Help the Indigenous Sengwer Peoples of Kenya

My name is Milka Chepkorir of the Sengwer indigenous peoples of Kabolet, Cherang'any Hills in Kenya. We are an indigenous people gradually facing extinction with the increased loss of biodiversity. We are traditionally hunter-gatherer peoples living in and around forests on our ancestral land of Cherang'any. Due to colonial processes and their impact, we were dispersed and forcefully assimilated to other communities around us. Over time, our elders have fought against the historical injustices, and we have now returned to a part of our ancestral land in Kabolet. Other Sengwer peoples from the Far East are still facing abuse and evictions in the name of conservation by the government, even though we have taken care of and conserved these forests since time immemorial.

The time spent wandering away from our ancestral lands, Kabolet, took us through many forms of ethnic extinction which included the loss of our traditions and practices which conserve our language and other useful norms. We have lived and mingled with other communities and have been introduced to foods different from our indigenous foods. Through these forms of loss, we are steadily losing not only biodiversity but also our language and traditional practices.

This is Sengwer Berur women in their indigenous tree nursery. This tree nursery has many indigenous trees good for soil restoration, restoring and keeping water and water points. Most importantly these trees are indigenous fruit trees which all children in the community enjoy for their great taste and the medicinal value they have. The names of some of these trees are being forgotten due to the influence of formal education. The women are also teaching the children the indigenous Sengwer names of these tree species.

We are working on collective actions to correct this and help us go back to who we are. I have been working with the women, youth, and children in my community to restore our environment, water sources, traditional seeds and most importantly our language. We consider language a critical aspect as we are losing many of our elders to the psychological distress of how the community and the world, in general, is speedily changing. Many elders are prone to dying in the process of or shortly after evictions due to psychological distress.

Indigenous Seed saving: Sengwer women during a biodiversity analysis exercise to identify which food species of their indigenous foods are endangered and need restoring to avoid exotic and engineered foods. It is from this exercise that they are establishing a community seed bank to store and regenerate the indigenous foods of the Sengwer Peoples

I am seeking your support to help the women of our community in continuing with our seed-saving project and the restoration of the environment in Kabolet. Your support will also help facilitate our indigenous-led education classes and stipend for our elders and youth who, together with the women, are starting to work on the restoration and documentation of our language.

Please read more about our work on page 32 of https://www.forestpeoples.org/sites/default/files/documents/July%202022%20-%20ILED%20Publication%20Indigenous%20Languages%20ENG.pdf

On indigenous-led education: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4QdRgcLL0h/?igsh=MXV2MXdkajBoeG53bw==