Indigenous People and National Parks

The article that I am sharing has to do with the displacement of indigenous people in order to create national parks in various countries. This article also draws from the World Park Congress and the closing statement made by indigenous delegates. What the author draws on reminds me of the readings on indigenous identities by Li, who notes that indigenous peoples will self-identify in order to protect and advocate their own self interest. As Professor Pena mentioned, “local, place-based cultures negotiate these identity positions, and may even choose to adopt concepts for strategic reasons, for e.g., to gain legitimacy as bona fide ecological actors” (Presentation 22).

In addition to learning how indigenous peoples shape their environment through TEK and enhance biodiversity from Professor Pena’s lectures and readings, I have also been learning about this concept in my other environmental studies classes. One main example of this being Yellowstone National Park, and the realization that indigenous communities did play a role in shaping this historic icon of nature and wilderness. Parks and national wildlife reserves were created with the thought that people inhibit the production of a healthy ecosystem when in reality it was the indigenous people themselves that managed and setup the biodiversity that we see today. I think that this European mentality that parks need to exist without human involvement stems from the fact that Western thought often looks to dominate their environment, and so they assume that other cultures are the same. As we learned from both the Fairhead/Leech reading and the Posey reading, the misreading of a landscape can lead to the destruction of an indigenous community and a huge loss to that culture and environment.

-Melissa