Discussions held at the end of last month between a delegation of Maasai community leaders from Kenya and Tanzania and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford prove that repatriation is not the only solution for the care of culturally sensitive objects.

It took seven years of collaboration and one week of deliberations before a group of Maasai family delegates decided that five objects whose ancestral lineage had been traced back to their families should remain in the care of the Pitt Rivers. Delegates felt these objects were being well cared for by the Museum.

The Pitt Rivers holds a collection of 188 Maasai objects, only a small fraction of its total collection of over 95,000 items sourced from Africa. Most of their Maasai collection was removed from Kenya and Tanzania during the colonial era.

The catalyst that triggered this decision to retain the five objects in Oxford started with the launch in 2017 of the Museum’s Living Cultures Project, described by the Museum as a new way to create equitable partnerships with Indigenous peoples. The project involves handing these peoples the power to decide on the future of their artefacts.

Maasai community representatives had approached the Pitt Rivers keen to change the way their living culture is represented - beyond the framework of the imperial past. The seven-year collaboration that followed has involved representatives from PALCA (the Pan-African Living Culture Alliance) and Oltoilo le Maa (a Tanzanian community-based video group, formed to document and protect Maasai culture). The project has been funded by The Staples Trust.

Concern about these five items - hereditary jewellery and personal ornaments - was raised formally during the first Maasai delegation to explore objects in the Pitt Rivers collection in 2018. A second delegation in 2020 set out to identify (using Maasai systems of knowledge) how these objects had entered the Museum’s collection, which families were affected by their absence and possible routes for reconciliation.

Four years of discussions, joint research and ceremonies then followed, leading up to the meeting held at the Museum in September 2024. This time, the delegation of Maasai family representatives (selected as cultural knowledge keepers by their respective families), together with representatives from PALCA, Oltoilo le Maa and the Orkiaama (the Maasai’s traditional leadership structure) all met up in Oxford, “to reconnect with the objects and decide on the next steps,” according to a statement from the Museum.

Maasai tradition dictates that hereditary ornaments such as these would never have been given away or sold. They could only be lent to family members and only for a very short time. As a result, each item must have been taken by force, after killing its owner and removing it from their body on the battlefield.

None of the delegation had seen the objects in person, so coming face to face with these objects for the first time in Oxford understandably led to much emotion, shock and sadness. Specially selected herbal teas were applied to the objects (in small quantities) and distributed to the delegates, staff and participants at reconciliation and healing ceremonies held at the Museum. Delegates said these herbal medicines helped them withstand the hurt of being reconnected with their objects.

Massai delegation examining ancestral objects

Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

The decision by the family delegates to leave the items in the future care of the Pitt Rivers was made only after intense discussions and after taking advice from Mokompo, the group’s spiritual leader. It's another tradition of the Maasai community that when a warrior is killed on the battlefield, the body should be buried there, instead of returned to his home. As the objects are considered warriors themselves, this encouraged the delegates to decide the ornaments should remain in Oxford.

This decision is considered the final step in a process of reconciliation and healing with the five families from whom these objects were violently removed.

The Museum has undertaken to preserve each ornament in a separate box bearing the name of its original owner. The Maasai nation, families and individuals will be given lifetime access, which can also be facilitated online; the stories behind each object will be documented and made available in both English and Maa.

The Museum has said it plans to build on its relationship with the Maasai community by working together on future collaborations, “to decide how the outcomes of this unique process and Maasai cultural traditions can be best represented in the permanent galleries of the Museum, so that as many visitors as possible will learn from this process.”

* Further details of Living Cultures 2024 can be found here

Photo: Maasai delegates visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford