- During Kenya’s colonial era, Maasai, Samburu and other pastoralist communities were evicted from what is now Laikipia county to make way for British settler farms.
- Today, much of that land is still concentrated in the hands of British descendants, as well as other Kenyans and foreign investors who own large ranches and wildlife conservancies.
- Over the past decade, some of these ranches have been embroiled in conflicts with Laikipia’s pastoralist communities over access to water and forage for their herds.
- These conflicts are the subject of “The Battle for Laikipia,” a documentary film shot over seven years. Mongabay spoke to Daphne Matziaraki, one of the filmmakers.
KIMANA, Kenya — Lush, fertile and green, the Laikipia highlands of Kenya are renowned for their beauty and abundant grasses that feed its wildlife and livestock. They’re also the theater of some of the longest-running land disputes in the country.
Traditionally occupied by the Maasai, along with their Maa-speaking cousins the Samburu and other pastoralists, Laikipia county has a temperate climate and suitability for agriculture that made it highly coveted by British settlers at the turn of the 20th century. By 1911, colonial authorities had moved nearly all the Maasai to distant reserves in the country’s south, converting land that had been used for livestock forage into farms and cattle ranches.
The echoes of this period still reverberate today. After independence, many settlers fled Laikipia for Europe — but the land they left behind did not revert back to the pastoralists who once grazed their herds there. Much of it was transferred to other Kenyans to be used for farming, or remained in the hands of the families that chose to remain. Today, massive ranches and wildlife conservancies cover more than half the county’s 9,532 square kilometers (3,680 square miles), the bulk of which are owned by descendants of those families or investors they sold them to.
In the last decade, some of these ranches have been the locus of conflict between their owners and pastoralist communities who believe they were established on stolen land. Spurred on by a series of droughts, some Samburu “invaded” the ranches to look for water and forage for their herds. The resulting clashes became a national political issue in Kenya, claiming dozens of lives and renewing debate over the country’s unsettled history.
In this context arrives the meticulously reported documentary film Battle for Laikipia. Shot over the course of seven years at the height of the crisis by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi, the film follows Simeon Latoole, a Samburu pastoralist and human rights activist, and Maria Dodds, a British-descended owner of the Kifuku Ranch, along with her family. The result is a moving and nuanced portrait of Laikipia’s drought years and the humanity that lies behind the veil of today’s conflicts over resources.
Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo spoke to Matziaraki about the process of making the film and the tensions it explores. The following is a lightly edited transcript of their discussion.
Mongabay: How did you come to choose Laikipia as a setting for a film?
Daphne Matziaraki: In 2015, I was doing another story, which was completely [unrelated], about poaching that took place in Laikipia. That’s when I got to meet a couple of these [white Kenyan] families who were already back then experiencing a situation of pressure. As these pressures came and the weather was becoming drier, there were big identity questions of belonging and home. These families were there for four generations and considered Kenya home. Laikipia has this settler history with big ranches. It’s like a place where you still see these vast land inequalities and land issues, with small families — or now changing to small — owning vast amounts of land.
But still, these families are people who consider themselves Kenyan. They work very hard and have for generations. And they live in this very delicate balance where their home is not exactly their home, but there is no other place for them. I found this a very difficult and interesting place to be as a human being, questioning this idea of home and belonging. It was very universal and I started really thinking about it. When this big conflict started in 2017, I thought it was a good way to try to tell this important and universal story.
Mongabay: If I’m not mistaken, most of those families showed up after the Maasai were evicted from Laikipia, right? The word Laikipia comes from the Maasai language.
Daphne Matziaraki: Yeah, Laikipia is a Maa word. This is a very debated question, because history is always written from the side of the conqueror. All the books and archival footage are from the white settler side, which says nobody was there, it was empty land, and that’s why they took it.
But if you ask Samburu people, who are Maa people, that would say of course that they’ve always been there. Of course, there has been a population increase. So, there were fewer people, but maybe it was a time when they were migrating. And these people did not have permanent settlements. They were, and are, seminomadic pastoralists who have always followed the range. So, you wouldn’t find a town or village in one place ever.
That’s the big and important question. If you ask the old people — and if you remember, in the film Simeon’s grandfather is a very important figure who dies at the end and takes these memories with him. We captured these memories of him being there when the white man came with big cars. And we have Simeon looking and searching for the history of these agreements with leaders who didn’t know what they were signing, basically.
If you ask the Samburu people, they know exactly where their ancestors were buried in Laikipia. They know exactly the ancient migratory routes, all the paths. They know everything. It’s passed from generation to generation. So they, of course, consider Laikipia their ancestral land.
Mongabay: You talked a bit about Simeon. One thing that really strikes me about the film is how much it seems like you were able to get both Simeon and Maria to trust you. How did you do that?
Daphne Matziaraki: That’s a really good question. I think this is why it took us so long to make this film, because it was a constant negotiation of trust. When we initially got there, it was like at the moment of crisis, where both sides felt that they wanted to tell their side of the story, and it was urgent.
For Simeon, if you read the news at the time, it was broadcasting the side of the white families, really like “Crisis in Laikipia!” In the BBC and other international outlets, the Samburu were presented as criminals, really, and bandits. People with illegal weapons attacking white properties. They didn’t have a platform. They didn’t have a real voice, so for Simeon, it was difficult to trust us, because I initially went there by myself, a white woman trying to convince him that I really want to tell his side of the story. We went there in a hurry. We didn’t have the time to organize our team properly. We had our producer — she’s Kenyan, but was at the time based in Nairobi — so I was by myself trying to convince Simeon. And that took a lot of time, and it was so challenging. Actually, it took years and years to convince him.
