Land Violence and the Indigenous Female Body: Mapping the Guarani and Kaiowá experience

By Anaclara Giurfa de Brito and Tarsila Iglecio.

With contributions Amelia Yates, Anna Magrì, and Sara Cano Diaz.

Edited by Jaqueline Aranduhá.

Photo by Fabiana Assis Fernandes

Leia este artigo em português em: https://uclcaos.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/violencia-territorial-e-o-corpo-indigena-feminino-2.pdf

The First March of Indigenous Women took place in Brasília in 2019. The march gathered approximately 2,500 women from 130 different Indigenous communities to demand the protection of their fundamental rights. The “Outcome Document” produced by the marchers stated:

“We are embedded in the land, since this is where we look for our ancestors and what we use to nourish our life. For these reasons, we don’t see our territory as a good to be sold, exchanged, or exploited. Our land is our own life, our body, our spirit”.

Across the world, Indigenous women have centred their resistance against violence by connecting land and gender-based violence. For Indigenous communities, the land is a core living aspect of culture. Indigeneity and womanhood embrace reciprocal relationships between territory, spirit, human and other beings (Kermoal and Altamirano-Jimenez 2016: 9). The struggle for equal access to the land is then not only a struggle for Indigenous sovereignty but also a struggle for the valuation of women’s bodies and reproductive work. The expropriation of territories involves simultaneously the transformation of women’s experiential meanings and life-forms into commodities. Going beyond notions of “property”, indigenous cosmovision of land embodies cycles, practices, and ancestral knowledge (Arvin et al. 2013: 21). Environmental changes can then endanger the community’s cosmology and survival.

The expression “cuerpo-territorio” (“body-territory”) emerges from Latin-American feminist, Indigenous, and afro-descendant movements and expresses historical violence perpetrated against feminized and/or racialized body-spaces. The Latin American communitarian feminists (feminismos comunitarios) have coined the concept of “cuerpo-territorio” by joining the fight for their traditional territories to the defense and protection of their bodies (Cabnal, 2015; CMCTF, 2017). The explicit union between the body and the territory introduces us to a particular way to move in the world – deeply rooted in an understanding of personhood, undistinguished from the land. “Cuerpo-Territorio’’ reveals a common and regional history of colonial and patriarchal relations of power where feminised bodies and territories are spaces for conquest and exploitation. The body is then a territory-place to conquer, with experiences, emotions, and sensations, while simultaneously becoming a space and tool of denunciation. In this way, land and bodies render oppression and humiliation visible through pain and memory. Their transformative relationship moves from spaces of conflict to resistance (Cabnal 2010; Cruz Hernández 2016; Segato 2016; Carrillo Rodríguez 2020).

Although “Cuerpo-Territorio” emerges in a Latin American context, its origins trace back to European cosmology, drawing dichotomies between culture/nature, male/female, and civilization/wilderness (Cronon 1996; Ulloa 2016). As nature previously contained places with little to no population, the European notion of wilderness expressed a fearful understanding of the natural environment, associated with the inability to control and exploit spaces. Likewise, womanhood was historically interrelated to nature which allowed European societies to present both as ‘territories of subjugation’. When these notions were brought into the colonies, the confrontation with the ‘other’ left colonisers with a vision of ‘chaos’, ‘uncontrollability’, and ‘uncivilisation’. New territories seemed to present a challenge for their domestication and exploitation explicitly leading to the legitimization of the use of violence towards new bodies and territories (Cronon 1996). In Latin America, this logic was institutionalised through the construction of nation-states, which legally and structurally allowed processes of dispossession and exploitation. Non-white and feminized bodies have been marginalized alongside undomesticated territories, targeted as spaces of conflict and violence. Their survival has thus proven the interrelationship to be strong and resilient, drawing a historical line of fight and resistance.

In Mato Grosso do Sul, Central-West of Brazil, the Great Assembly of Guarani and Kaiowá women – Kuñangue Aty Guasu – have undertaken the leadership of the community’s fight. Despite being the region with the highest incidence of violence, Mato Grosso do Sul is characterised as being one of the state’s “blind spots” for the lack of public policies and studies addressed towards gender-based violence. Additionally, the alarming violence Indigenous communities face every day is ignored and institutionally neglected (if not justified) leaving no political space for demands and equity. As a response to this, the Guarani and Kaiowá women decided to register and communicate themselves the violence the community is facing in their region. In 2019, Kuñangue Aty Guasu started collecting individual reports on violence through on-site visitations which led to the creation of a valuable database. This allowed them to write “Corpos Silenciados, Vozes Presentes” (“Silenced Bodies, Present Voices”), an insightful understanding of violence, bodies, and territories. In this work, they introduce us to the Guarani and Kaiowá cosmology and highlight the absence of the word “violence” in their native languages (Kuñangue Aty Guasu 2020). Despite this, violence seems to contagiously enter their communities, poison their lands, intoxicate their youth, reduce their territories, appropriate and silence their bodies.

The Making Violence Visible Map
https://en.kunangue.com/mapainterativo

These 120 pages have then become the seeds to create an interactive map which would digitally amplify Guarani’s and Kaiowá’s voices at an international level. The creation of this map is the result of Kuñangue Aty Guasu’s work and resistance – supported by the ‘’Instituto de Arte e Cultura – IDAC” and the UCL Multimedia Anthropology Lab. The project was named “Making Violence Visible: Mapping Violence against Guarani and Kaiowá Women” and it initiated a multifaceted process of translation. The challenge was to ‘translate’ bodies and territories into digital voices of resistance. By adopting a “karai” (“non-Indigenous”) way to denounce violence, GK women showed how their fight needed to ‘bend’ and follow ‘dominant’ pathways in order to be heard and seen. Despite the pain and difficulty to quantify different accounts of violence, they identified and categorised 21 forms of violence. Several categories didn’t match with legal or internationally recognized violence, such as the “Brazilian state and the violence against our bodies” which intertwines genocide, epistemicide and ecocide. The map is a political tool, with audiovisual content that allows the viewer to feel and understand the emotional weight these territories carry, alongside the collective struggle and memory of GK women. Kuñangue Aty Guasu’s interactive map is thus the embodiment of survival, strength, and memory. It is constantly fed by new reports and incidents of violence, aiming to help its community to stand up against social injustice whilst also building a strong international network of solidarity and resistance.

