Those of you around Lake Bogoria last Saturday – or around their television screens – will have noticed the huge celebration taking place there.

The Endorois community, one of Kenya’s 'real' minorities (a semi-nomadic sub-group of the Kalenjin numbering only about 60,000), had invited other Kenyans to share their joy at the landmark decision of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights over their claims to their ancestral land.

Minister of Lands James Orengo was present, as was the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and most of Kenya’s human rights community.

And tellingly, Kenya’s other 'real' minorities – or 'indigenous' peoples – from around the country were present too.

Because the decision has a bearing on their own claims to ancestral lands.

To backtrack a bit, using the term 'indigenous' peoples in what is now an independent, post-colonial, black-majority country is sometimes confusing and sometimes seen as provocative, the argument being that, with the exception of those who settled here from Asia and Europe during and post the colonial period, we are all 'indigenous'.

But, if we are honest, and if we dig even a little into what we still know of our pre-colonial past, we are forced to admit that we (like most peoples in the world) have always been on the move.

In that movement, bigger communities, with a tendency to more agricultural and settled livelihoods, have often won territory from smaller communities, particularly those with less individualistic land use patterns, such as forest dwelling and pastoralist communities.

Among the Gikuyu, for example, the stories speak of encountering small people who jumped into holes and disappeared.

'Small people who jumped into holes and disappeared'?

Are the stories referring to what used to be known as the Ndorobo, lighter-skinned people, some of whom did, in fact, intermarry with the Gikuyu?

Or are they referring to what used to be referred to as Pygmies, who presumably are what we now know as the Batwa, who were forced to move deeper and deeper into Central Africa where the forests that sustain their livelihoods persist?

It remains a mystery to me, but hopefully less so to the anthropologists and historians among us, whose explanations of our pre-colonial migratory and settlement patterns would in fact be immensely useful at this particular point in our history.

Because it is so clear that those stories live on, and inform the deepest levels of claim to land in this country.

And because it is those deepest levels of claim that form the basis for the worst of contemporary contestation over land.

Fast forward to the present and to the Endorois.

Their forcible displacement from their ancestral land around Lake Bogoria took place more recently – between 1974 and 1979, during the Kenyatta regime – to make way for what became the Lake Bogoria Game Reserve.

Denied access to pasture and water in arid Marigat, they lost most of their livestock.

They also lost access to their traditional medicines, found in plants around the lake.

And they lost access to the lake itself, a site of cultural and spiritual significance.

They did not take the forcible displacement lying down.

They petitioned the Moi regime and the former president (whose family now owns one of the lodges around the lake) for restitution. They failed.

They filed their first case against the forcible displacement in the Kenyan courts in 1997, challenging the manner in which the Baringo and Koibatek county councils – in whom responsibility for the trust lands had been vested – had exercised their trusteeship.

That is, the legality of the forced eviction and the consequent exclusion of the Endorois from benefiting from the proceeds of the Lake Bogoria Game Reserve. They failed.

And so they moved to the African Commission in 2003, which has now ruled in their favour as follows: '[I]n view that the African Commission finds that the respondent State is in violation of Articles 1, 8, 14, 17, 21 and 22 of the African Charter [on Human and Peoples’ Rights], the African Commission recommends that the respondent State: recognise rights of ownership of the Endorois and restitute Endorois ancestral land; ensure the Endorois community has unrestricted access to Lake Bogoria and surrounding sites for religious and cultural rites and for grazing their cattle; pay adequate compensation to the community for the losses suffered; pay royalties to the Endorois from existing economic activities and ensure that they benefit from employment possibilities with the Lake Bogoria Game Reserve.'

There are a few more findings, but those are the most important: recognition of ownership; restitution; access; compensation; royalties and compensation.

This is huge. It lays the ground for the kind of communal land ownership system now spelt out in the new Land Policy.

It lays the ground for negotiations by other 'real' minorities and 'indigenous' communities with the government of Kenya over other ancestral lands.

It lays the ground for recognition by all of us of the need to better balance, in future, individual and public economic imperatives for land use with the communities whose ancestral land is in question.

It lays the ground for the slow process of renegotiating our very country.

Hongera to the Endorois.

And to all of those who’ve supported their long struggle.

And to Mr Orengo, who not only saw fit to be there to celebrate the victory with them and indicate his support in ensuring the African Commission’s ruling is implemented, but who has seen the Land Policy finally move forward.

The new Kenya? Maybe it will, in the end, come – from the bottom up.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* L. Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.
* This article was originally published by The East African.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.