Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research – serie

This Element supports Gwich'in, Iñupiat, and all Alaska Natives' collective continuance and reparative justice from the perspective of a settler in the traditional territories of lower Tanana Dene Peoples. It stands with Alaska Natives' recovering and safe-keeping: kinships obstructed by settler-colonialism; ontologies and languages inseparable from land-relations and incommensurable with English-language perspectives; and epistemologies not beholden to any colonialist standard. These rights and responsibilities clash with Leopoldian conservation narratives still shaping mind-sets and institutions that eliminate Indigenous Peoples by telling bad history and by presuming entitlements to lands and norm-making authority. It models an interlocking method and methodology - surfacing white supremacist settler-colonialist assumptions and structures of Leopoldian conservation narratives - that may be adapted to critique other problematic legacies. It offers a pra xis of anti-colonialist, anti-racist, liberatory environmental-narrative critical-assessment centering Indigenous experts and values, including consent, diplomacy, and intergenerational respect needed for stable coalitions-making for climate and environmental justice.

This Element addresses a range of pressing challenges and crises by introducing readers to the Maya struggle for land and self-determination in Belize, a former British colony situated in the Caribbean and Central America. In addition to foregrounding environmental relations, the text provides deeper understandings of Qʼeqchiʼ and Mopan Maya people's dynamic conceptions and collective defence of community and territory. To do so, the authors centre the voices, worldviews, and experiences of Maya leaders, youth, and organisers who are engaged in frontline resistance and mobilisations against institutionalised racism and contemporary forms of dispossession. Broadly, the content offers an example of how Indigenous communities are reckoning with the legacies of empire whilst confronting the structural violence and threats to land and life posed by the driving forces of capital accumulation, neoliberal development, and coloniality of the state. Ultimately, this Element illustrates the realities, repercussions, and transformative potential of grassroots movement-building 'from below.' This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

This Element addresses a range of pressing challenges and crises by introducing readers to the Maya struggle for land and self-determination in Belize, a former British colony situated in the Caribbean and Central America. In addition to foregrounding environmental relations, the text provides deeper understandings of Qʼeqchiʼ and Mopan Maya people's dynamic conceptions and collective defence of community and territory. To do so, the authors centre the voices, worldviews, and experiences of Maya leaders, youth, and organisers who are engaged in frontline resistance and mobilisations against institutionalised racism and contemporary forms of dispossession. Broadly, the content offers an example of how Indigenous communities are reckoning with the legacies of empire whilst confronting the structural violence and threats to land and life posed by the driving forces of capital accumulation, neoliberal development, and coloniality of the state. Ultimately, this Element illustrates the realities, repercussions, and transformative potential of grassroots movement-building 'from below.' This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

This Element supports Gwich'in, Iñupiat, and all Alaska Natives' collective continuance and reparative justice from the perspective of a settler in the traditional territories of lower Tanana Dene Peoples. It stands with Alaska Natives' recovering and safe-keeping: kinships obstructed by settler-colonialism; ontologies and languages inseparable from land-relations and incommensurable with English-language perspectives; and epistemologies not beholden to any colonialist standard. These rights and responsibilities clash with Leopoldian conservation narratives still shaping mind-sets and institutions that eliminate Indigenous Peoples by telling bad history and by presuming entitlements to lands and norm-making authority. It models an interlocking method and methodology - surfacing white supremacist settler-colonialist assumptions and structures of Leopoldian conservation narratives - that may be adapted to critique other problematic legacies. It offers a pra xis of anti-colonialist, anti-racist, liberatory environmental-narrative critical-assessment centering Indigenous experts and values, including consent, diplomacy, and intergenerational respect needed for stable coalitions-making for climate and environmental justice.

This Element presents a case study of the authors' partnership with the Pintada community in their excavation of a pre-Columbian site known as 'Huaca Pintada', a pyramidal mound located in the Lambayeque region on the north coast of Peru. The site, which gained recognition after the fortuitous discovery by looters in 1916 of an exceptional polychrome mural, was somehow 'forgotten' by the scientific community after irreversible damage. However, this was not the case for the local inhabitants, families like the Inoñán or the Chapoñán descendants of ancient muchic traditions, who founded a village named after their illustrious elder. The authors will describe how local actors like shamans or workers were indispensable in finding solutions that led not only to the rediscovery of the treasures of the Huaca Pintada but also to the reconnection of the community with its past.

This Element presents a case study of the authors' partnership with the Pintada community in their excavation of a pre-Columbian site known as 'Huaca Pintada', a pyramidal mound located in the Lambayeque region on the north coast of Peru. The site, which gained recognition after the fortuitous discovery by looters in 1916 of an exceptional polychrome mural, was somehow 'forgotten' by the scientific community after irreversible damage. However, this was not the case for the local inhabitants, families like the Inoñán or the Chapoñán descendants of ancient muchic traditions, who founded a village named after their illustrious elder. The authors will describe how local actors like shamans or workers were indispensable in finding solutions that led not only to the rediscovery of the treasures of the Huaca Pintada but also to the reconnection of the community with its past.

Indigenous and tribal communities often make claims to territory citing their longstanding ties to the land. Since 1989, they increasingly reference ILO Convention No. 169, the only legally binding international agreement on Indigenous and tribal peoples rights. This Element proposes a three-pronged analytical framework to assess the promise and limits of indigenous rights to land as influenced by international law. The framework calls for the place-specific investigation of the interrelations between: (1) indigenous identity politics, (2) citizenship regimes, and (3) land tenure regimes. Drawing on the case of Mexico, it argues that the ILO Convention has generally been a weak tool for securing rights to ancestral land and for effectively challenging the expansion of extractivism. Still, it has had numerous other significant socio-political implications, such as shaping discourses of resistance and incentivizing the use of prior consultation mechanisms in the context of territorial disputes.

Indigenous and tribal communities often make claims to territory citing their longstanding ties to the land. Since 1989, they increasingly reference ILO Convention No. 169, the only legally binding international agreement on Indigenous and tribal peoples rights. This Element proposes a three-pronged analytical framework to assess the promise and limits of indigenous rights to land as influenced by international law. The framework calls for the place-specific investigation of the interrelations between: (1) indigenous identity politics, (2) citizenship regimes, and (3) land tenure regimes. Drawing on the case of Mexico, it argues that the ILO Convention has generally been a weak tool for securing rights to ancestral land and for effectively challenging the expansion of extractivism. Still, it has had numerous other significant socio-political implications, such as shaping discourses of resistance and incentivizing the use of prior consultation mechanisms in the context of territorial disputes.

Investigates the 2016 installation of Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language) toponym signs throughout the White Earth Reservation, reflecting an ongoing tradition of Ojibwe linguistic preservation rooted in environmental knowledge of waters. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with White Earth citizens, descendants, and personnel, this work addresses how these public markers make Anishinaabemowin visible in the world for Ojibwe youth and other White Earth Anishinaabeg, while marking the reservation as an Ojibwe space. These place name signs, along with youth language programs, intervene in the legacy of imposed language loss of Anishinaabemowin on the White Earth Reservation caused by mission, day, and boarding schools. Examines Ojibwe people's intergenerational efforts to document place names, responses to these signs, and how they relate to toponymic authority and spatial belonging. Focuses on historic and contemporary stories of Ojibwe geographic relationships grounded in fishing, hunting, ricing, and gathering within and surrounding Gaa-waabaabiganikaag. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.