Indigenous women are the most heavily impacted by colonial-patriarchal processes of land dispossession. The end goal has been the erasure of indigenous peoples and the possession of their territories; this is why women and their reproductive networks have been targeted (VLVB Report and Toolkit, 2016). Feminicidal violence is structured around the destruction of reproductive paths and ecosystems since it goes against the communities’ movements and practices on the grounds of ancestral land-based connections (Card 2003: 63). These ongoing assaults against Indigenous lands, bodies, and communal “webs of life” have made Indigenous women the protagonists of struggles against environmental degradation. In Mato Grosso do Sul, the collusion of power between the Brazilian state, local farmers, and transnational corporations is putting land defenders at extreme risk of violence. It is vital that the voices and experiences of GK women, and Indigenous women globally, continue to be heard and amplified, while their struggles against environmental degradation and climate collapse are strengthened.

Bibliography

Arvin, Maile, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill. 2013. “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy.” Feminist Formations 25 (1): 8–34. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2013.0006.

Cabnal, Lorena. 2010. Feminismos diversos: el feminismo comunitario. ACSUR – Las Segovias.

Card, Claudia. 2003. “Genocide and Social Death.” Hypatia, 18(1): 63-79.   

Carrillo Rodríguez, Eliana Carolina. 2020. “Cuerpos-Agua : Defensa y Cuidado Del Territorio a Través de La Experiencia de Las Mujeres de La Escuela Campesina de Chapacual, Nariño.” Undergraduate thesis. https://repository.javeriana.edu.co/handle/10554/49785.

Cronon, William. 1996. “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Environmental History 1 (1): 7. https://doi.org/10.2307/3985059.

Cruz Hernández, Delmy Tania. 2016. “Una Mirada Muy Otra a Los Territorios-Cuerpos Femeninos.” Solar: Revista de Filosofía Iberoamericana, June.

Kermoal, Nathalie, and Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez, eds. 2016. Living on the Land: Indigenous Women’s Understanding of Place. Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771990417.01.

Kuñangue Aty Guasu. 2020. “Corpos Silenciados, Vozes Presentes: A Violência No Olhar Das Mulheres Kaiowá e Guarani,” November.

Segato, Rita. 2016. La Guerra Contra Las Mujeres. Traficantes de Sueños.

Ulloa, Astrid. 2016. “Feminismos Territoriales En América Latina: Defensas de La Vida Frente a Los Extractivismos.” Nómadas 45 (October).

Women’s Earth Alliance, and Native Youth Sexual Health Network. 2016. “Violence on the Land, Violence on Our Bodies. Building an Indigenous Response to Environmental Violence.” A partnership of Women’s Earth Alliance and Native Youth Sexual Health Network.

Don’t let partial views of human nature obscure our innate capacity to address the environmental crisis 

Arif Jamal

During the vortex of climate debate around Glasgow’s COP26, I was struck by a depressing consensus reached by some of the UK’s most prominent environmentalists: humans are innately destructive and psychologically inept when it comes to tackling the climate emergency.

In his keynote address to world leaders, Sir David Attenborough solemnly asked, “Is the smartest species doomed by that all too human characteristic of failing to see the bigger picture in pursuit of short-term goals?”. His hope lay, not with our capacity to live within planetary boundaries, but with the combination of our “smartness” and the ever-increasing immediacy of climate change impacts jolting us into action.

And shortly before the start of COP26, environmental campaigner George Monbiot painted an even grimmer picture of our special deficiencies:

“There is a myth about human beings that withstands all evidence. It’s that we always put our survival first. This is true of other species. When confronted by an impending threat, such as winter, they invest great resources into avoiding or withstanding it: migrating or hibernating, for example. Humans are a different matter.

When faced with an impending or chronic threat, such as climate or ecological breakdown, we seem to go out of our way to compromise our survival. We convince ourselves that it’s not so serious, or even that it isn’t happening. We double down on destruction, swapping our ordinary cars for SUVs, jetting to Oblivia on a long-haul flight, burning it all up in a final frenzy.”

For anthropologists, whose field of study is the diversity of human societies on the planet, sweeping statements about what humans are or are not leave us feeling queasy. That’s not to say that generalisations can’t be made, just that when making them we must consider “humanity” in its fullest sense. And when we use this principle to scrutinise the claims made by our esteemed green campaigners, they simply don’t hold up. Missing from their conceptions of “the human” is a huge chunk of humanity – the 2.5 billion people of Indigenous and local origin – recognised by the United Nations-Indigenous Peoples and Intergovernmental Panel on the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for their harmonious connections to land and the natural world.

Occupying nearly every ecosystem on the planet in ecologically sustainable ways, Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) provide us with a model of humanity that is neither destructive nor short-termist. Using mainly communal modes of organisation, IPLCs manage 50% of the global landmass. Indigenous peoples alone, a population of approximately 370 million, manage about 38 million km² of land covering savannas, forests, tropical forests, shrublands and rangelands[i].

So, what’s going on? Why have these intelligent and well-meaning environmentalists latched on to an unnecessarily partial and bleak view of human nature?

Before getting into this, let’s decode their statements. When Attenborough laments humans’ overriding pursuit of short-term goals, he’s referring to the malign social influence of the profit motive found in industrialised capitalist economies. And when Monbiot bemoans humans’ penchant for SUVs and long-haul flights, he’s describing the status-signalling behavioural consequences of hyper-consumerist culture from the same societies. The effect of both declarations is the shrinking of the category of “human” from people of every society to those belonging only to the industrialised world.

These assertions are consistent with the broader homogenising and ethnocentric tendencies of Western thought, most evident, perhaps, in the sciences. An obvious example is the popularisation of the term ‘the Anthropocene’ for our current geological epoch, which erases human diversity and reinforces the erroneous notion that humanity-as-a-whole is responsible for the planetary-scale climatic disruption we’re witnessing.

With respect to narratives of human nature, psychological science has casually erased IPLCs from the “human”. Recognised as the “WEIRD” problem[ii], psychological knowledge is dominated by studies involving a very specific kind of human: the university student in rich industrialised nations. In what can only be described as a form of colonisation of the mind[iii], generalised claims about “humans” are unashamedly made by Western psychologists from this exceptionally limited population sample.

Inevitably, these fallacious generalisations seep into Western environmental discourse. In his influential book “Don’t even think about it: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change”, environmentalist George Marshall consulted eminent psychologists on the question of why “we” don’t seem to care about the climate crisis. Their conclusion was that human brains are riddled with biases that prevent meaningful collective climate action. Evolution, he’s told, failed to furnish us with instincts to respond to such an abstract and distant threat[iv].

As soon as you properly expand the “human” category, the absurdity of the notion that our brains are wired to ignore climate change becomes apparent. For many decades now, the full diversity of indigenous peoples of the planet have been the most vocal and vociferous campaigners against global environmental destruction and climate change[v]. Their lifeways, and those of their ancestors, unambiguously demonstrate a human capacity to live rich lives with care and respect for the world’s biodiversity. And these ways of being long pre-date the appearance of so-called civilisation and are, therefore, far more representative of our evolutionary past than industrialised society.

There’s no doubt that the environmental discourse arising from colonial conceptions of humanity has been harmful. Not only does it unfairly tar the hundreds of millions of humans living sustainable lives beyond industrialised civilisation with our ecocidal brush, often with devastating consequences for their livelihoods[vi], but it also gives us an overly pessimistic view of human nature, one that obscures the important truth that humans have lived harmoniously with nature for thousands of generations, and that within us all is the potential to do so again. Without this understanding, we’re stuck with the false belief that we’re fighting innate tendencies, and gloomy narratives, like those at the top of this article, will inevitably prevail.

My message to Sir David and George is this: ditch the despair and use your platforms to amplify the inspirational model of humanity provided to us by IPLCs. Fight the political, social and economic forces in industrialised societies that move us away from their example, things like private ownership, individualism, alienation from nature and food, inequality, and the celebration of greed. Fight for the promotion of their cultural values and ways of being in our society such as the importance of the sacredness of the living world, gender egalitarianism, communal living, decolonisation, ecological relationality, other-than-human agency and indigenous knowledge systems. Most importantly, to address climate change and species loss effectively, fight for the recognition, demarcation, protection, and expansion of their territories. Wherever there is indigenous-led conservation, we find thriving ecosystems.

Yes, us “moderns” are acculturated into a sociopathic and destructive socioeconomic system which generates all manner of environmentally dysfunctional behaviour. But we must never lose sight of the fact that these behaviours are not a consequence of our humanity but of the theft of its full expression, as represented by our indigenous brothers and sisters and their radical embeddedness in the web of life. In the words of Casey Camp Horinek, environmental ambassador of the Ponca Nation and land defender: “We are not defending nature – we are nature defending itself!”.

What might Sir David have said to world leaders had he heeded this advice? Perhaps something along these lines: “Modern civilisation has erased our indigeneity – that part of our humanity that binds us to land, to our relationships with non-human lifeforms and to natural processes. But we are lucky. There are still millions of indigenous peoples on the planet whose wisdom and knowledge holds the key to restoring this lost part of us. Bring them to the negotiating table and listen to what they have to say. They are the solution to this crisis.”

Graphics by Matilda Bowden

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[i] Sangha, K. K. (2020). Global Importance of Indigenous and Local Communities’ Managed Lands: Building a Case for Stewardship Schemes. Sustainability, 12(19), 7839.

[ii] Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Nature, 466(7302), 29-29. WEIRD stands for “Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich & Democratic”.

[iii] In recent years, Indigenous psychologists have begun to shine a light on the colonial nature of Western psychology. This article by Indigenous psychologist Darcia Narveaz explains how fundamentally different indigenous psychology is compared to psychology’s standard model

[iv] The similarity of Attenborough’s view of human nature to that espoused in this book is worth noting. An important Indigenous critique of colonial psychology is that it is culture blind. This culture blindness is particularly evident here. The psychologists offering their opinions about “human” brains being wired to ignore climate change completely ignore the effect of the culture in which these behaviours arise – industrialised capitalist societies.

[v] There are many examples. One of the most well-known is the case of the Kogi who, in 1990, abandoned 5 centuries of relative isolation to make a plea to the modern world to stop destroying the planet. The full documentary can be found here. It’s also worth mentioning the academic effort pushing forward IPLC cosmovisions under the banner of the “Pluriverse”. Arturo Escobar’s book, “Pluriversal Politics” is a great introduction to this idea.

[vi] The erroneous idea that humans can’t be trusted to care for nature has created an “anti-people” mindset in conservation that seeks to exclude Indigenous and local populations from designated conservation zones. Not only does this approach dramatically worsen the lives of Indigenous and local peoples, who are excluded from their traditional hunting territories, but it fails in its stated conservation goals. See here and here

Decolonising protected areas: Sapelli in eastern Cameroon

By Simon Hoyte

In 2018, the Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar remarked:

We are facing modern problems for which there are no longer modern solutions

What he’s referring to is that the worsening ecological crises, created through Western knowledge systems, cannot be solved by Western knowledge systems despite being widely considered ‘advanced’ and ‘modern’.

This involves the mindset and understandings of the world that Western science is rooted in and maintains. Another way to put it, in the words of Ajay Parasram and Lisa Tilley is that:

Colonial science alone is ill-equipped to solve colonial problems

Colonial science? Knowledge is not created or maintained in a vacuum, it is a product of particular contexts, norms, influences, and values; “The truth is that facts and frameworks reflect the worldviews and truths of their creators” as Amber Huff and Nathan Oxley phrase it. And most people in the world, before colonial invasion at least, do not share the same worldviews and truths as Westerners. Western science teaches us that these alternate systems are incorrect, for example animist societies who *know* how the world is and value it based on spiritual relations (read more here).

Nature conservation is at the forefront of colonial science. The majority of nature conservation remains centred on the creation of protected areas, built to keep ‘nature’ in and people out. In the most extreme these involve the eviction and brutalising of indigenous and local communities who are in the way of nature (such as that ongoing around Messok-Dja in Congo). In the least extreme cases protected areas may involve some level of so-called ‘sustainable use’ by local people and perhaps even co-management or indigenous protected areas. But the concept of protected areas itself is increasingly being criticised because it is inextricably dependent on a separation between people and ‘nature’, when actually the majority world (those outside of the West) see no such dividing lines at all.

Lobéké National Park in south-eastern Cameroon is a prime example. 

The park was created in 1999 to protect the rich biodiversity of the region from poaching. Lines were drawn on maps and eco-guards were employed to conduct armed patrols of the forest. Unfortunately, despite claims that local Baka hunter-gatherer and Bangando communities were consulted and gained access to the park which was ‘For them a dream came true!’, in reality access has been heavily restricted resulting in cultural destruction, and the deterioration of livelihoods thereby forcing many into the illegal wildlife trade. Unsurprisingly, this has led to increased poaching and fewer and fewer animals. 

Some Baka communities have been instructed to apply for permission before entering the forest by filling in paperwork, but the vast majority of people are illiterate and cannot wait to receive permission before going in search of food, the permit itself only lasting for a couple of weeks before having to renew it again. Most worryingly, serious cases of abuse and violence by eco-guards have been recorded towards Baka people surrounding the park, including beatings, torture, destruction of villages, and confiscation of food. Conservation can of course never be successful or sustainable when it is goes hand-in-hand with human rights abuses. Ironically, it is the Baka and their ancestors who have inhabited these forests for many millennia and, through their practices and knowledge, have played a part in making the forest as rich as it is today. 

Honey collecting with a bundle of smoking leaves

In 2019, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between the Baka of this region and the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife. The deal was that the Baka will be allowed access to the park in order to hunt, fish, forage and carry out cultural activities, but only if following strict restrictions on size of prey, hunting equipment and many other things. 

Human rights organisations have criticised the MoU for it’s vagueness on what actual rights the Baka will have with regard to accessing the park, and that communication with communities has been so poor that they often ‘claimed to know nothing of the MoU (some not even knowing what “MoU” meant)’. The whole idea of an MoU itself as a solution in this case should be put into context when considering more fundamentally that this forest has been stolen from local people (‘green grabbing’) who need it to survive, despite the root causes of ivory trafficking, pangolin smuggling, and logging being elsewhere.

In any case, the MoU exists and the task now is to properly monitor it. In this vein, WWF, who supports the government in managing Lobéké, invited me to initiate Sapelli citizen science projects alongside the Baka of Lobéké. Whilst being initially hesitant to work in this controversial and problematic context, I decided that this was an opportunity to initiate change, whereby the voices and values of the Baka could be taken seriously.

Maximising the bottom-up design of the project and the sharing of knowledge between Baka communities, I asked Mangombe, a friend from my primary fieldwork village, if he’d like to join me in the new WWF work. He hastily agreed, excited about meeting many new Baka families in a different region and learning medicines of the forest that are new to him.

We set off on the 5-day journey from Bemba village on the edge of the Ngoyla-Mintom forests to the Lobéké forests of the East.

Lobéké National Park (OpenStreetMap)

Contrary to the way conservation projects normally work, minimal planning and design was done before visiting communities in order to promote local leadership. The Sapelli technology was not initially mentioned in village meetings at all – doing so may lead to communities joining the project simply because they want to use a smartphone. Instead, we sat down and asked communities about their forest – what concerns they have, what their current situation is like, how the forest has changed, how intact their traditions are, what their relationships are like with ministry eco-guards, WWF, non-Baka communities.

These conversations revealed all sorts of interesting insights: problems with accessing the forest due to abusive eco-guards and absurd requirements to apply for written permission; conflict with safari reserves who keep the Baka out by employing heavily-armed personnel (who shoot first and ask questions later); anger over logging companies who are cutting down the forest, for which the Baka see no benefits, and includes important medicinal and fruiting trees; wildlife traffickers that arrive, coercing some local people to help, and smuggle animals and trophies away by tipping off officials; concerns by elders that Baka ecological knowledge and cultural heritage is vanishing and failing to be passed on to the next generation, amongst many other things. Two villages told us of concerted efforts by government guards to destroy Baka culture by threatening communities to stop calling the ancient and most powerful spirit of the forest – ‘Ejengi‘. This was shocking to for us to hear because of the fundamental role Ejengiplays in male initiation, teaching boys how to walk in the forest, identify medicines, hunt animals, and other knowledge to survive, and also his role in mediating conflicts and at other times of distress (watch this for more). “We need to have Ejengi in our village” the women told me.