And for Maria, initially, it was like, yeah, it’s a color situation. She trusted me because I was white. And then, as the story progressed, she had her own child-like questions, because they both knew that we were filming with the other side. They did not know who we were filming with. They just knew that we were filming. They were so kind, in a way, to never ask what we were filming and what was being told.
I built these relationships in a way that I feel shows in the film. We truly wanted to tell their side of the story without manipulation or opinions, just to show their side of the story and let the audience understand, and through empathy become aware and educated. And I feel that they both did understand that over time, because of our constant showing up, being there, and being present with them all the time, living with them, talking to them about our idea for the film.
Maria never got to see the film, unfortunately, but her family did. And they really loved it, even though it was really hard for them. And Simeon too. I feel that we tried hard from the beginning until the very end to keep our word that we were going to stay true to their story and try to create empathy and understanding. But it was a huge challenge. It was so difficult. We were constantly negotiating the trust and relationships that we had with them.
Mongabay: I feel like your film is sort of, in some ways, about how people are affected by history today. I wanted to ask how the Samburu people you spent time with see the history of Laikipia, if they spoke to you about it, and also what you think your film says about how we navigate these histories we are burdened by.
Daphne Matziaraki: I can’t put every person in Laikipia into one voice, but the people I spent time with feel that there has been a huge historical injustice that has not been undone. And it’s like that injustice was done and was continued by the Kenyan government. So they feel voiceless. They feel that history has marginalized them and that they are oppressed. They’re very proud of their identity and their culture, and they’re very smart and savvy and aware of contemporary and modern ways of life. Simeon, for example, is a very educated man. He’s been to university, but chose to go back and live the traditional Samburu lifestyle because it’s very important for them to stay true to who they are and not disappear.
How we navigate history now is a very difficult question, and we really hope that this film will bring awareness. It’s a very different thing for the communities themselves to see themselves on screen, and for people who shape history — leaders in politics and in conservation, all the stakeholders — to see, “OK, this is what we’ve done. This is what has happened so far. How do we move forward?” That’s very important for us.
There is a history in Laikipia, but we feel that things are not set in stone. There is room for change. The Samburu population is not a thing of the past. They’re alive. They’re active, they still live this life. And there is room for what they do. There is room for them to 100% have a say and a seat on the negotiating table. So we really hope that at least this film can add a little something to change the course of history.
Mongabay: Something I thought a lot about when watching was how resource hoarding creates this artificial scarcity that then leads to conflict. One of the really valuable things about your film is that you inhabit the mind of people who are on the hoarding side. I wonder if you have anything that you felt about what it’s like to be on that side for them. It didn’t always look great.
Daphne Matziaraki: Yeah, exactly, it’s not great way to live. I think Maria was an amazing person. In all this privilege that she grew up with, she questioned herself, and she says it in the film: “Why are we doing this? Why do we live this way?” It’s really tough, and it’s miserable, and I think — I’m not a doctor — there was so much stress for her and [her son] George. There’s so much pain coming with this colonial legacy, so much trauma for both sides, I feel, and all this burden of keeping this heritage alive. There’s thousands and thousands of acres in that heritage.
Especially in Western cultures, we identify so much with our possessions and our belongings. It’s really so hard to let go of something like that. And it’s really interesting, because some [people] live a totally different way of life. They don’t view the land like that, as theirs. It’s like they’re passing by the land. They borrow the land. They just use it gently, and then move on. But they want to access it, and that’s a huge difference. I think there is so much pain and burden coming with the colonial legacy for both sides.
Mongabay: The scene that stuck with me the most about the film is when Maria’s husband sees all of these shattered objects, and says something like, “Our possessions are our weak point.” Pastoralism is often very demonized. Governments have been trying to shut it down for various reasons for decades. You had the chance to really spend a lot of time with pastoralists, and I think that’s a very fortunate opportunity. What would you say you learned about them?
Daphne Matziaraki: It completely transformed me. I think it was the most valuable years of my life. Seeing firsthand the true connection between man and nature, the respect that these people have for the environment that they live in, the knowledge that they have about everything and the way that they treat the environment and resources, the way that they understand nature. They can read the weather, the rain, the drought, the herbs, the soil, the grass. It’s so much wealth, and such a different perspective of viewing life and positioning oneself on this place called Earth. And they completely abide by this lifestyle — they believe in it. Their rituals, their cycles of life, are so sacred and so respectable.
And yes, there’s a massive population increase, and it is not sustainable, because they have so much cattle, sheep and goats that they now destroy the land. And there are the cattle barons and politicians who are doing money laundering with cattle, all these things are also part of the of the scenario.
But the core is that the pastoralist way of life has so much to teach us. I feel when we talk about environmental protection and resources and conservation and coexistence, there is so much to learn. And the rest, when we talk about cattle violence and population increases — these [issues] could be balanced with good policies and inclusive planning. They can be solved.
Banner image:A Samburu pastoralist watches over their herd in northern Kenya’s Sera Community Conservancy. Image by Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay.
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