Maasailand: A Study in Community Activism is an 18-credit field studies program offered to students of Prescott College during summer quarter. The program is taught by Meitamei Olol Dapash and Mary Poole, with the assistance of Kaitlin Noss. The program is the result of a close collaboration between Prescott College and the Maasai Environmental Resource Coalition (MERC), a community based organization working for the empowerment of Maasai people and environmental conservation. This program strives to create for American students the opportunity to experience Maasai culture on its own terms, and to give back what is of most value to Maasai people in their struggle for cultural, economic and political survival.
What makes Maasailand: A Study in Community Activism unique
- The course is designed to engage students directly with social justice activism.
- It offers U.S. college students the opportunity to work with and learn from Indigenous activists, and to share the benefits of their educations by conducting research on behalf of Maasai communities.
- It models an experiential approach to learning about and across cultural differences. U.S. students and Maasai people come to know each other as colleagues rather than objects of study, and learn about cultural differences through individual relationships.
Curriculum
- Learning and working with Maasai people in Nairobi and towns and villages throughout Maasailand, including: fellow students, members of Kenyan Parliament, elders, warriors, activists, and teachers.
- Investigating issues facing Maasai people as they encounter the forces of globalization, including: the political economy of tourism and trade, Maasai community owned businesses and cooperatives, language and literacy.
- Exploring the current debates within Maasai communities, including: the benefits and detriments of formal education, the challenges and opportunities presented by collaboration with outside entities around issues of gender equality, and the impact of development on culture.
Course activism and research products
The course content varies each year, as it is developed by Maasai and Prescott College leadership around a current, pressing need within the Maasai community.
Research products from this course can be viewed on the Research Results Page.
- 2005: Students were asked to research the impact of the tourist industry on Maasai communities.
- Research was conducted by interviewing lodge managers and employees, tourists, Maasai leadership, tour operators, and undertaking a literature review of related work.
- Final article was presented to the Narok County Council, Kenyan Wildlife Services Community Partnership progam and the country’s Public Prosecutor on completion.
- Articles were written for publication in East African newspapers. The first an expose on the exploitative practices of tour operators in Maasailand, and the second on positive efforts by Maasai leadership to manage the Maasai Mara Game Reserve.
- 2006: Maasai leadership in Amboseli requested research into the history of the government’s assumption of the Amboseli National Park, traditionally part of Maasailand, in the wake of renewed administrative interest in handing the park back to the management of Maasai communities.
- Research largely based on interviews and archival research.
- Final paper was presented to members of parliament and the Kaijiado County Council, and contributed to the eventual park management agreement achieved.
- 2007: Students wrote biographies and children’s books, telling the life stories of two Maasai activists/community leaders, for publication and distribution to Maasai primary and secondary schools.
- We are currently seeking funding to publish and bind copies of these texts for wider distribution.
- 2008: Prescott College students conducted historical research into the history of a 30,000 acre piece of Maasailand, in an area known as Mau Narok, to inform the efforts of the Maasai community to recover the land, first taken under British colonialism and then redistributed under the Kenyatta administration. Students presented the research in August, 2008, and several days later 700 Maasai community members organized a protest on the land. The research has formed the basis of a court case, to be filed in February, 2009, following the success of PC students to raise funds for court costs.
