Decolonizing Maasai History: A Path to Indigenous African Futures

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In this open access book, Maasai leader and activist Meitamei Dapash teams with historian Mary Poole to offer a new version of Maasai history based on Maasai memory and concerns. Through their rich and detailed narrative, we learn not only about the history of the Maasai as they understand it, but also about the relations between politics and Western history; about the untold history of Kenya both pre- and post-nationhood; about why the creation of nation-states is not synonymous with liberation; and about how and why Indigenous approaches to land obstruct global processes of resource extraction. All of this finds wider resonances that upend received narratives of post-independence Africa and offer new opportunities for the emancipation of Indigenous communities from neo-colonial regimes the world over. Theebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Author Bio

Meitamei Olol Dapash is a nationally recognized leader of the Indigenous Maasai community in Kenya, as well as Director of the Institute for Maasai Education, Research & Conservation, Talek, Kenya. He is also the co-founder, with Mary Poole, of the Dopoi Center for community organizing and education, near Talek, Kenya. Mary Poole is a historian of East Africa and Chair of Social Justice Studies, Prescott College, USA. She has collaborated for twenty years with Meitamei Dapash to reconstruct Maasai history and support Maasai land-rights activism.