20-1Voices From the Commons

When Parks Encroach Upon People: Expanding National Parks in the Rusitu Valley, Zimbabwe

When Parks Encroach Upon People: Expanding National Parks in the Rusitu. Valley, Zimbabwe It is all too easy to overlook uncomfortable facts about many people-park conflicts. The usual, discreet account of a dispute proceeds as follows: residents have lived in and used resources from a given area for generations. Relative newcomers, as smallholder farmers, also may depend absolutely upon the...

Voices from the Commons: Evolving Relations of Property and Management

From the late 1960s, the word, "commons," in the U.S. and other parts of the Western world has been associated with a phrase that has taken on epic proportions: "the tragedy of the commons." In popular parlance the "commons" is linked with environmental degradation and irresponsible use. Forgotten is the older and larger tradition of stewardship over common resources. Since the 1970s an academic...

The Seventh Rainbow: Hope from the Mountains of Southeast Mexico

On January 3, a week before beginning a third round of negotiations with the Mexican government, the Zapatista Liberation Army convened a National Forum on Indigenous Rights. The locale, timing and cool weather of the forum recalled the first days of the new year, two years ago, when the Zapatistas burst onto the national and international scene with their armed occupation of San Cristobal de Las...

The Honey Bee Network: Voices from Grassroots Innovators

An assumption behind most approaches to the alleviation of poverty is that poor people are too poor to be able to think and plan on their own. The result is that most interventions are designed by others: civil servants, technocrats and NGOs. Despite much discussion of the wisdom of participation by the poor, they have seldom been given the opportunity to articulate their own agenda and visions...

The Chinchero Culture Project

For the past twenty-six years, Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez has been involved in many aspects of weaving, including spinning, weaving, knitting, braiding, and dying. In 1981 Nilda was invited by Cultural Survival to give weaving demonstrations and exhibitions in the United States. Four years later, she returned to lead workshops and give lectures across the country. IN 1990, she was invited by the...

The Broken Hoe: Cultural Reconfiguration in Biase Southeast Nigeria

The Broken Hoe is several books in one. It is testament to the concern and frustration of Nigerians with the failure of modern Nigeria and high price rural communities have paid for that failure. It is an autobiography about a journey from the village to a career beyond graduate studies in the U.S. It is also a reflexive ethnography by an anthropologist about his own indigenous and native culture...

Sanuma Memories: Yanomami Ethnography in Times of Crisis

Sanumá Memories: Yanomami Ethnography in Times of Crisis. Most readers of this journal are familiar with the Yanomami of the subtitle from the widely read Yanomamö, The Fierce People, by Napoleon A. Chagnon and Tales of the Yanomami: Daily life in the Venezuelan forest by Jacques Lizot, where they were portrayed as fighters and/or lovers. More recently, news reports have depicted them as victims...

Reclaiming the Commons: Grassroots Resistance and Retaliation in Honduras

At the time of the Spanish Conquest, southern Honduras was a culturally diverse area, home to a number of distinct indigenous peoples. According to chroniclers of the sixteenth century, "more people than hairs on all the deer" utilized the rich volcanic soils along the Pacific Coast, cultivating corn, beans and squash, and supplementing their diets with chilies, peanuts, fruits and turkeys....

Pastoralism and the Demise of Communal Property in Tanzania

The Usangu Plains in southwestern Tanzania are the homelands of the Sangu peoples (of Bantu origins), who maintained a thriving pastoral economy until recently. Today, very few Sangu own livestock and most have become rice cultivators. In 1990 I went to Usangu to study this transformation out of pastoralism. I was told, "we are not Sangu anymore, we are just Tanzanians now." What had caused the...

Indigenous People and Democracy in Latin America

The naming of peoples is an act of power. Nearly five hundred years after Christopher Columbus designated all of the native inhabitants of the Americas as indios ("Indians"), the rallying cry of indigenous (and other) people of Spanish-speaking "Latin" America rang forth: "After 500 years of domination, auto-determination in 1992!" The call came from diverse peoples in sovereign nation-states,...

