28-1 Indigenous Lands or National Park?

Indigenous Voices at the Table: Restoring Local Decision-Making on Protected Areas

Meeting once every decade, the World Parks Congress (WPC) is the largest gathering of parties interested in the future of protected areas. Ten years ago this gathering set a target of doubling the land area of Earth covered by protected areas to 10 percent. That goal has been surpassed, and today 12 percent of the Earth’s land surface is designated a protected area. “Benefits Beyond Boundaries,”…

Indigenous Lands or National Parks?

Indigenous peoples throughout the world face many threats to their lands and territories and to their cultural integrity. While most people have heard of the negative consequences of mining, logging, dams, and other infrastructure projects, many would not list national parks and other protected areas among the threats. These areas are often seen as benign, as valuable contributions to…

In Guyana, Indigenous Peoples Fight to Join Conservation Efforts

Beginning in 1995, the government of Guyana in collaboration with the World Bank began pursuing plans to establish a National System of Protected Areas (NPAS). The idea was to establish 10 protected areas representative of the country’s ecosystems. Formulated as a World Bank project, this entailed meetings with “stakeholders” in Georgetown, the capital, and later with the leadership of the…

Here Our Culture is Hard: Stories of Domestic Violence from a Mayan Community in Belize

By Laura J. McCluskyUniversity of Texas Press 2001 ISBN 0-292-75249-0 Here Our Culture Is Hard: Stories of Domestic Violence From A Mayan Community In Belize is a path-breaking ethnography that offers colorful insights into the complexities of the lives of Mopan Maya women living in Belize. Author Laura J. McClusky approaches a topic that many academics have encountered in Latin America…

Help or Hindrance? The Global Environment Facility, Biodiversity Conservation,and Indigenous Peoples

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is an international financial mechanism that provides grants and concessional funding to governments for activities that aim to protect the global environment in six areas: biodiversity, climate change, international waters, ozone layer depletion, land degradation, and persistent organic pollutants. The GEF is the financing mechanism for the Convention on…

He Paua, He Korowai, Me Nga Waahi Tapu/A Shellfish, a Woven Cloak, and Sacred Places: Maori and Protected Areas

He Paua, He Korowai,Me Nga Waahi TapuHe Paua, He Korowai, Internationally recognized conservation protected areas now constitute 12 percent of the Earth’s total land mass and two percent of the oceans, but many, if not most, have been gained through a colonial process contrary to the basic principles of democracy. Many of the world’s protected areas were taken from indigenous peoples during the…

Decolonizing Co-Management in Northern Canada

Where lands and resources have been contested in Canada’s north, many Aboriginal peoples have entered into cooperative environmental resource management agreements with provincial, territorial, and federal governments. On the face of it, many of these agreements are seen to serve Aboriginal interests as they frequently purport to result in tangible gains in Aboriginal management authority over…

Conservation Policy and Indigenous Peoples

The creation of protected areas has been a central element in conservation policy since its beginnings in the 19th century. From their inception, protected areas were conceived as areas of land alienated to the state and managed for the benefit of future generations but to the exclusion of residents. National parks, pioneered in the United States, denied indigenous peoples’ rights, evicted them…

Transfrontier Parks in South Africa

In southern Africa, as in other parts of the world, indigenous peoples are integral components of parks and protected areas. Indigenous Africans are mostly from hunting and gathering societies or from nomadic herding peoples. Although there is controversy about the term “indigenous African,” in southern Africa it is widely accepted that hunter-gatherers such as the San and Khoe are the First…

Inequality in Australia

By Alastair Grieg, Frank Lewins & Kevin White Cambridge University Press 2003 ISBN 0-5215244-3 Inequality in Australia is a well-written college sociology textbook that explores, with an impressive eye to detail, the changing nature of inequality in modern industrial Australia. The authors adopt an innovative approach to the task at hand, linking theoretical approaches, individual…

Indigenous Youth Killed While Protesting Eco-Park

An indigenous Garo youth was killed on January 3 by forest guards during a protest of the Ministry of Environment's Botanical Garden and Eco-Park in the Modhupur forest of the Chandranath Hills, the Dhaka Courier reported. Although no specific individuals had been accused, the Modhupur forest people in January blamed Bangladesh Nationalist Party members for intimidating indigenous protestors from…

Talo Dam Construction Delay Holds: African Development Bank and Malian Government Implement Cultural Survival Recommendations

Cultural Survival recently attended African Development Bank (AfDB)-sponsored meetings in Mali with the Malian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries. The purpose was to engage in a fruitful exchange on the technical and process concerns Cultural Survival raised three years ago about the Talo Dam Project, part of the government PMB/Program for Developing the Plains of the Lower Bani…

Seeking Environmental and Social Justice

An interesting new volume from the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) spotlights environmental advocacy within the world’s 11 major faiths in 60 countries to convey a simple but powerful message: Through storytelling, celebration, practice, spiritual guidance, community activism, and advocacy worldwide, faith groups can be powerful and effective partners in conservation.In the 2004…

Rebkong Library and Learning Center Opens in Tibet

When the Tibet Project, a Cultural Survival Special Project, began in 1990, its ambition was to help meet the needs of over 100,000 Tibetan refugees. It began with a rug-weaving project that promotes the tradition of weaving and vegetable-dying in Tibet (see CSQ 27:2). Through this work, the Tibet Project has been able to fund students at the Srongsten School, an exile government school in Nepal…

Protecting Archaeological Sites for Mongolian Nomads

Climbing to the top of Baga Gazrin Uul you look out over an expanse of land uninterrupted as far as the eye can see. The only breaks in these plains are the small tent structures or gers used by the nomads of Mongolia. In a country where the population density is one of the lowest in the world, the ger will appear as a white speck on the open landscape. The site of Baga Gazaryn Chuluu (BGC) is…

Protected Areas in Suriname: A Voice from Suriname’s Galibi Nature Reserve

The problems posed by protected areas are not limited to Maroons living around the CSNR. Established in 1969, the Galibi Nature Reserve covers about 400 hectares, hosts four important sea turtle species, and attracts a steady flow of tourists from the United States and elsewhere. It is also an integral part of the ancestral territory of the Lower Marowijne River Kalinya people. Ricardo Pané,…