The lie of the lion: racialization of nature in the safari souvenir

Abstract

The narrative of the Maasai lion hunt, invoked to sell souvenirs in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area, establishes a vision of nature intertwined with racial otherness; on safari, nature is racialized, and this racialized nature is exemplified by the souvenir. The Maasai souvenir represents wild, external nature because it includes ‘natural products,’ and it mimics the trophy. It symbolizes wild, internal, human nature by invoking the mythos of the lion hunt, thereby solidifying time by recalling the colonial past and tying it to the tourist present. Such race-environment issues can best be understood via social ecology rather than framed by environmental justice. Building on ethnographic field work, interviews, and archival research conducted over the past decade, I have found that nature is racialized on safari. To go to or know of Tanzania, and perhaps Africa more generally, is to see nature through the lens of racial difference. This racialization of nature therefore has much wider implications not only for perceptions of the African landscape and people, but for notions of whiteness as well.