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Contribution short abstract:

How has colonial understanding of the natural world changed during post-colonial times? How have conservation measures affected populations Indigenous to colonized landscapes?

Contribution long abstract:

Conservation efforts on colonized lands arose through the same doctrines of conquest and control as did

colonization albeit with seemingly different worldviews at play. Conservation efforts- from preserved areas

to land allotments to resource management- have had varied impacts on the respective indigenous

populations. Over the last century of decolonization, this has only recently begun to change, in faltering

steps across the Global South. Throughout the short 20th century, there were many faltering steps in

decolonial environmentalism. Only since the 1990s has local ecological sovereignty made significant

strides.

The Paiute of the Yosemite Valley, the Adivasi of Western Bengal, the indigenous peoples of the Sahel,

and the Hill Tribes of interior Thailand are all examples of people who held their own methods of

environmental stewardship that long preceded foreign colonialism. The traditional sciences of these

people groups were slandered, muted or ignored during colonial and post-colonial times in the name of

progress. Each group in their turn has campaigned for their rights as indigenous people, and each has

had to reckon with national and international orders in their struggle for sovereignty. These case studies

demonstrate both the growing pains and the emerging success stories of decolonized peoples and

decolonizing environments as they work with changing ideas in colonial environmental stewardship.

Recently, ethnobotany and ethnobiology have begun to validate indigenous ways of knowing, and the last

two decades have yielded positive results in scientific decolonization, not just political decolonization of

these regions and their inhabitants