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3. Precarious Alliances
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3 X Precarious Alliances Maasai, like other groups in Africa marked by distinctions of culture, language, and livelihood, had a long history of challenging the injustices and disparaging stereotypes perpetrated on them by first the colonial and later the postcolonial nation-state. The political dynamics of these struggles were generally confined within national boundaries, as a matter between Maasai and the colonial administrators and later national elites who ran the government. By representing themselves as indigenous people, and thereby linking their situation and struggles to those of indigenous people elsewhere , Maasai activists and NGOs expanded the dynamics of their efforts to include the transnational advocacy organizations, multinational institutions such as the UN, and international donors involved in the indigenous rights movement, thereby establishing international recognition and support for their demands. In addition to regularly attending the annual meetings of the UN Working Group and UN Permanent Forum, Maasai activists from Tanzania (and Kenya) participated in the international indigenous rights movement in several ways. Perhaps most importantly, they built strong ties with several international organizations that advocated on behalf of indigenous peoples, including IWGIA, Survival International, and Cultural Survival. These organizations and others sponsored local, national, and international workshops and meetings to educate Maasai and other African groups about indigenous rights and to provide opportunities for activists to meet one another to share their experiences , learn new strategies, and build an international coalition. In addition, with the encouragement and sponsorship of certain advocacy organizations and eager individuals, several Maasai NGOs and leaders developed relationships with specific indigenous groups. One of the most publicized associations took place between Tanzanian and Kenyan Maasai and Australian Aborigines from 1998 to 2000. Pilotlight UK, a charity founded by 106 Being Maasai, Becoming Indigenous Jane Tewson, the wife of Charles Lane, an Australian social scientist who had long studied and advocated for the rights of Barabaig pastoralists in Tanzania (Lane 1996), organized an exchange program (funded by the UK Lotteries Commission) between “indigenous East African Livestock Herders” and Aborigines “so that they can learn from each other and inform their own efforts to secure rights to their lands.”1 In 1998, nine East Africans visited Australia for six weeks, hosted by Aboriginal communities. The delegates included seven prominent Maasai activists, one well-known Barabaig leader, and a Tanzanian lawyer who was actively involved in defending Barabaig land rights.2 According to an Australian friend of mine who happened to meet with them, “Matei [a Maasai member of Parliament at the time] kept pretty much to himself, made some great speeches but didn’t mingle much even with his colleagues, and Martin [head of a Maasai NGO] seemed rather shy (although gorgeous— he, Naomi, and Joseph wore Maasai clothes and looked resplendent).” As she concluded, “It’s mostly a profile-raising and public education exercise and also inspirational for the actual delegation members.”3 In return, Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania hosted a delegation of four Aboriginal activists from Australia in 2000, who were accompanied by a BBC team filming for a planned television documentary, Common Ground (later retitled Meeting the Masai Mob). According to one reporter’s account, “Many points of connection emerged between the Aboriginals and the Maasai. . . . As our host in Lorkisale, Tanzania put it; ‘It’s the first time in this zone that we’ve had guests like this . . . sitting together, exchanging ideas together. . . . We’re both traditional people and it’s similar. . . . There are Maasai in Australia!’” (Rose 2000). (Similarly, IWGIA encouraged the development of ties between Maasai in Tanzania and Saami reindeer herders from Scandinavia.) All of the activists that I spoke to acknowledged that one benefit of their success at gaining significant international visibility and recognition as an “indigenous people” was a tremendous flow of resources from international donors. In effect, international recognition enabled them to circumvent the Tanzanian state to access signnificant resources for social and economic development initiatives such as water, education, health services, and livestock restocking, at a time when the state had withdrawn its support for these services. For example, in addition to the projects described in chapter 2, Danida spent almost $5 million on a livestock development project in Ngorongoro, working through the auspices of a Maasai NGO; HIVOS and NOVIB (two Norwegian donors) worked with another Maasai NGO to [54.242.75.224] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 12:38 GMT) Precarious Alliances 107 support water projects, women’s income-generating projects, and several land-rights claims; and other donors funded NGOs to build...