After Independence, Whose Land? Settler Colonialism, Conservation, and the Protection of Citizens in Laikipia, Kenya

Abstract

Kenya's independence in 1963 ended British colonial rule, but political independence did not automatically dismantle the land relations, territorial inequalities, and institutional arrangements produced through colonial settlement. Laikipia County provides an important case through which to examine this unresolved relationship between colonial history and contemporary conservation. Once profoundly transformed through the displacement of Maasai communities and the establishment of large settler ranches, Laikipia is today characterized by private ranches, wildlife conservancies, pastoralist territories, smallholder farms, research institutions, and competing claims to land and environmental authority. This paper asks how colonial histories of land dispossession continue to shape contemporary conservation arrangements and what responsibilities the postcolonial Kenyan state has to protect citizens and communities affected by those arrangements. Drawing on scholarship on settler colonialism, political ecology, racial capitalism and the postcolonial state, the paper brings together historical research on Laikipia, critical conservation scholarship, Kenyan constitutional and land law, human-rights documentation, institutional material produced by conservation organizations, and contemporary public testimony concerning alleged violence within conservation landscapes. The paper does not argue that contemporary conservation is identical to colonial rule, nor does it treat allegations contained in media interviews as independently established facts. Instead, it examines how historical structures can be transformed and reproduced through new institutional forms. It argues that conservation must be understood not only as environmental governance but also as a form of territorial and social governance in which land, mobility, knowledge, security and citizenship are negotiated. The paper ultimately asks what independence requires of a state whose citizens continue to experience contested relationships with historically unequal landscapes. It argues for a model of conservation in which ecological protection is compatible with substantive citizenship, community authority, historical land justice, meaningful participation, and accountable regulation of both public and private power.