Resilient Memories, Claim Making and Cultural Heritage Among the Migrant and Stateless Makonde Community in Kenya
The project focuses on critical questions of memory and heritage in East Africa through a focus on the Makonde people, in Kenya, a group who originally came from Mozambique, and only recently gained Kenyan citizenship. It explores heritage and identity for such a minority migrant group living in a land where their presence and rights have not always been secure. The Makonde community is in this dilemma where it finds itself within a diversity of cultural forms and it is struggling to collectively re-own its culture and heritage. As critical heritage scholars argue, heritage is inherently linked with power relations and representation and is a space for contestation where contesting groups showcase their resilience. Within this space, issues of whether people belong or not, as well as claims over ownership and power control, support the making of heritage. Heritage scholars further argue that within the same space, there are social, economic and political struggles as heritage is contested delineated and appropriated.
This project explores Makonde material culture and cultural heritage within a wider theme of displaced and migrant community who lives in Kenya having migrated from Mozambique. About 18,500 Makonde migrants have stayed in Kenya for many decades and are finding themselves in a dilemma of threat to their cultural heritage and social memories. However, Makonde people have been able to deal with their social memories while at the same time making claims on the land that they have lived on for several decades in Kenya. The Makonde is, therefore, an interesting case study of how communities can be resilient about their social and collective memories, identities and heritage even in places where they find themselves as a diasporic minority group.
The aim of this study is, therefore, to: examine the relations between the usage of memory and arts in the reconstruction of Makonde’s heritage; examine resilience building by Makonde on their tangible and intangible cultural heritage in Kenya; assess how Makonde resilient memories, culture and heritage have impacted on Kenya’s culture and heritage as well as the process of claim making and contestations by the Makonde community. Finally, the study evaluates the extent of social and economic integration between Makonde and their host communities in Kenya. A descriptive research design and a postcolonial theoretical formulation will be used in the study.
Researchers
Gordon Omenya Lecturer at Kenyatta University
Neil Carrier Associate Professor in Social Anthropology, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology