Paper short abstract:

Baka hunter-gatherers of southeastern Cameroon number around 30,000 but are largely excluded from the management of their forest due in part to ontological and epistemological mismatches between conservationists and the Baka; magic, ritual, and forest spirits dominate Baka-forest relations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper details the spiritual connections that Baka hunter-gatherers of Cameroon hold with their forest and how these compare to the human-forest relations of other forest inhabitants: cultivators, NGOs, logging industries, academics, and ministry officials. Through long-term ethnographic fieldwork and interviews a divergence has become clear between the Baka and other actors; the latter tend to value the forest for it's services and intrinsic and economic properties, whereas the Baka regard themselves as embedded into the fabric of the forest through intangible spiritual and relational continuations. The most powerful of these is materialised through forest spirits and their ritual associations which are a literal manifestation of nature as culture and bind initiates into a relationship with the forest that transcends extrinsic and intrinsic values. However, in the complex context of southeastern Cameroon, a frontier of 'wilderness' ideology and aggressive resource extraction, such relationships with the forest can serve as both a saviour and a threat. Employing a decolonising approach centred on self-determination and participatory action research, efforts to actively identify and revitalise Baka spiritual and relational heritage are underway as one of the only genuine pathways to sustain the biological and cultural diversity of the forest.