Conservation, restoration, and participatory management of ecosystems (i.e., from the inside-out) are not only hands-on forms of “engagement with nature,” but also reciprocally restorative practices: restorative for the people involved as well as for the ecosystems undergoing restorative actions.
After four years of struggle, the Wixárika community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán in Mezquitic, Jalisco, will directly receive federal resources to manage amongst themselves without the intervention of local officials or political parties.
Native tribes are reliant on their local water sources, which have been continuously exploited and contaminated by the U.S. government and non-Native people. Indigenous groups are finding new ways to demand justice.
Supporting indigenous Territorialities goes beyond supporting biodiversity conservation; it is also an invitation to organize and reinscribe communal systems that have been erased and dismantled all over the world by the increasing expansion of the capitalist economy and the conservation paradigm.
Whether communities are fighting to address mining harms or standing in the way of these unwanted projects, their struggles are potent examples of the sort of reimagining and digging in for fundamental change that Arundhati Roy urged at the start of this pandemic.
Indigenous leaders have called on Citigroup to stop financing oil and gas projects in the Amazon, saying the bank’s activities contradict its climate pledges by putting the threatened ecosystem at greater risk.
As part of Mexico’s world-renowned community forestry model for sustainability, the example of the Chimalapas shines. It has produced important results in conservation of a natural biosphere considered one of the most important lungs of Mexico.
As seafaring colonizers divvied up the world and justified their actions using the Doctrine of Discovery, the era of land-grabbing imperialism led to outrageous exploitation of Indigenous peoples and ecosystems.
“We do not want our children and people who come from other communities to see indigenous exploitation as a normal thing.”
Sherri Mitchell is the Founding Director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the global protection of Indigenous land and water rights and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life. She addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
I of course had very limited exposure to the thousands of simultaneous events. But my sense was that there was little meaningful interchange between different positions. Two worlds talked past each other or – because of restricted access, problems with visas and the high costs of attending –- never even met.
Greenland, long with other indigenous communities around the world, are starting to lead a fightback against the industrial, extractive capitalism that’s killing the planet.