Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.

This saying circulates widely in Anglophone collections of “African proverbs” and in postcolonial and political discourse as a comment on who gets to record history. It is typically invoked in contexts where the powerful—conquerors, colonizers, victors, or institutions—control archives, publishing, and education, thereby shaping public memory in their favor. The proverb’s imagery (hunters versus lions) frames historical narration as a contest of perspective: as long as only the hunters tell the story, the hunt will be remembered as heroic rather than as violence done to the hunted. It is often used to argue for recovering suppressed voices through oral history, local testimony, and alternative historiography.

The proverb argues that narratives of conflict and power tend to celebrate the perspective of the winner—in this case, the hunter—because the winner controls the means of storytelling and record-keeping. “Lions” stand for the hunted, the defeated, or the marginalized; “historians” stand for authorship, literacy, archives, and cultural authority. Its significance lies in highlighting structural bias: even accurate facts can be arranged into a story that legitimizes the powerful. The line is often used as a call to recover suppressed voices, diversify sources, and treat dominant accounts with skepticism, especially where violence, conquest, or exploitation are involved.

1) “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”
2) “Until lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always praise the hunter.”
3) “Until the lions have their storytellers, the hunter will always be the hero.”