"Inhabiting Otherwise" : Maasai Pastoralists' Ontological Struggles Over Land in Tanzania

In this paper, I take the case of Maasai pastoralists' land struggles as an entry point to demonstrate ontological struggles over how land is known, treated and managed in Tanzania. Engaging political ontology and Indigenous scholarship and drawing on my own lived experiences as an Indigenous Maasai, I highlight a Maasai relational mode of inhabitation (Eramatare) that informs different natures being struggled over in land conflicts. Firstly, I show how this mode of inhabitation differs from a modernist-colonial mode of inhabitation that structures destructive societal relations with nature. Secondly, I illuminate how Eramatare challenges the colonial assumptions about nature and the insights it may offer to those seeking for a decolonial socio-ecological transformation.