Mali Ole Kaunga
Laikipia Maasai | Founder & Director of IMPACT
Mali Ole Kaunga is a respected Maasai activist who speaks about the ongoing struggle for Maasai land rights in Kenya and its connection to global climate challenges. He shares powerful insights into the historical injustices faced by the Maasai people, including forced removals and the erosion of their traditional way of life. He also discusses the importance of preserving Maasai cultural identity and the crucial role of traditional pastoralist practices in promoting environmental sustainability.
Ole Kaunga is is a Laikipia Maasai and the Founder and Director of IMPACT. Born in Laikipia, he has dedicated over 20 years of his career to defend the land and human rights of pastoralists in Kenya and Africa. He is the founder of several organisations, including the Organisation for Survival of II-Laikipiak Indigenous Group (OSILIGI). Ole Kaunga also founded the Maasai Cultural Heritage Center and has worked for the International Labour Organization (ILO) as an expert on Indigenous Peoples, extensively working on land rights, Indigenous traditional knowledge and culture, as well as natural resource governance. He consults for the United Nations and other international or grassroots organisations and has worked with several universities and law firms to get justice against governments actors and the private sector who violate community rights.
He has also worked with WIPO on issues of Maasai Cultural Heritage and with UNESCO on Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and Climate Change. He has published articles in different journals on the topics of Indigenous traditional knowledge, Indigenous Peoples and urbanization, Indigenous Peoples’ education and the militarization of Indigenous lands.
““Pastoralists are claiming the right to self-determination. We need the space to practice our rights and to be who we are according to our own cultural expressions and traditional economies. We stand for human dignity and the need to invest in social movements and traditional economies, because that’s where the solution to climate change lies, with the people at the front line of climate change.””
The Proven Sustainable™ Conversation Series is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Transformative Action, a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization. Any funding directed towards the Conversation Series will go towards production efforts to ensure the the recorded discussions are diligently captured and meaningfully distributed. This Conversation Series and website are not-for-profit and created with the intent of channeling support directly to the Peoples represented.