From Spiritual Leader to English Milk Maid: Colonialism and Maasai Women :: Essays Papers

From Spiritual Leader to English Milk Maid Colonialism and Maasai Women Before Western imposition of the nation state, Maasai men and women well-kept overlapping positions of power and social prestige among varying age groups. For centuries, there was no clear, gendered distinction between the domestic and the public/political domains, or among social, economical and political activities (36). Yet with the new compound parameters of male Maasai power beget from Western social systems, the Maasai embraced new modes of control and authority, becoming something that might be called decrepit (16). In this new pastoralist system, ethnic variances were disregarded, capitalistic profit drove foreign-native relations and Maasai women lost the place of honor and authority within Maasai conceptions of being Maasai. Prior to colonial contact, married women were significantly more influential than commonly supposed. In terms of wealth and economy, married women kept a size sufficient crop of h er own kine with exclusive rights to milk and byproducts of her herd and maintained links with neighboring agricultural groups, trading surplus milk, hides, smallstock and even donkeys for the needed grain and food stuffs (30). Women traditionally travelled to markets and trading settlements, visited friends and relatives at neighboring homesteads (27) and were free to take lovers prior to and after marriage, so long as traditional household duties were not neglected (31). Moreover, women were able to lobby judicial proceedings and mediate relationships between Maasai and God, thus expressing moral authority and power (33). However, beginning in 1890, Western colonialism reshaped the Maasais perception of who they should be. Though the German colonialism was uneven and limited, it weakened the Maasai through disease, and established the practice of state rule (37). Conforming the Maasai to colonial, and then national, agendas of progress, the assertion and expansion of state power reordered Maasai lives and livelihoods to suit Western needs (275). Subsequent British rule in the 1900s expanded on state authority with tribal relocations and new heads of households, enforcing neat alignments of ethnic identicalness with territorial identity on a mobile and nomadic people. Frustrated Westerners created a political hierarchy of Africans to ruled through co-optation (61) and instituted colonial taxes upon the men, disrupting cows ownership among men and women (69). Even in the 1960s, continuing a potentially lucrative source of state revenue, foreign organizations spent millions of dollars on the increase of Maasai productivity, yet the programs held no cultural sensitivity and flopped.