Credit: Yvette Mongondji

Sapelli projects emerged from these concerns, and with constant dialogue with the communities (if you’re not familiar with Sapelli, see here). Sapelli was not presented as a solution to all the problems, but more so as a tool which could help with addressing specific problems which we identified together: increasing access to the forest by mapping important resources (fruit trees, honey, wild yam, fishing and hunting sites, and medicinal trees; a requirement for access within the MoU), reporting wildlife poaching, documenting instances of violence and abuse, and recording where animals eat and damage crops (human-wildlife conflict). 

At a meeting on the MoU there was a change of tune in regard to Ejengi. WWF and the ministry decided that the Baka should be allowed to hunt elephants in order to practice the Ejengiceremony, but restricted to a maximum of one per year for several villages grouped together. In order for this to work, they said, it would have to be carefully monitored; but how do you carefully monitor a forest spirit? Sapelli, the Baka decided, could play a part in this by alerting authorities as to when Ejengi has arrived and whether the hunting of an elephant may be necessary.

One of the best parts of a bottom-up approach is the tendency to produce unexpected outcomes – the mapping of Ejengi, but also the youths in one village who proposed that Sapelli could help them map potential sites for football pitches (though later changed their minds).

It all hinges on the process of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC): being honest with communities about the possible advantages and risks of the projects, and ensuring that proper understanding is behind their decision to accept or deny the projects. Having these conversations relies upon trust, and, having worked with the Baka in Cameroon since 2016, I’ve learnt how this can be achieved. Speaking the Baka language is the most impactful, and I’ve learnt it through living in Mangombe’s village: hard work but opens up so much. The WWF staff accompanying me included two Baka employees, meaning that for many meetings and also amongst ourselves we would be speaking in Baka. Staying overnight in each community where we would share food, hear stories and histories, and get to know people more genuinely was invaluable.

The village built us mongulus to sleep in overnight

The Sapelli software is made up of icons in order to include those who cannot read and write (such as the Baka), and I’ve found that if these icons are designed by each community themselves, not only does the software make much more sense, but community members feel a sense of ownership over the technology. This process of locally-led ‘co-design’ is an important part of trying to decolonise research.

Training in how to use the smartphones was done with a self-selected team within each community over two or three sessions in the forest, during which questions were encouraged and the FPIC process continued. Communities decide for themselves how they will manage the phone – who will keep and charge it and how they will share it -, where exactly their data will go and who will have access to it, and for what purpose. It’s all well and good to involve indigenous peoples in participative, innovative projects, but if they do not have the opportunity to decide on who has access to their data and for what reason, are these really so different from top-down, colonial methodologies?

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Icons from one Sapelli project depicting poaching, human-wildlife conflict, abuse, and fishing (left), eco-guard violence (middle), and Ejengi (right)

The primary use of Sapelli in all five villages centres on helping to regain access to the forest, both the national park, and its periphery – a forest taken from them, but in which their ancestors thrived and their identities and spiritual world still depend. But this project too requires strong collaboration with outsiders (WWF, the ministry, ExCiteS) in order for the data to change things, and it’s us outsiders who remain in the position to actually take actions or not. 

So, whilst this is a positive step, I don’t think it goes far enough. Conservation must shift towards autonomous management, whereby communities themselves receive the funding (perhaps in the form of organisations or associations), and protect landscapes as a part of a complex web of social-ecological connections. Indigenous protected areas, like those in Australia, go part of the way, but so-called ‘biocultural heritage territories‘ must be the objective of all conservationists – “Their main goal is holistic wellbeing, rather than conservation, but holistic wellbeing means the wellbeing of both people and nature, and results in conservation as the outcome of an autonomous process. This reflects Indigenous peoples’ holistic worldview that biodiversity and culture — or nature and people — are inextricably linked and cannot be separated.” This has also been termed ‘flourishing diversity‘, which stresses the necessity of learning from indigenous wisdom traditions.

Such ideas of conservation are likely to differ hugely from those in the West and the average WWF supporter. ‘Modern’ solutions must become increasingly about local, alternative, decolonised solutions, which embrace other knowledges and world-views on an equal level, which Sapelli and similar tools can certainly help with. 

I’m sure these will, in most cases, seem radical. But to those who live within the majority of the world’s conservation hotspots and are on the frontline of ecological and cultural crisis, such as the Baka, these ideas are not at all new and are practiced through everyday life. They have, therefore, always been modern.

Acknowledgment to Mangombe Felix, Yvette Mongondji, and Bibi, without whom this project would not have materialised. Endlessly hard-working, intelligent, and generous
Funded by the European Research Council Horizon 2020 and WWF

Indigenous-led technology can boost biodiversity and ensure human rights

Simon Hoyte, Alice Sheppard, Marcos Moreu, Megan Laws & Jerome Lewis

Extreme Citizen Science Research Group

 

Over recent years there have been high profile legal challenges, investigative articles in the media, and important reports on the relationship between conservationists and Indigenous peoples.

In the latest of these, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) carried out an assessment of claims that the human rights of Baka hunter-gatherers are being violated by conservation guards around the new WWF-led Messok-Dja park in the Republic of Congo. The UNDP’s findings, in agreement with those documented by non-governmental organizations, seemingly puts to rest any doubts over whether serious maltreatment is taking place, from forced evictions to physical abuse and confiscation of wild meat.

Those concerned about the magnificent but threatened biodiversity of the central African rainforests might retort that making sacrifices is necessary. And what’s the alternative? That we allow gorillas and forest elephants to go extinct?

But there is an alternative: to put the Baka and other Indigenous peoples and local communities at the heart of decision-making. For millennia these groups have been the primary managers of their environments, maintaining them as areas of rich socio-biodiversity until their custodianship was taken over by national governments. It is a common Euro-American view that areas of rich biodiversity should be left devoid of all humans. In practice, there are few examples (Antarctica and parts of the Arctic) of major terrestrial world ecosystems that have not been shaped in part by human actions.

