CONS 410 - Indigenous Voices in Conservation

Credits: (3)
Prerequisite(s): CONS 201 or ENSP 101 or BIOL 204
College Curriculum: COLL 350
The field of conservation emerged along with settler-colonialism at the end of the 19th century, and it was linked to white settler strategies of land appropriation and resource control. While nature, game, and wildlife became protected for settler interests (game, logging, resource extraction), indigenous peoples living in protected areas became displaced, criminalized as poachers, and persecuted. Moreover, settlers and state officers often used nature and conservation ideas to justify the displacement, genocide, and exploitation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Since then, the field of conservation has been dominated by White, men, and western voices.

Today, Indigenous Peoples entangle their Land-Back movement with the idea of restoring Land to the tribes and conserving their forms of stewardship, environmental practices, and cultural relations. Simultaneously, conservation actors have noticed that Indigenous peoples protect 80% of global biodiversity despite comprising less than 5%.

In this context, conservation actors are increasingly seeking ways to collaborate with indigenous communities and learn from their social and environmental worldviews. At the same time, Native Tribes are increasingly leading and funding environmental projects while linking the survival and conservation of nature and Land to their resistance and survivance.

This course examines how indigenous scholars and activists conceptualize, historicize, and investigate conservation, human-nature relations, and forms of stewardship and earth-caring. While doing so, indigenous voices in conservation have connected nature with histories of race, settler colonialism, eurocentrism, marginalization and poverty, gender, and family structures.
Cross-listed with: ANTH 326