Maasai

The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group of pastoralists native to the Rift Valley region of East Africa, concentrated in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are organized by patrilineal clans and an age-set system in which young men pass through a warrior (moran) grade before becoming elders, and cattle wealth is central to social status and marriage exchange. Maasai communities are widely documented in ethnographic literature on East African pastoralism and have become, for outside observers, one of the most visually recognizable African ethnic groups because of the retention of distinctive dress and beadwork, though this visibility has also fed a degree of stereotyping the group's own scholars and advocates have pushed back against.