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The Chairman and the Lions

Peter Biella, Frank Kaipai Ikoyo, Juma Mriga

The Chairman and the Lions
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About

As recently as forty years ago, most sections of the Maasai were semi-nomadic and relatively independent of the nation-state. However, political, social and economic changes in East Africa have forced many herders to adopt a sedentary lifestyle.

The Chairman and the Lions introduces Frank Kaipai Ikoyo, a charismatic Ilparakuyo Maasai who, at thirty-three, is the leader of a Tanzanian village called Lesoit. Ikoyo was elected to his post at the age of twenty-six in part because he had completed primary school. That someone so young would be accorded such authority would have been without precedent not long ago. Yet this ethnography of Ikoyo's duties as village chairman shows how literacy and insight into the workings of the nation-state are essential for Maasai to combat the many lions, both real and figurative, that beset them: land grabbers, "bush" lawyers, unemployment, out-migration and poverty.

Like leaders of many indigenous groups, Ikoyo understands education to be a double-edged sword. He advocates schooling as a key to village self-determination, while still seeking to preserve the foundations of pastoralist identity. For as one Maasai woman argues, schooling may well transform their children into "educated criminals."

The film depicts Ikoyo contending with the invasion of village land by a non-Maasai farmer, interrogating spies in a lawsuit, persuading mothers to send their daughters to school, navigating the legalese of an exploitative contract, and eliciting help from a renowned elder to train young warriors in the art of lion hunting. The Chairman and the Lions interweaves its observational vignettes of Ikoyo's activities with narrative accounts by the chairman himself.


Subjects:

Indigenous Studies:

Regions:

Credits

The Chairman and The Lions 


Director, Cinematographer


Peter Biella


Producers

Frank Kaipai Ikoyo 

Juma Mriga 

Kelly Askew

Howard Stein


Sound, Sound Mix 

Iván Drufovka


Editors

Peter Biella

Daniel Chein


Production Manager

Kelly Askew


Ethnographic Consultation Translations 

Frank Kaipai Ikoyo

Juma Mriga

Kelly Askew

Faustin Maganga

Lydia Nyeme

Nina Kisando


With Thanks to

Frank Kaipai Ikoyo, Lesoit Chairman
Ndatuya Tang'idi, Village Executive Officer
Juma Mriga, Village Secretary
Kirorua Pasirando, Village Council Representative

Parory Mangura, Age-set Spokesman

Kunando Nyoroi Ndalo, Lion slayer

Lesoit Women's Bead Cooperative

Kiteto District Council, Tanzania

Faustin Maganga

Howard Stein

Gerda Marie Odgaard

Lydia Nyeme

Members of the NSF funded research project:

 "Tranformations of Poverty and Property Rights in Tanzania"

Benjamin Fortson

Christopher Askew-Merwin

Cecilia Fortson

Jill Bond

Enrica Chili

Tracy Drufovka

Len Kamerling 

The People of Lesoit Village


Vocalist

Frank Kaipai Ikoyo

Lesoit Chairman

Supported by: