Human-Nature Duality and Early Environmentalism

The separation of humans and nature has dominated Western conservation ideology for over a century. Leaders of the early Western ecological movement in North America constructed a division between Western civilization and the natural world, resulting in the concept of “wilderness.” Settlers reported the seemingly pristine condition of the landscape, which was in contrast to the heavily industrialized land from which they had departed in Europe. Disregarding that the lands on which they had arrived had been inhabited by Native communities for thousands of years, settlers referred to the continent as terra nullius or “nobody’s land.” The narrative created by settlers, that Indigenous peoples were not making good use of the land and thus had no real right to it, helped justify a range of abuses in the centuries to come.

The contemporary environmental movement arose in the late 19th century in response to concerns about the Industrial Revolution. It was shaped heavily by the musings of figures such as John Muir, Madison Grant, and Gifford Pinchot, who bought into and perpetuated the idea of human civilization and healthy nature as dichotomous. These men infused early American environmentalism with racist rhetoric, advocating protection of nature as a separate entity from humans. This began a devastating relationship between conservation and Indigenous land rights that has permeated into contemporary conservation and environmental work, despite increasing apparent support for social and environmental justice. And, unfortunately, though other countries were simultaneously working towards environmental goals, the ideals formed within the United States have heavily shaped the global environmental movement and helped establish a global “fortress conservation” framework that tends to pit Indigenous people against the ideals of “wilderness.”

Conservation Refugees

The problem with the concept of wilderness is twofold; it overlooks that Indigenous peoples lived on lands settled by Europeans since time immemorial, and it ignores the reciprocal ways in which Indigenous peoples have and continue to interact with the land. This article focuses on conservation refugees, the Indigenous peoples who are evicted from their homelands in the name of environmental protection. The need for the term is an unfortunate manifestation of the power imbalance between Indigenous communities and powerful conservation organizations, paired with the debilitating perception that humans must be separate from nature for nature to thrive.

For decades, some of the world’s most powerful and well-respected environmental groups have catalyzed evicting residents from their homes and land in the name of national park or wilderness area designation. When lands are converted to conservation areas, traditional land management practices are banned and human settlements are cleared, sometimes violently. In the case of parks, tourists are welcomed while those who have supported the land’s health are dispossessed from their homes. The United States National Parks system has a long history of expelling Indigenous Americans from their lands for the sake of conservation and recreation.

In his book “Conservation Refugees,” Mark Dowie dives into the recent history of Indigenous dispossession in the name of conservation. He explains how the BINGOs of the world, the big international NGOs, received enormous endowments from transnational banks and corporations to further their conservation efforts in the 1990s, leading to an explosion of protected areas across six continents. None of these funds were allocated to Indigenous groups. Though these protected areas may have been implemented with good intentions, it is estimated that the resulting parks and wildlife refuges from this period displaced an excess of 14 million people, though true figures are extremely challenging to procure.

As Western conservation organizations survey the globe for intact and biodiverse land to protect, they home in on the places that continue to thrive. Contrary to what the human-nature duality perspective might predict, many of these identified lands are thriving not because of the absence of humans, but because of their presence, in the form of diverse Indigenous cultures. The healthy relationships upheld between Indigenous peoples and the land for millennia leads to areas that are targeted for conservation due to their “pristine” condition, and facilitates ongoing colonial dispossession. This creates a wicked double threat to Indigenous land rights: on the one hand they face continuing pressure from people who want to develop their lands in the same vein as colonial settlers from the days of manifest destiny, on the other they face dispossession from conservation organizations trying to fight development-induced habitat destruction by creating wilderness refuges free of human residents.

Though Western science and society increasingly acknowledges that Indigenous communities tend to be the most effective stewards of their lands, and the goals of biodiversity conservation and Indigenous self-determination often overlap, Indigenous sovereignty and lawful access to their lands are moral imperatives in and of themselves. While Indigenous communities have typically been integral to ecosystem health and biodiversity in their homelands for tens of thousands of years, their right to their land comes before the values of conservation organizations.

Indigenous Regenerative Land Practices

The reality is that if conservation organizations could see themselves in a broader framework that is organized around justice and the valuing of Indigenous self-determination, they would also find their conservation goals to be largely met in the process.

The long history of Indigenous land stewardship demonstrates how some human-nature relationships stand in stark contrast to Western conservation regimes. In living on their homelands, Indigenous groups around the globe have developed extensive regenerative management practices. Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer beautifully illustrates one example of reciprocal human-flora interaction in her book “Braiding Sweetgrass.” She explains how the human harvest of sweetgrass facilitates the plant’s growth. When these plants are not harvested (or are improperly harvested) in their native environments, they will be gradually replaced by other species. Controlled burns, forest gardening, soil-building, rotational clearing, and sustainable fish and wildlife harvest are other Indigenous land stewardship methods that help enhance ecosystem health, resilience, and diversity. The finding that “Indigenous created forest gardens of the Pacific Northwest support more pollinators, more seed-eating animals, and more plant species than the supposedly ‘natural’ conifer forests surrounding them,” dismantles the Western human-nature binary. The countless environmental management failures that result from the wilderness framework are further evidence of this point.

Dispossessions and Responses

Beyond traditional land conservation efforts, new initiatives such as efforts to mitigate impacts from carbon emissions in the form of carbon credits can also contribute to Indigenous dispossession. Carbon credits are a mechanism that permits corporations to emit a specified amount of carbon by paying for an equivalent amount of carbon to be removed from the atmosphere. Many developed countries have expressed excitement for and support of enhancing this climate change mitigation strategy, but the forests that are targeted as the source to store carbon are often inhabited by Indigenous peoples. ‘Carbon grabs’ occur when a nation’s government sells the legal titles of forests to corporations for carbon credits, thus taking rights from local peoples. This can both dispossess Indigenous groups or steal from them the right to manage their own carbon credits to fund local conservation. Managing carbon offsets in this way can perpetuate land theft from Indigenous communities.

There has been a growing awareness about the inequitable and destructive approach of conservation efforts among many environmental groups and governmental entities. Some countries have enacted laws that require a participatory approach to wildlife and biodiversity conservation efforts, co-created with and managed by Indigenous peoples on their lands. However, the fact remains that many organizations are embedded within a colonial legacy. Green energy is particularly poised to perpetuate colonial forces on Indigenous lands, as many sites of interest for lithium mining fall on Indigenous territory. As a range of powers focus increasing energy on environmental issues, it is crucial that Indigenous rights are not sacrificed in the effort to solve the problems that have already disproportionately affected them, and which they did not create. Collaborative management efforts are effective tools for confronting and preventing injustices inflicted in the name of conservation.

Returning stolen land to its rightful inhabitants and multi-millennia stewards is crucial to redress displacement of Indigenous peoples, and is a powerful response to land restoration needs. Land back movements, besides being one of the most important actions to address the injustices of dispossession, are also associated with increased ecological health, decreased fires, and restored biodiversity. This movement is growing, with recent returns in the National Bison Range in Montana, Okanogan County in Washington State, Ewa Beach in Hawaii, and the state of Queensland in Australia. The Nature Conservancy’s Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Program has provided support in land acquisition for Native groups domestically and internationally. Giving land back could also enhance equity in carbon credit programs; the Yurok Tribe in Northern California have used their carbon-offset program to purchase nearly sixty thousand acres of their rightful land to permanently manage it.

As restoration and conservation policy is drafted in accordance with goals set forth by UNFCCC COP 26 and other environmental efforts, it is critical that greater support and protections of Indigenous rights and land is a top-tier priority. It is far from coincidence that some of the last vestiges of healthy earth and coastal zones fall on Indigenous lands. Global leaders scrambled to develop solutions to the climate crisis during COP 26, but perpetuated the historical behavior of devaluing and marginalizing Indigenous voices in environmental action. Though Indigenous communities saw some progress during the climate summit, many motions remain ambiguous and challenging to implement. There are also great concerns that the newly proposed “30 by 30” plan will result in widespread evictions. It is vital that commitments to Indigenous groups be made in concrete, legally binding policy that supports Indigenous sovereignty. There will be no solution to the ecological crisis without a globally unified and equitable effort, an effort that acknowledges and rectifies the historical inequities and ongoing reality of land theft from Indigenous peoples. It is far past time that the voices of Indigenous peoples stand unquestioned, and that Indigenous self-determination is centered in issues of land management.