Quote by Chinua Achebe: “Until the lions have their own historians, the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

History is written by those with power. If only one side tells the story, that version becomes the 'truth' — even if it erases or distorts the experience of everyone else. The people being hunted need to tell their own stories to exist fully in the record.

Achebe made this observation during the late 1980s, a period when postcolonial scholarship was challenging whose version of African history was taught in schools and universities. Across the continent, newly independent nations were wrestling with how to decolonise education and cultural memory after decades of colonial rule.

Nigerian novelist and critic widely regarded as the father of modern African literature. His 1958 novel Things Fall Apart is one of the most widely read works of African fiction, translated into over fifty languages. He taught for decades at Bard College in the United States.