As has been well described by academics and Indigenous and local communities themselves, a militarized approach to conservation is self-defeating in that it is generally more, not less, likely to drive local people into illegal activities, and it actively rejects and suppresses Indigenous knowledge and the systems in which they are embedded. This knowledge and the associated practices are recognized by many scholars and practitioners alike as essential to protect and enhance the planet’s dwindling biodiversity, a fact becoming increasingly pertinent as studies show that Indigenous and local communities can be equally or more successful at safeguarding biodiversity than governments or protected areas.

Much of this safeguarding relies upon the web of beliefs, values, and relationships that make up local world views, and within which knowledge is upheld. The Baka, for example, support populations of forest elephants by replanting the heads of wild yams, a practice not directly for elephants but rather to ensure enough food for both themselves and the powerful forest spirit Ejengi to which elephants are closely linked.

A Baka woman digs up sāpà wild yams in southern Cameroon, a food-source which has allowed hunter-gatherers to thrive in Central African forests for millennia. Image courtesy of Simon Hoyte.

Embracing Indigenous peoples and local communities for their biodiversity protection alone is missing the point. Indigenous peoples, like all peoples, are safeguarded by universal human rights, and afforded additional protection of their unique heritages, languages, and traditional lands through the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Exclusion, eviction, and abuse which result from conservation interventions must be denounced not just because of the value of Indigenous peoples for conservation, but because of their right to be alive, healthy, and feel secure like everyone else.

As outlined in a recent paper (co-authored by two of us), violation of the rights of local and especially Indigenous peoples are not always as direct as those reported by UNDP in Congo; they often take the form of imposing outside values, agendas, and ideas of what is right and wrong. The danger of this is all too obvious when we consider that over half of nearly 10,000 conservationists surveyed in one study are either neutral or agree that evicting communities to create people-free parks is acceptable – a seemingly clear case of conservationists valuing animals over people.

The cornerstone of UNDRIP is the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination, to give or deny consent to projects that will affect their lives and livelihoods. This is termed as free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). Unfortunately, in many circumstances FPIC is reduced to one or two questions and a simple box ticked on forms, allowing researchers, organizations, or industries to claim they have community consent and continue with pre-planned projects.

States and officials dependent on income from extractive industries often see FPIC as an impediment. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the only four countries to vote against UNDRIP in 2007 (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S.) are settler states who have strong capitalist ideologies and experience tension with their Indigenous peoples over resources.

Protecting biodiversity is often considered important by outsiders, but for Indigenous peoples and local communities, it can be a matter of life or death, both literally and culturally. For example, the Wet’suwet’en First Nation of British Columbia argue that the ongoing invasion of their territory in the pursuit of natural gas will “pollute our waters and destroy any future we have to be Wet’suwet’en.”

Respecting the rights of Indigenous and local communities in the context of conservation requires a shift in emphasis from outsiders’ concerns to local concerns and knowledge. Through long-term interactions with the landscape, these communities understand so-called ‘wildernesses’ as interconnected systems in which humans are a fundamental part. Their concerns are often based on holistic ecological thinking, something which many professional conservationists are increasingly adopting.

The Ashaninka of the Brazilian Amazon, for example, carefully organize and carry out reforestation of Indigenous trees to feed both themselves and forest animals, and breed Indigenous turtle species to repopulate local rivers in order to achieve harmonious relations with their environment.

Indigenous-led technologies

The question is, what is the best way of partnering with communities who are the frontline of ecocide to act on their concerns? This is where equitable partnerships and appropriate technology can play a role. In an active affront to top-down, often colonial methods, digital technology projects are now being instigated and designed, either by or alongside, Indigenous peoples and local communities themselves, led by, rather than contradicting, local beliefs, values, knowledges, and, indeed, technologies. Digital mapping is becoming an influential part of this since it acts as a bridge between disempowered communities and those in power.

In Ecuador, the Siekopai people approached the NGO Digital Democracy to help them map their ancestral land, an area encroached on by agribusiness and oil development leading to ecological disconnection and cultural erosion. Using offline satellite imagery and the Mapeo phone app, Siekopai youths and elders mapped important lakes and ancient sites rich with Indigenous stories and meaning. Interacting with these finished maps, produced in their own language, revitalizes the connection between the Siekopai and their land, and has stirred an increasingly strong resistance to its pollution.

Indigenous and local communities in Cameroon, Congo, Namibia, Kenya, Ghana, and Brazil are collaborating with the Extreme Citizen Science group (of which we are part), having communicated their concerns over issues as broad as wildlife crime, destruction of important foraging and hunting sites, land invasions, safeguarding of ethnobotanical knowledge, exclusion from fishing zones, monitoring climate changes, and abuse by forest guards. The open source software Sapelli is used to create icon-based apps designed from scratch by or alongside communities themselves, regardless of their level of digital or print literacy. Communities have chosen to use Sapelli to collect GPS-tagged data points, strengthened with photo and audio data, which can be presented to decision-makers and dominant authorities as interactive maps.

Maasai warriors in Narok County, Kenya, test the Sapelli software. Image courtesy of Megan Laws.

Participative projects extend far beyond mapping. In East Timor, local women are working alongside an NGO in the creation of a community marine protected area governed by their traditional laws (tara bandu). Through using the participative software Open Data Kit on smartphones, the women are actively managing their area by taking data on fish abundance and catch quantities, led by local values enshrined in tara bandu and providing for future generations.

And in the Philippines the Ibaloi, Ifugao, Kalinga, and Kankana-ey peoples haveadopted participative video making to create films about their experience of climate change, including the impact it’s already having on their lives and sharing advice on how to adapt. These films have now been screened by communities across the Asia-Pacific region, as well as at the UN’s COP16 climate conference in Mexico, influencing climate change policy.