Indigenous Initiatives and Petroleum Politics in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Along with 250 other lowland Indians, Marta Gualinga trekked through the rainforest for there days before reaching Villano - the site of ARCO's exploratory wells. Lowland Quichua representing 133 indigenous communities throughout Ecuador's central Amazonian province of Pastaza gathered for an assembly called by OPIP (Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza). For three days in mid-December...

Gwich'in Environmental Knowledge Project

The Gwich'in Environmental Knowledge Project (GEKP) collects information on traditional environmental knowledge (TEK), spiritual beliefs, and ethical principles of the Gwich'in Nation. The Gwich'in live along the Mackenzie River Valley in the Arctic region of Canada's Northwest Territories and are one of the world's few indigenous groups that continue to sustain themselves on the resources of the...

Fields of Memories as Everyday Resistance

Given an agricultural system that relies on streamlining for greater efficiency and profit as exists in most countries today, one is left with "reak-guard" options for safeguarding plant diversity, until such a time that people again come to realize its importance, and opt for a drastic change in priorities. One strategy pursued by both national and international ties. One strategy pursued by...

Editorial - Voices from the Commons: Evolving Relations of Property and Management

When Spain's American colonies seized their independence, Simon Bolivar emerged as the leader of a sprawling new nation known as Gran Colombia, covering the territories of what are now Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. In 1834, soon after Bolivar's death, an edict issued in Gran Colombia stated that "in no tribunal or court shall complaints be heard, whose sole object is to request that Indian...

CSQ Department Highlight: Curriculum Resources Program on Indigenous Peoples

CSQ Department Highlight: Curriculum Resources Program on Indigenous. Peoples As more and more school districts embrace the philosophy of teaching tolerance and critical thinking through a multicultural framework, many educators turn to specialist organizations such as Cultural Survival to diversify their curricula. In part as a response to the hundreds of letters we receive monthly from students...

Brazilian Presidential Decree 1775 Poses Threat

The signing of Decree 1775 by Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on Jan. 8 of this year marked a dramatic reversal of Brazilian policy toward the protection of human rights of indigenous peoples and the natural environment throughout the country, but especially in the Amazon region where most indigenous lands are located. Indigenous areas now make up 11% of the total area of Brazil....

Addressing Resource Management Concerns of the Indigenous Communities in Palawan

Addressing Resource Management Concerns of the Indigenous Communities in. Palawan Palawan is the long narrow island lying northeast-southwest of the Philippines. It is a province abundant in natural resources and is a popular haven for tourists. It is unique not only in its pristine environment, its richness in culture and the refuge it provides to wildlife, but also in the province-wide...

A Voice from Deer Creek

Tucked away in the foothills near the floor of the Sacramento Valley in Northern California is a small community of ranchers who have preserved their ownership of the land and their way of life, almost intact from the nineteenth century. How this community successfully met and resolved the challenge of environmental regulation and of endangered species public trust mandates is a story that may...

"Women and Children First": Fishery Collapse and Women in Newfoundland and Labrador

Fish have been fundamental to the society and economy of Atlantic Canada. In recent years, six cod stocks have collapsed and such species as American plaice, flounder, grey sole and turbot have been massively over-fished. Since 1992, the number have been massively over-fished. Since 1992, the number of fisheries closed by the government for conservation purposes and the predicted duration of...

Sri Lanka's Forests: Conservation of Nature versus People

As the clock struck the midnight hour on November 9, 1983, the traditional way of life of the indigenous group, Wanniya-Laeto (Veddahs), the last hunters and gatherers of Sri Lanka, became a criminal offense in that country. These forest people, who occupied the dry-zone monsoon forest lands from 28,500 B.P. (before present) until the beginning of this country, were evicted from their territory...

Ogoni Battle Shell Oil

In November 1995 Kenule Saro-Wiwa and eight young Ogoni men were executed by the Nigerian government. While accused by Nigeria's military regime of murdering several of their rivals last May, Saro-Wiwa has led a nonviolent opposition to oil exploitation by Shell since 1958. The British Bar of Human Rights Committee lawyer observing the trial termed the proceedings unconstitutional, noting that...