Indigenous Peoples and the Collaborative Stewardship of Nature: Knowledge Binds and Institutional Conflicts

The conservation and protection of nature in the form of National Parks is not a straightforward matter as the authors Anne Ross, Kathleen Pickering Sherman, Jeffrey Snodgrass, Henry Delcore and Richard Sherman of the book Indigenous Peoples and the Collaborative Stewardship of Nature show. Indigenous peoples who live in or near National Parks face a multitude of problems, or ‘barriers’ to use the phrase of the authors, which dismisses or neglects an equal input into management schemes. Instead, building on four case studies in Australia, India, Thailand and USA, the authors highlight how the western scientific dogma and state institutions have taken over the decision-making in the National Parks. This collaborative book attempts to put Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and Indigenous Peoples to the front of the resource management debate as crucial stewards and experts in nature conservation and maintaining biodiversity. The road, as the reader discovers, is full of obstacles and the authors go to great length to illustrate these “epistemological and institutional or systemic barriers”.