It is clear that putting the rights of Indigenous and local communities first is not just a moral imperative, but a conservation one too. Cultural and biological diversity are mutually enhancing and enriching: one cannot be protected in isolation of the other. Efforts, therefore, for both environmental recovery and social rights will continue to fall short until this mutual relationship forms the heart of policy.

Whilst issues of funding cycles and true data sovereignty remain obstacles, emerging approaches of locally-led technology will be vital to protect and revive global biocultural diversity, and a genuinely sustainable planet may begin to be realizable.

 

[Originally published by Mongabay as ‘Indigenous-led technology solutions can boost biodiversity and ensure human rights‘]

Violence, corruption, and false promises: Conservation and the Baka in Cameroon

Originally published by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs

Simon Hoyte & Catherine Clarke

University College London & Forest Peoples Programme

Spending time with the Baka, as we have both done over several years, is a humbling experience. This group of over 40,000 spread between the forests of Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and Gabon, practice hunting and foraging as a traditional livelihood. Through their long history in the Congo Basin they have accumulated and passed on extensive ecological knowledge and sophisticated cultural mechanisms of egalitarianism, sharing and human-nature conviviality.

Despite (or because of) this rich cultural heritage, the Baka, and hunter-gatherers around the world, have consistently been forced into categories of ‘primitive’ and ‘uncultured’ by neighbouring agriculturalist communities, national governments and some international actors. In Africa, as a result of skills that enable them to thrive solely on wild foods, hunter-gatherers are often said “to live like wild animals and not human beings” (Woodburn 1997:353). For a myriad times we have witnessed first-hand the racism and physical abuse suffered by the Baka in Cameroon, oftentimes described as ‘weak’ and ‘like chimpanzees’ by government officials and neighbouring villagers.

Forests for wildlife, not people

Forced from their forests by the outgoing French colonial government in the 1960s, as well as the incoming independent government and later pressure from the World Bank to make way for logging concessions and national parks, the Baka have experienced ongoing violence including forced labour by new sedentary neighbours. In Cameroon, Indigenous Peoples’ land rights are not recognised under national law, despite the fact that the majority of the national territory has been occupied and managed by local and Indigenous communities for centuries. Access to justice and political representation is effectively zero (Perram & Clarke 2018).

In this context, the influence of wildlife conservation has played a profound role. Driven by both neoliberal aspirations and a determination to rescue the characteristic megafauna of the forest through the use of ‘elite’ Western scientific knowledge, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) funded by animal-loving citizens, institutions and governments have claimed vast swaths of Cameroon’s rainforest as protected areas for wildlife, effectively “locking out the very people who have preserved these forests over thousands of years” (Clarke 2019). This style of fortress-conservation, which is deeply woven into neo-colonialism, has created ‘conservation refugees’ through forced eviction across the Congo Basin, in violation of international human rights law obligations.

The world’s last major stronghold of hunter-gatherers exist in the Central African forests (Hewlett 2014), and, because their identities, social structures and the majority of their subsistence needs rely on the forest, they have experienced the most severe ramifications from conservation restrictions. There is often no difference in outcome for them between those attempting to protect the forest and those cutting it down (Lewis 2003).

Soft targets: eco-guards and the Baka

To protect wildlife reserves from poachers and other threats, armed guards are employed. Concerns over such militarisation of conservation are neither fringe nor few; many academics have been documenting its detrimental effects for years, some describing the situation as nothing less than “war, by conservation” (Duffy 2016). Most disturbingly, these eco-guards, often ill-equipped and pressured to get results, target the Baka with extreme abuse in the name of conservation. As anthropologist Jerome Lewis puts it: “Unable to act against the powerful perpetrators of the illegal wildlife trade, eco-guards began to attack softer targets: the hunter-gatherers and villagers” (Lewis 2020). Wildlife conservation, carrying the air of a noble and apolitical practise, has clearly got some dark secrets.

In the forests of the Baka and their cousins the Mbendjele, this direct violence by eco-guards has been ongoing for at least 19 years (Nguiffo 2003), with some harrowing testimonies: “They have ruined our world”, said Asimba, a 35-year-old Mbendjele woman. “If we try to hunt in the forest they beat us so badly. They even kill us if they see us in the forest” (quoted in Lewis 2016).

The Baka have expressed similarly distressing accounts: “If the guards find you, even with just one antelope, they beat you and make you take your clothes off” (quoted in Warren & Baker 2019). As hunter-gatherers, Baka families do not hunt, fish and forage (just) for fun. It is their means of survival. The confiscation of meat hunted under droit d’usage (user rights) is nothing but criminal. Some eco-guards push this brutality further, confiscating the Baka’s most treasured gift of the forest – wild honey – for seemingly no reason other than to assert their power (Duda 2017).

This complex series of events is still unfolding today; yet increasing evidence shows that the creation of strict reserves in Central Africa is not only violating human rights, but also failing to protect threatened biodiversity (Pyhälä 2016).

The case of WWF

In 2016, these allegations of human rights abuses reached a global audience. Armed with dozens of first-hand testimonies and in-depth work by NGOs such as Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) and by anthropologists, the British Indigenous rights organisation Survival International lodged a formal complaint against the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD). The parks in Cameroon which are connected to violent abuse against the Baka are managed by WWF, who, through financial and technical support, fund and train the controversial eco-guards. Survival later withdrew from OECD mediation and abandoned their complaint in 2017.

Since then, an onslaught of allegations against WWF have emerged in mainstream media, this time centring on the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with Rainforest Foundation UK and Survival International detailing forced eviction of the Baka and other hunter-gatherer groups, and terrorising by eco-guards. In apparent breach of its own policy, WWF continues to support the creation of conservation areas on Indigenous Peoples’ lands without their genuine free, prior and informed consent, such as the proposed Messok Dja area in the Republic of Congo recently assessed by FPP.

