Living Cultures: Maasai Stories - Redress and Resilience

When: November 28, 2018, 18:00 - 21:00 GMT

Where: The Building Centre, 26 Store Street, London, WC1E 7BT, United Kingdom

Cost: From £5.98

InsightShare, Oakland Institute and Pitt Rivers Museum invite you to join us for an evening of discussion, film screenings and presentations with Maasai Elders and Community leaders from Tanzania and Kenya. We will explore the relationship between museum representations of Maasai culture and present-day struggles over land rights and protection of language and culture.

Living Cultures is a unique collaboration between Pitt Rivers Museum and InsightShare, working for the first time with Maasai communities from Tanzania and Kenya to reclaim the narratives behind the Museum’s collections from the region. Collaborating with museum curators to realign stories, attributions and descriptions of artifacts, the Maasai team will also showcase their powerful videos and discuss how the use participatory video to bring sharply into focus their current land rights campaign.

Land-grabs, forced evictions, human rights violations: these are the harsh realities faced by Maasai communities today. Foreign ‘investment’ in Maasai territory has led to the burning of villages, intimidation and violence by the authorities. Erosion of language and culture is the inevitable consequence, perhaps the ultimate conclusion of colonialism.

Confronting our imperial past and bringing Maasai stories up to date, Living Cultures aims to raise awareness of the ongoing struggles they face to protect their land, culture and communities.

Join us as we begin our journey, through Living Cultures, towards reparation and restoration.

Join us to support the new Maasai land rights campaign, harnessing the power of participatory video to challenge land grabbing and effect positive social change.

Supported by:

Pitt Rivers Museum, Staples Trust, Bertha Foundation, Network for Social Change, The Foundation for the Built Environment, The Gentlemen Baristas