Mr. John Keen, one of the Maasai delegates to the conference, aptly described the treaties imposed on the Maasai:
“The law took from indigenous inhabitants any right to occupy their traditional land, exposed them to deprivation of the religious, cultural and economic sustenance which the land provides, vested the land effectively in the control of the Imperial authorities without any right to compensation, and made the indigenous inhabitants intruders in their own homes and mendicants for a place to live.”
The Maasai leaders’ request that their land claims be addressed fell on deaf ears.
From Independence to Now
Following independence, the country became more politically stable and attractive to development projects and tourism. The Maasai were continually left out of the processes of development, and their land claims continued to be ignored.
One of the more promising developments came with the enactment of a new national Constitution in 2011. Article 67 of the new Constitution created a National Land Commission, one duty of which is to “initiate investigations, on its own initiative or on a complaint, into present or historical land injustices, and recommend appropriate redress.”
EDLC and the Maa Civil Society Forum
EDLC has been working with the Maa Civil Society Forum, an umbrella group for Maasai organizations that was formed to promote land rights claims. The current situation may represent the best opportunity the Maasai have had in a century to resolve these issues in their favor. And EDLC has engaged a highly respected English law firm to lead this renewed effort to obtain justice for the Maasai in a landmark case regarding corporate use of Maasai lands.
- John Keen, representative of the Maasai at the Lancaster House independence conference of 1962.