TIGed

Switch headers Switch to TIGweb.org

Are you an TIG Member?
Click here to switch to TIGweb.org

HomeHomeExpress YourselfPanoramaNational Parks and Environmental Racism
Panorama
a TakingITGlobal online publication
Search



(Advanced Search)

Panorama Home
Issue Archive
Current Issue
Next Issue
Featured Writer
TIG Magazine
Writings
Opinion
Interview
Short Story
Poetry
Experiences
My Content
Edit
Submit
Guidelines
National Parks and Environmental Racism Printable Version PRINTABLE VERSION
by (no name), Jul 27, 2007
Environment , Human Rights , Peace & Conflict   Opinions

  

National Parks and Environmental Racism
And now, for our tour: to start off our tour of the Global Apartheid of National Parks and Recreation, we will bring you to our first stop, Brazil. Within the State of Acre, the Naua Tribe, thought to be disappeared, raised it's voice in one last effort of despair. "They said they should not have to leave their land, since they had always been there. They said they were Naua," Antonio Pereira Neto spoke from the headquarters of the National Indian Foundation. "We thought there were no more Naua," he said. "Our job now is finding them land... No humans are allowed in the park, just the forest and the animals."

While the Naua were once the most populous ethnic group in the Acre region, the last recorded document of their existence was in 1906, in a newspaper article with the headline "Last Naua woman marries." Currently, theatres, streets and even a popular soft drink bear the tribal name. Interestingly enough, even though Brazil has shifted their policy in indigenous rights to a somewhat more progressive stance, they are still intent on moving the Naua tribe from their traditional lands, in the name of their protection. The reason that the tribe emerged out of hiding was to prevent their lands from being turned into a national park. The existing tribespeople are now largely rubber-tappers, and hunters, and their existing economies are prohibited on the land that they have traditionally inhabited. Often, the establishment of a National Park comes with the subtext of preserving the "natural" while at the same time prohibiting its use by the people for economic benefit. Without the means to make a living on their traditional bioregion, the Naua people are left in a situation where they have to choose between survival and honoring their ancestors' territory.

The next stop on our tour is the traditional Maasai territory along the border of Kenya and Tanzania. Africa is popularly seen by conservationists as home to some of the last wild places left to be preserved. 1950s conservationist Bernhard Grzimek characterized Africa as “the ultimate and last paradise of all our yearnings” and commented that its “national parks must remain primordial wildernesses to be effective. No men, not even native ones, should live inside its borders.” For the Maasai people this meant that their traditional grazing and hunting lands were deemed protected zones, in other words, free of natives.

Since the beginning of European colonization, the Maasai have been relocated and had their environments "managed" by the authorities. At first their hunting ground was expropriated for European planters and by the 1940s the Maasais’ main form of economic production shifted to grazing cattle. Eventually the parks were set apart for Safari hunting adventures for the Europeans, and even grazing on parkland was restricted. As wildlife tourism increased in the 60's, the National Parks became more extreme in their rules on "non-humans". Of course there were plenty of humans visiting and hunting in the park, but local "poaching" was prohibited. When the 90's rolled around the Maasai were living more modern lives, and the argument that they were not a part of the natural bioregion seemed more potent in conservation circles. The WWF even provided weapons to the local government to enforce conservation, which in the end were really used for means of ethnic violence.

Over one hundred thousand Maasai have left their traditional homelands as a result of the restrictions that conservationists have enforced (Dowie). At the 2004 World Conservation Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, Maasai leader, Martin Saing'o, declared, "We are enemies of conservation." That same year the International Forum on Indigenous Mapping passed a declaration signed by all two hundred delegates stating that, "activities of conservation organizations now represent the single biggest threat to the integrity of indigenous lands." It is obvious in the case of the Maasai that conservationists have completely changed the locals’ traditional lifestyles by re-zoning land in order to prevent economic activity. While many Maasai do live within the park, their activities are still extremely restricted.

Journalist Mark Dowie states that, "It’s no secret that millions of native peoples around the world have been pushed off their land to make room for big oil, big metal, big timber and big agriculture. But few people realize that the same thing has happened for a much nobler cause: land and wildlife conservation. Today the list of culture-wrecking institutions put forth by tribal leaders on almost every continent includes not only Shell, Texaco, Freeport and Bechtel, but also more surprising names like Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)."

Currently, in Canada, we have our own battles going on. We are now at the last stop of our tour, our home and "native" land. For First Nation peoples, this line of our national anthem may seem ironic, as, to this day, they continue to face attacks through the expropriation of and entrenchment on their traditional territory. Crown land, land that, according to the Canadian State, belongs to the Queen, is lent out to private forestry corporations as they see fit. This land does not belong to the Canadian Government, and much of it remains treaty free.







Tags

You must be logged in to add tags.

Writer Profile
(no name)


This user has not written anything in his panorama profile yet.
Comments


صورة جميلة
Adham Tobail | Oct 29th, 2007
اعجبتنى صديقتى الكاتبة الصورة الجميلة التى وضعيتها هنا شكرا لك واتمنى لك النجاح adham_333@hotmail.com ادهم طبيل فلسطين



"People of the Earth"
Constanza Schmit | Nov 3rd, 2007
Nice Article.. I will continue the tour to the south... In Argentina, there are some National Parks, such as Lanin, that were created in the frame of a Nationalist governement, in order to protect nature resources, still when a culture (the Mapuche community) was being rooting out of the region to create that "Protected Area".. The question is.. Protected from whom? Protected from the aborigin's bad use of the earth?.. ... Just think this: "Mapu - Che" means "People of the Erath".. There are no people more nature-respectuful than aborigins..



R Kahendi | May 17th, 2008
Excellent article!

You must be a TakingITGlobal member to post a comment. Sign up for free or login.