Decolonising Cultural Spaces: The Living Cultures Project

About Living Cultures

InsightShare’s Living Cultures initiative supports Indigenous Peoples to protect their territories, languages and cultures using Participatory Video.

Living Cultures is a growing movement across Asia, Africa and the Americas uniting indigenous communities across borders; to celebrate, foster and protect their cultures with the principle of self-determination at its very heart.

About the Film

“Decolonising Cultural Spaces: The Living Cultures Project”, a full-length documentary produced by InsightShare, made by Zoe Broughton, coordinated by InsightShare, Oltoilo la Maa (Voice of the Maasai) and Oxford University Pitt Rivers Museum, in partnership with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge.
The documentary follows a delegation of seven Maasai representatives from Tanzania and Kenya who spend two weeks in the UK working alongside British museums to decolonise cultural spaces by making them aware of their colonial history and how this can be addressed responsibly. InsightShare would like to thank it’s funding partners; The Staples Trust, The Network for Social Change, and Bertha Foundation.

MovieMedicine is proud to host the online film premiere of “Decolonising Cultural Spaces: The Living Cultures Project” on Monday 3rd August at 12pm midday (BST). The film will be available to watch for 48 hours at a time and from a timezone that suits you! To watch the film: click the ‘Watch the Living Cultures Project Film’ button.

About the Q&A

The film screening will be accompanied by a live Q&A on Zoom and Facebook Live on Wednesday 5th August at 7pm (UK). Save your spot on the live Zoom call by registering your place below.

Join the live Q&A panel discussion with special guests; Maasai delegates from the film, Evelyn Paraboy Kaney, Scholastica Kukutiya, Amos Karino Leuka and Samwel Nangiria; Co-founder and director of InsightShare, Nick Lunch; Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Laura Van Broekhoven; and is moderated by Creative Director of the Bertha Foundation, Adrian Kawaley-Lathan. 

Please note: The film screening and Q&A are both free, but your kind donations will go directly to The Pan African Living Cultures Alliance (PALCA), an international NGO led by and for Indigenous Peoples of Africa and registered in Kenya.

PALCA’s mission is to safeguard communities’ biocultural rights, support inter-generational transmission, preserve indigenous languages, promote traditional governance of natural resources, with participatory video at its heart.

Donate today to support our work with indigenous communities to protect their lands, rights and cultures around the world. 100% of donations are spent on local projects. Donate here: https://insightshare.org/donate/

Links

Find out more about InsightShare here: https://insightshare.org/network/
Learn more about how Pitt Rivers Museum has committed to change, with practices of provenance, transparency, repatriation and redress here: https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/committed-to-change

Q&A Speaker Bios

Stills photography by John Cairns.

The live Q&A panel discussion welcomes special guests: Maasai delegates from the film: Evelyn Paraboy Kanei, Amos Karino Leuka and Samwel Nangiria; Co-founder and director of InsightShare, Nick Lunch; Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Laura Van Broekhoven; and is moderated by Creative Director of the Bertha Foundation, Adrian Kawaley-Lathan. 

Evelyn Paraboy Kaney – Maasai Delegate

Evelyn is from the Ilparakuyo Maasai community. She has worked to support community development since 2010, addressing the challenges that hinder sustainable livestock production. In her work, Evelyn has focussed on community history and post- colonial relations. She holds a degree in Accounting from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Mary in Fargo, North Dakota, USA.

Scholastica Kukutiya – Maasai Delegate, InsightShare Associate (Maasai, Kenya)

Scholastica is a women’s rights community activist in Kenya, who uses participatory video to promote women’s economic independence within her Maasai community. She supports traditional beadwork and has established an organization, Olmaa Makes, that sells Maasai-made beadwork and pours the profits back into women’s initiatives, education and up-skilling. In 2018, Scholastica was part of the 2018 Maasai delegation visiting University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum to assess Maasai cultural artefacts.

Amos Karino Leuka – Maasai Delegate

Amos is a teacher, long-time activist in cultural leadership practices, and a founding member of the Pan-African Living Cultures Alliance. He is a young member of the Loita council of elders and a member of the Land Committee in Loita. As a member of the council of elders, he has been outspoken on the subjects of the position of girls in society, and on the practice of Female Genital Mutilation. Amos is currently developing a participatory video project that explores the cultural practices behind FGM and how they can be addressed within the community. 

With this Participatory Video project Amos hopes to: empower women and girls; address misconceptions that cause Female Genital Mutilation to occur; educate people about its dangers; and develop new rituals that mark the coming-of-age of women.

Samwel Nangiria – Maasai Delegate, InsightShare Associate (Maasai, Tanzania)

Samwel is a socio-environmental scientist and long-term human rights defender. He is a leader of Enguserosambu Community Forest Trust and the founding director of Oltolio Le Maa – a participatory video group that documents human rights issues, social development and Maasai culture. He has worked with indigenous Maasai peoples in Loliondo, Tanzania, as a chief campaigner to retain the land and protect the culture under threat from hunting and conservation corporations for over 10 years. 

Samwel is a Tanzania Human Right Defender of the Year 2016 award winner and honorary member of ICCA consortium. Samwel spearheaded the Living Cultures movement and is a co-founder of the Pan-African Living Cultures Alliance.

Dr Laura Van Broekhoven – Director Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford 

Laura Van Broekhoven is the Director of Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. She holds a Professorial Fellowship at Linacre College, and is associated with the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at Oxford. Previously she led the curatorial department of the National Museum of World Cultures (Amsterdam, Leiden and Berg en Dal) and was a lecturer in archaeology, museum studies and indigenous heritage at the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University. Laura’s current research interests include repatriation, redress and pluriversality.

The work being developed at the Pitt Rivers Museum focuses on equity, co-production and reflexive inquiry. 

Nick Lunch – Co-Founder & Director of InsightShare

Co-founder of InsightShare with his brother Chris, Nick has 30 years’ experience as a community activist and is recognised as a pioneer of Participatory Video (PV) methods. 

Since 2005 he has led in the use of Participatory Video with indigenous communities, working together with indigenous partner communities in Africa, Asia and South and Central America to preserve and promote traditional knowledge, advance the cause of indigenous rights, and support local representatives as delegates at key global gatherings.

Adrian Kawaley-Lathan – Creative Director of the Bertha Foundation

Our Q&A host Adrian is the Creative Director of the Bertha Foundation, which supports activists, storytellers, and lawyers who are working to bring about social and economic justice and human rights for all.