Ethnoecology, advocacy, and indigenous land and resource rights

students in a class roomPrincipal Investigator: Miguel Alexiades
Co-investigators: Daniela Peluso, Daniel Rodriguez
Project dates: 2004-2006
Funding: Nuffield Foundation (2002-2005), Darrell Posey Foundation (2005-2006), PPI/CIFOR (2005-2006), PPI/The Christensen Foundation (2005-2006)

Using methods and technology (including GIS, social cartography and participatory video), this programme seeks to strengthen the capacity of the Ese Eja to face some of the daunting social, political and resource problems undermining their well-being and right to self-determination. It is organically linked to People and Plants International (PPI) Cultural Landscapes and Resource Rights Program, and it focuses on three different arenas regarding indigenous cultural landscapes and resource rights in western Amazonia:
Cultural landscapes and land claims: There is a substantial body of international (notably ILO Convention 169), as well as national, legislation to support land and resource rights in ancestrally-occupied lands. Historical archives, living testimonies and social knowledge (genealogies, place names, etc.) together with material evidence for historical use and occupation (old settlements, gardens, cultivated plants, fallows, etc.) all constitute powerful resources to substantiate legal claims regarding land and resource rights.
Indigenous cultural landscapes and natural protected areas: The indigenous groups that today live along western Amazonia and the Andean piedmont not only share certain important aspects in their social and political history and in their lived environments; they also confront similar problems in terms of their relationship to the state and to the global economy. One dimension of this shared environment is the juxtaposition, if not superposition, of indigenous legally or ancestrally occupied lands and natural protected areas. The Vilcabamba-Amboró corridor, running from Peru to Bolivia, for example, seeks to create a contiguous and ecologically coherent, ‘meta’ natural protected area. This overlap creates enormous possibilities in terms of developing strategic alliances between indigenous peoples and environmental managers, perhaps even leading indigenous co-management of protected areas. However, the relationship is not without its challenges. Participatory processes which document and re-vitalise indigenous people’s links to place have an important role to play in facilitating the relationship with the state and external agents in the context of conservation and natural protected area management.
Indigenous cultural landscapes and oil and gas exploration: A number of geopolitical, economic and technological factors are generating a new boom in oil and gas exploration and extraction in the Andean piedmont and western Amazonia, which together with a new wave of road-building and mega-development projects (for example, the trans-oceanic highway) is creating a new set of challenges for indigenous groups living in these areas. Mobilising people around a shared sense of self and place and using cutting-edge communications technology to share knowledge and experience between different indigenous groups can all help develop a more effective response and a more equitable playing field at the time of negotiating agreements with governments and oil and gas companies.

Activities

  1. Ese Eja in Peru and Bolivia are sharing knowledge and experiences relating to their history of use and occupation of their ancestral lands on the Madidi, Tambopata and, especially, Heath rivers. Tools used have included inter-community meetings, travel by delegates between communities, and the use of community-prepared maps and participatory video. Ese Eja in Bolivia and Peru are being trained in basic filming and video editing. Through this process new forms of agency and organisation are being generated and consolidated, an example being the recently formed Organización Indígena del Pueblo Ese Ejja (Bolivia).
  2. The Ese Eja in Bolivia are currently negotiating for their inclusion in an indigenous land claim on the Bolivian side of the Heath river, within an ancestrally occupied and currently utilised area. The creation of a legally demarcated territory on the Bolivian side of the Heath river- across the border from two Peruvian titled Ese Eja communities- would open the door for the gradual re-unification of families that were subject to twentieth century migrations and displacement.
  3. These activities are themselves linked to a broader network through the project

‘Anthropological approaches to advocacy and traditional rights: developing local-global feedback for policy advocacy on biocultural diversity’.

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