Educational Media Reviews Online

For decades people have sought adventure and a chance to gaze at lions and elephants in their natural environment while on safari in the Serengeti of Eastern Africa. What tourists will not see while traveling through this vast ecosystem are the indigenous Maasai people who were displaced by British colonizing forces during the nineteenth and greater part of the twentieth century and after WWII by the Frankfurt Zoological Society under Bernard Grzimek. A Place without People: Tanzania looks at the efforts taken to remove the Maasai from their land in order to “protect” the Serengeti and the impact of tourism on the land, wildlife, culture, and economy of Tanzania.

What type of fire is a good fire? The answer to this question is not so much about who is asking the question as it is about who is answering the question and when. The Maasai people of northern Tanzania and southern Kenya routinely set fire to parched vegetation at the end of a growing season to enrich the soil in preparation for the next growing season. However, during the 1950s government officials, claiming such practices were dangerous, removed the Maasai from the land they needed not only to survive, but to keep their valuable cattle alive. Today, as the film documents, after decades of cultural destruction and exploitation of animals and resources, government officials routinely set fire to parched land to keep the Serengeti lush and attractive to the tourists who pay tens of thousands of dollars to site-see and hunt. Numerous hotels have been constructed along the periphery of the Serengeti and interviews conducted with leaders of the surrounding villages provide explanation for why they have agreed to sell their land to be used as part of the Seregeti.

The filmmakers draw comparisons between what has transpired in the Seregeti with the push by President Theodore Roosevelt at the beginning of the twentieth century to establish national parks in the United States. However the film does what most history textbooks do not by addressing the destruction done to Native American groups as a result of the seizing of their land to create spaces such as Yellowstone National Park. In addition to interviews with Maasai, National Park officials, wildlife protection activists, human rights lawyers, and other related parties discuss their perspectives and justifications for why their role in relation to the Serengeti and the game reserves will prove most beneficial for the animals and people of Tanzania.

The film serves as a good starting point for discussing the actions taken by national and foreign government agencies to “preserve” areas of land for the benefit of outsiders at the expense of indigenous inhabitants. The intersections of ethnicity, economics, and ecology presented in the film make for a dynamic analysis of the argument and primarily Western belief that humans and animals cannot coexist in a shared space. The issues explored in this film as they relate to the Maasai are repeated across time and place and for that reason the film, while only touching on the various social conditions related to wildlife reserves and wild game hunting, will serve educators looking to increase the level of critical thinking their students engage in regarding environmental issues and our role as stewards of the earth.