The forest held opposite symbolic meanings for colonizers and colonized Kenyans

Evidence

In the dominant colonial literature about Mau Mau (political tracts, memoirs, and fiction), the forest appears as a place beyond reach of civilization, a place of atavistic savagery where “terrorists” banded together to perform degenerate rites of barbarism. For those Kenyans who sought an end to their colonial subjugation, the forest represented something else entirely: it was a place of cultural regeneration and political refusal, a proving ground where resistance fighters pledged oaths of unity, above all, an oath to reclaim, by force if necessary, their people’s stolen land. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 387

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the land/place and settler-colonial threads of the eco-justice polyad; the same ground read as ‘savage’ or ‘refuge’ parallels extraction-versus-vernacular landscape maps in ch4. — connects to: Colonialism systematically dispossesses the colonized of resources under a justifying discourse of hierarchy — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 246; Colonial representations of natives contained their opposite readings from first contact. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 628

Broader Connections

• Colonial representations of natives contained their opposite readings from first contact. #expands (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 628
• Colonialism systematically dispossesses the colonized of resources under a justifying discourse of hierarchy #complicates (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 246