Becoming indigenous peoples: Difference, inequality, and the globalization of East African identity politics

Abstract

Although the term 'indigenous' implies a state preceding that which is foreign or acquired, indigenous movements in Africa are a recent phenomenon. Drawing from the author's research of the Tanzanian indigenous peoples' movement in the 1990s, this article argues that indigenous identity in Tanzania does not represent miraculously preserved pre-colonial traditions or even a special sort of marginalization. Rather, it reflects the convergence of existing identity categories with shifting global structures of development and governance. Specifically, it reflects a combination of 'cultural distinctiveness' and effective strategies of extraversion in the context of economic and political liberalization. The Maasai, who are 'culturally distinct', and who have a long tradition of enrolling outsiders in their cause, naturally dominate this movement. BETWEEN 1991 AND 1997, I CONDUCTED ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN NORTHERN TANZANIA, primarily in Maasai herding communities. Throughout the twentieth century, Maasai communities have seen their territory taken over by national parks, large-scale commercial agriculture, and small-scale subsistence agriculturalists displaced from neighbouring highland areas. These transformations have made extensive livestock herding an untenable economic activity. My time in the field was one of especially intensive change, as Tanzania liberalized its economy. Throughout the 1990s, foreign investors flocked to Tanzania in pursuit of cheap land and other natural resources. They were joined by Tanzanian elites, finally free of the investment restrictions that had been imposed by Tanzania's previously socialist government.1 My research examined the cultural and political responses of Maasai communities to economic and political liberalization, especially grassroots Jim Igoe (jigoe@cudenver.edu; jigoe@mwekawildlife.org) is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado at Denver. 1. United Republic of Tanzania, Report of the Presidential Commission for Enquiry into Land Tenure Matters (Government Publishers, Dar es Salaam, 1993); Issa Shivji, Not Yet Democracy (IIED, London, 1998).