The 'liberatory value of indigenous institutions'?i: Cultural practice as resistance in the British Colony of Kenya

The bodies of indigenous women and girls in Kenya during the colonial period were contested sites of cultural identity and expression for both indigenous communities and their colonisers. The ritual and the results of Kenyan women's body modification have served as markers of difference, not only between Kenyans and colonists but also across indigenous Kenyan cultures. Indigenous women's agency is often elided in discussion of their bodies - lost in a tendency to use the contest for control over women's bodies to explore the dynamics and pressures of the colonial encounter. This approach necessarily aggregates women's experience to build a picture of their collective experience, and to track the rise of popular resistance movements through women's actions. Discussing women's collective action is useful in understanding the larger narrative of indigenous resistance to colonial oppression, and significant historical work has been done on the centrality of women's bodies in the struggle against colonial rule in Kenya (Thomas 2003; Kanogo 2005). However, this work does not often examine the embodied experiences of these women.