AO: Carotenuto and Luongo (2005) point to the Mau Mau reparations and Maasai Land treaty as two key reasons why members of the public, even those who may be illiterate, have been frequenting the archives.
In the last few years, members of Kenya's public have increasingly drawn on the KNA's resources to do their own historical research about two contentious issues: Mau Mau reparations and the Maasai Land treaty. In the wake of heated international discussion and popular dis- course about the possibility of the British Government offering repara- tions to Mau Mau detainees, elderly ex-detainees and their relatives are visiting the KNA with the hope of finding family names in the colonial detention records, thus making them eligible for reparations if such funds indeed become available. Second, with the recent expiration of the con- troversial Maasai Land treaty, an agreement through which the British colonial government acquired Maasai lands for settler development for a period of 99 years, elders from Maasai communities are searching the KNA collection for information to aid their campaigns to reclaim the leased lands.