The pressure on WWF is growing remarkably. Most recently, a UN Development Programme investigation gathered credible evidence of violence against Baka in the Congo (Vidal 2020), IWGIA, FPP and others have written directly to the Director General of WWF International, and the global activist group Extinction Rebellion have amplified the cause.

As for Cameroon, a scathing investigation by BuzzFeed News in 2019 confirmed that the situation has not changed (Warren & Baker 2019). Internationally there has been shock and anger. Celebrity ambassadors to the charity have stood down, important funders have withdrawn support and members of the public have expressed outrage, demanding answers. “Only if WWF recognises that if it doesn’t change its strategy on conservation it will lose a lot of financial support, will it eventually think about really doing something” threatens a German MP (McVeigh 2019).

At the international level, WWF is undeniably aware of the issues, and has, in principle, shown willingness to discuss them. However, concrete action is urgently needed.

At the national level in Cameroon, the government and WWF have celebrated access agreements (MOUs) with Baka communities, enabling them to once again carry out traditional activities within the parks. However, research by FPP has exposed several serious flaws, as well as documenting how eco-guard abuse has additionally left communities fearful of entering the forest outside of protected areas to carry out their traditional livelihoods and important cultural practices (Clarke 2019). Ironically, elitist conservation has also created perverse incentives for communities to use resources unsustainably.

Baka-led conservation

Until the ‘powerful perpetrators’ themselves are stopped, including corrupt officials, the scapegoating of the Baka will continue. This cannot realistically happen until the conservation paradigm itself has been radically transformed, enabling Indigenous and local communities to lead in a genuine way. Where this has been achieved around the world, Indigenous Peoples are demonstrating they are equally or more effective than conservationists, and at the same time have their rights protected (Fa 2020).

The concept of excluding local knowledge and ruthlessly protecting islands of ‘nature’ in a country ridden with corruption was doomed from the start. Baka conceptions of sharing must now take the lead: “When everyone benefits well from the forest, that will be good for us all.”

 

Our thanks go to Helen Tugendhat and Justin Kenrick for their helpful comments. Images credit to Forest Peoples Programme

References

Clarke, C. 2019. In and Around Cameroon’s Protected Areas: A rights-based analysis of access and resource use agreements between Indigenous Peoples and the State. Moreton-in-Marsh: Forest Peoples Programme

Duda, R. 2017. Ethnoecology of hunting in an empty forest. PhD thesis: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Duffy, R. 2016. War, by Conservation. Geoforum 69, 238–248

Fa, J. et al. 2020. Importance of Indigenous Peoples’ lands for the conservation of Intact Forest Landscapes. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 18, 135–140

Hewlett, B. 2014. Hunter-gatherers in the Congo Basin. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

Lewis, J. 2003. From Abundance to Scarcity. Contrasting conceptions of the forest in Northern Congo-Brazzaville, and issues for conservation. Presented to the Canadian Anthropology Society, Dalhousie University

Lewis, J. 2016. ‘Our life has turned upside down! And nobody cares’. Hunter Gatherer Research 2.3, 375–384

Lewis, J. 2020. How ‘Sustainable’ Development Ravaged the Congo Basin. Scientific American

McVeigh, K. 2019. ‘British watchdog launches inquiry into WWF abuse allegations’. The Guardian

Nguiffo, S. 2003. One forest and two dreams: the constraints imposed on the Baka in Miatta by the Dja Wildlife Reserve. In: Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas in Africa (J. Nelson & L. Hossack, eds), 195–214. Moreton-in-Marsh: Forest Peoples Programme

Perram, A. & Clarke, C. 2018. Complaint abandoned, but systematic human rights violations continue for indigenous Baka communities in Cameroon. Moreton-in-Marsh: Forest Peoples Programme

Pyhälä, A., Orozco, A. & Counsell, S. 2016. Protected areas in the Congo Basin: failing both people and biodiversity? London: Rainforest Foundation UK

Vidal, J. 2020. ‘Armed ecoguards funded by WWF ‘beat up Congo tribespeople’’. The Guardian

Warren, T. & Baker, K. 2019. WWF’s Secret War: WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People. BuzzFeed News

Woodburn, J. 1997. Indigenous discrimination: The ideological basis for local discrimination against hunter‐gatherer minorities in sub‐Saharan Africa. Ethnic and Racial Studies 20, 345–361

JULY 2nd 2020Support Ashaninka to help their region in the COVID crisis

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Live Campaign Launch Time on July 2^nd:

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Living in the forest

A new article on the consequences for biological and cultural diversity of sustainable development in the Congo Basin – just out in Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-sustainable-development-ravaged-the-congo-basin/

Indigenous peoples and scientists urge Europe to commit to real sustainable trade with Brazil

Carolina Schneider Comandulli

Extreme Citizen Science Research Group

Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability

 

Indigenous and environmental rights are under threat in Brazil from Jair Bolsonaro’s government. In a little less then 4 months in power, Brazil’s current President has managed to dismantle the country’s existing structures for the protection of environmental and human rights.

Jerome Lewis and Hannah Knox In Discussion

A recent discussion between CAoS co-founder Jerome Lewis and UCL Associate Professor Hannah Knox, in which they discuss public anthropology in the context of climate change and digital technology. This conversation takes place on behalf of Global Ethnographic, an online multimedia ethnographic journal.

CTI (Indigenous Advocacy Centre) and CAoS (Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability) win the Brazilian Newton Prize 2018.

Announced on November 13^th 2018 in Brasília, the £200,000 Newton Prize for projects demonstrating the best science and innovation to address global challenges through partnerships was awarded to the project ‘Improving Guarani lives by restoring the Atlantic Forest’.