The Maasai are facing a battle for their home. Why?

Miyo McGinn

August 1, 2022

The Maasai, an indigenous ethnic group in East Africa, has been fending off foreign powers and fighting to preserve their culture for over a century. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they had to contend with colonizers. Now, in the 21st century, it’s powerful business interests and their own national governments.

Over the last few months, years of conflict in Tanzania are coming to a head as the government tries to force tens of thousands of indigenous Maasai people to relocate from their ancestral rangelands in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Government officials claim that the Ngorongoro region is overpopulated, and moving the Maasai is for the protection of the conservation area from the impact of the tribe and their cattle herds. Advocates argue that this is fallacious, not to mention colonial.

“Indigenous [communities] have been living there for generations. These territories are now important nature conservation areas precisely because the original inhabitants took such good care of their land and wildlife,” Fiore Longo, a research and advocacy officer at the indigenous rights group Survival International, said in a press release.

So how did we get here?

Over a hundred years ago, before the British established a “protectorate” (in this case a colony, for all intents and purposes) in the Great Rift Valley, a region of East Africa in modern-day Kenya and Tanzania.

Before colonialism and after, the Maasai were known for being nomadic or semi-nomadic herdspeople who did not own, but traveled freely over, broad swaths of land. They got almost all of their food from their livestock and were notably fierce warriors.

The Protectorate of British East Africa was established in 1888 by the British Imperial East Africa Company and officially handed over to the crown a few years later. In 1904 and 1911, faced with the threat of the English’s superior weapons and weakened by foreign diseases, the Maasai signed two treaties with them that ceded an estimated two-thirds of their land across modern-day Kenya and Tanzania to the colonists.

When the British left and the republic of Tanzania was formed, much of the Maasai’s ancestral range became national parks or wildlife preserves. In addition to being lush and fertile—which is why the British had wanted these territories in the first place—their lands were also home to large mammals like rhinos and lions. The Maasai had lived alongside these animals for generations, but the presence of these legendary animals was spun into a source of massive wealth via big game hunting and tourism.

In 1992, Otterlo Business Corporation, based out of the United Arab Emirates (and with ties to the UAE royal family), acquired exclusive hunting and safari rights to the Loliondo region. Despite reports of a rocky relationship with the Tanzanian government—their license was apparently pulled and reinstated, and conservation groups alleged that the company has paid large bribes to various government officials—Otterlo Business Corporation still claims hunting rights and has been at odds with the Maasai for years.

Today, the Maasai population numbers over a million across Kenya and Tanzania. Many have chosen to settle down outside of their traditional grazing lands and take up other work, but others have opted to continue living as pastoral nomads. Their way of life is threatened by everything from modernity to climate change, but for the 70,000 that still live around Loliondo and call the Ngorongoro Conservation Area home, the most immediate danger is the long-running effort by the Tanzanian government to encroach on their remaining lands.

In August 2009, approximately 3,000 Maasai people were forcibly evicted from their homes near Loliondo. Indigenous advocacy group Survival International reported at the time that Tanzanian riot police set their houses on fire, clearing the way for the Otterlo Business Company to move in.

Following a second round of evictions in 2013, a 2014 attempt by the state to seize Maasai lands was thwarted when the tribe’s leaders publicly revealed the government’s intentions and received a deluge of popular international support. But evictions and other clashes would continue as Tanzanian officials continued pressuring the Maasai to relocate.

Then, in February 2022, Tanzania’s tourism minister announced that all land belongs to the president and that the Maasai, who had lived on and stewarded that land for generations, did not have a claim.

In April, Maasai from Loliondo and Ngorongoro sent a letter to governments in the US, UK, and the EU asking them for support in protecting their homelands against the Tanzanian government’s encroachment.

“We are appealing to human rights organizations, media and other citizens who value Indigenous human rights to share our plight and put pressure on the government of Tanzania to respect the rights of its citizens, and particularly Indigenous people,” the letter reads.

So far, their requests for help haven’t received the same response they did in 2014. On June 10 of this year, government officials began delineating the 1,500 square kilometers (about 579 square miles) destined to be a game reserve owned and run by Otterlo Business Company, sparking a protest. Ten Maasai leaders were arrested and 30 others were injured when the protests turned violent, and the state claims that a police officer was killed by the protesters. The injured Maasai and their allies have had to travel to neighboring Kenya for medical treatment, for fear of being denied treatment or arrested at the hospital.

In the days after the protest, Survival International reports that police went house-to-house looking to punish protesters and anyone who had shared videos of the protests.

Some Maasai families have relocated 600 kilometers (about 372 miles) south to the township of Handeni, where the Tanzanian government has offered them housing and up to ten acres of land per household for grazing their cattle. But those who made the move are still nervous about what will happen to their culture and way of life, so far from the lands of their ancestors.

Over 100 years after signing the first treaty to encroach on their ancestral grazing ranges, the Maasai still resisting are paying in blood right now to hold onto the land that’s left. So if you’re feeling the draw of a vacation to check out the ‘Big Five,’ consider taking some time to look into the history of the land you’d be visiting before booking that safari.

Miyo McGinn

Miyo McGinn is a writer, fact-checker, and self-described aspiring ski bum based in Washington. Her bylines can be found at Grist, High Country News, and Outside. She covers US and global news stories for Adventure.com.