Presentation short abstract

This paper discusses the Sela Parv, a tree-planting festival celebrated by Van Gujjar pastoralists in India. It is a tradition that carries cultural and ecological significance while also challenging colonial conservation models that have actively dispossessed them, serving as forms of resistance.

Presentation long abstract

Every year at the end of July, in the forests of Uttarakhand, Van Gujjar pastoralists gather to celebrate Sela Parv, their traditional tree planting festival. Men, women, children, and youth participate in planting native trees, singing ‘Bainths’, sharing food, and engaging in dialogue with allies, researchers, and state officials, including the forest department and the local judiciary. Rooted in their cultural practice of “Needhi Pratha,” which supports tree diversity along their migratory routes and ensures fodder for their buffaloes, the once-forgotten ten-day festival was revived by the Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sangathan, a youth-led collective of and for the community. The Sela Parv serves as an opportunity for the community to ensure the revival and continuity of traditional management practices, and to legitimise their presence and role in the forest to a conservation apparatus that has marginalized and criminalized them for decades. A caring yet assertive articulation of resistance to exclusionary, colonial models of conservation, the Sela Parv approaches conservation through a symbiotic lens, viewing the community as active participants rather than destructive interlopers. It speaks of a story of revival and resilience, of inclusion and celebration. Drawing on Indigenous political ecology and scholarship that speaks to anti-colonial ways of knowing and caring for the land, this paper argues that the Sela Parv is an embodiment of ‘radical resurgence’, and provides insight into what doing conservation otherwise could look like.