Governance in Indigenous Societies

Abstract

This chapter explores the governance structures of Indigenous societies with special focus on the Meru community in Kenya. The chapter reviews the elaborate structure of governance that ensured and entrenched the basic parameters of a fair society. It outlines the impact caused by colonization and the subsequent loss of social fabrics that bound individual members and the entire community. The colonizers looked at the Indigenous as primitive and backward. They therefore classified them as tribes, natives' ethnic nationalities all of which demeaned the Indigenous communities. From such derogatory perspectives, the Indigenous systems including governance, culture, social, legal and judiciary, philosophy, economic systems were replaced with supposedly more advanced systems to assimilate and “modernize” Indigenous peoples. The chapter will demonstrate how these critical aspects and components of governance existed within the Indigenous governance structures of the Ameru community long before the colonial government. The chapter by use of practical illustrations advocates for decolonial perspectives to the realization of fair governance.

Citation

Muthaa, G. (2022), "Governance in Indigenous Societies", Wane, N.N., Todd, K.L., Chau, C. and Watts, H. (Ed.) Decolonizing and Indigenizing Visions of Educational Leadership (Studies in Educational Administration), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 109-123. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83982-468-520221007