A unique international Indigenous collaboration: Carcross/Tagish First Nation (Yukon Territory, Canada) and the Maasai (North Tanzania, East Africa)

May 7, 2019

 

News Release                                                                                        For Immediate Release

A unique international Indigenous collaboration: Carcross/Tagish First Nation (Yukon Territory, Canada) and the Maasai (North Tanzania, East Africa)

 

CARCROSS – On May 9th and 10th 2019, a Maasai delegation “Loita” from the Ngorongoro District of Northern Tanzania will be visiting the Traditional Territory of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation during a study tour of two weeks in Western Canada to develop relationships with Canadian First Nations and representing the Enguserosambu Forest Trust. The visit of the Maasai is being funded by the University of Victoria who set up the cultural exchange with the Kesho Trust, a Canadian Non-governmental organization and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

 

The Maasai people negotiated a settlement over traditional lands with the Tanzanian government nearly a decade ago. Now in an effort to build the capacity of its directors for their ongoing Indigenous rights work the Enguserosambu Forest Trust has partnered with Kesho Trust that works out of Tanzania and University of Victoria’s Geography Department.

 

The hope of this exchange is to bring Indigenous Nations together to share experiences and insights around Customary Land and Water and Governance. The Maasai will offer their own experiences and struggles for self-determination through the Enguserosambu Forest Trust they established to gain authority over their traditional lands after long negotiations with the Government of Tanzania. At the same time the Maasai are here to learn about C/TFN’s extensive experience with their land claims processes, oral histories and cultural ways of knowing.

For C/TFN this is not only an honour and a privilege, but just as C/TFN hosted the Maori delegation from New Zealand in August 2018, it represents a new stage in international Indigenous relationship building, collaboration and support. These unique affiliations undergird a challenging but much needed educational and capacity building project.

-30-

 

Contact:

 

Carcross/Tagish First Nation
Governance Department, Communications
Daphne Pelletier Vernier
daphne.vernier@ctfn.ca
(867) 821-4251 ext. 8235

 

University of Victoria
Faculty of Social Sciences, Communications
Anne MacLaurin
sosccomm@uvic.ca
(250) 217-4259