The Hapo Zamani Art Exhibition was organised by Tamaduni Zetu and held at the National Museum of Western Kenya in Kitale in May 2025. It promoted and celebrated Sengwer culture and provided information about the communities and organisations reviving the use of Sengwer indigenous knowledge. At the museum, community elders were building a house that would become a permanent exhibit. They told their histories and shared their knowledge of medicinal plants. In this article, a visitor to the exhibition reflects on the efforts to inclusively and sustainably preserve Sengwer cultural heritage and empower their communities through education.
Evicting forest communities
For a long time, colonial and post-colonial governments in Kenya have believed that the best way to protect forests and their wildlife is to remove all the people. This method, often called the ‘fortress’ or ‘guns and fences’ approach, has led to serious human rights abuses. Communities have been evicted, homes destroyed, and people killed.
Kenya has promised to protect 30% of its land and sea areas by 2030 but reaching this target will require major changes in land use. Land is already in high demand. Conflicts over land and resources are growing, big infrastructure projects are expanding, and many historical land injustices remain unresolved. Consequently, community-owned land is likely to be heavily targeted for new conservation projects.
The Sengwer people have been repeatedly evicted from their ancestral land. These evictions have had a lasting impact on Sengwer social, cultural and spiritual traditions. The dislocation from their landscape breaks families apart, scatters communities, and destroys important social and kinship ties. It also means that they can no longer rely on traditional livelihoods.
They have their own ways of caring for the land, based on generations of knowledge. But these systems have been weakened by insecure land rights and repeated evictions. When communities are removed from their land, they lose the connection that keeps these traditions alive.
Sengwer conservation practices
The Sengwer have an age-old relationship with trees based on conservation and sustainable use. They use trees for resources, with strict customary rules to ensure the forest’s preservation. They say that their practices are rooted in a deep connection to their ancestral land, the Embobut Forest, which holds immense cultural and spiritual meaning.
Sengwer practices that support the environment include:
- Firewood collection: Women and children only collect dry, dead sticks from the ground for firewood. It is a taboo to cut down a living tree for this purpose.
- Herbal medicines: The community uses tree roots, bark, and leaves for medicinal purposes. Specific rules govern this practice. A person collecting them must only pick an adequate amount for immediate use and cover the injured part of the tree (root, bark, or branch) to prevent it from drying up and dying.
- Sourcing materials: Community elders have responsibility for authorising the use of trees for other purposes (such as building or handicrafts), and only two branches from a single tree may be cut, not the whole tree.
- Beekeeping: Beekeeping and honey gathering is an important livelihood option that relies on a healthy forest ecosystem.
- Hunting and gathering: As a hunter-gatherer community, Sengwer rely on the forest ecosystem for wild animals (which they hunt with bows and arrows) and edible plants, linking their diet and survival directly to the forest’s health.
These conservation practices are integral to the Sengwer’s identity and their ability to live in harmony with the environment, of which they consider themselves the primary guardians.
Preserving environmental knowledge
Although governments and donors say they are protecting forests, their actions can inadvertently destroy proven, sustainable practices. For example, they impose management systems designed for completely different contexts to that of Kenyan forests. Formalising Sengwer indigenous forest management and conservation techniques, and integrating them with these other practices, would be a better approach.
Exhibitors spoke about the marginalisation of the Sengwer community and the challenges of preserving its identity, ancestral lands, and the transmission of traditional knowledge. They presented projects that are documenting Sengwer knowledge and how it connects to the environment and community governance. This included how they manage land, their relationship with forests and forest products, and their cultural traditions like songs, dances, stories, crafts, clothing, and food.
Embedding Sengwer culture in education
One aspect is the integration of the Sengwer language into the curriculum. The formal Kenyan education system, which uses a Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) framework, is designed to provide space to incorporate indigenous languages and knowledge systems. Within this language-in-education policy, lower primary (Grades 1–3) should receive their education in the dominant local indigenous language – especially in rural areas.
Essentially, children should begin learning in the language they know best, then build into Kiswahili and English. Such instruction in early years builds basic literacy as children understand concepts faster in a familiar language and are more active in class. Early reading and writing in their first language supports learning additional languages later, and indigenous language use strengthens cultural identity and self-esteem.
It is important therefore to align CBC competencies with local culture and language through the adaptation of activities, examples, stories, songs, and assessments to the local linguistic and cultural context. This is not just about translating existing examples from English or Kiswahili. It requires community involvement, drawing on parents, elders, and local storytellers as resources for language, culture, and oral literature. This fits with CBC’s emphasis on real-life, community-based learning.
The competency focus – developing communication, collaboration, and critical thinking – works best when learners are not struggling just to understand the language of instruction. However, despite the policy recommendations, schools face pressure from parents who believe that learning English early guarantees success. Resources are also needed to develop teaching materials and train teachers in indigenous languages.
The exhibition showcased examples of dictionaries, posters and similar resources in Sengwer, demonstrating progress towards the integration of indigenous languages and knowledge systems into the formal curriculum. The exhibition highlighted efforts to formalise Sengwer traditional practices and knowledge, especially concerning environmental conservation and cultural identity.
Tamaduni Zetu organised the exhibition. They aim to safeguard cultural heritage of indigenous communities in North Western Kenya through education, research and development. They can be contacted via their Facebook page: https://bit.ly/eer2025-5