In Our Own Voices
Indigenous knowledge should inform policy formulation at all levels, but especially at those elite levels of decision-making where global planning grids are imposed on the ground truths of local people in their customary settings. The struggle for basic rights goes on in many Indigenous communities, and with it the equally steep test – with all it implies for decisiveness, cooperative planning, and capacity building – of leveraging assets into economic development.
But each such struggle would be easier with inclusive policies in place. Indigenous Peoples must make a place for these policies. We cannot wait for policymakers to remember us, any more than our ancestors could wait for fair-skinned heroes to rescue them. We must not settle for letting our hopes, practices and viewpoints become absorbed into communications processes and fundraising strategies, much less outright marginalized. We cannot afford to let the policy world at large go on embracing the development fundamentalism of the few, who spread their carnage on all sides in the competition for resources, which is also a war on Indigenous Peoples and their habitats. We must speak for ourselves, in our own voices.
The first of our First Peoples Worldwide grantees to be heard from on this new forum of our website is Dennis Martinez, Co-Chair of the Indigenous Peoples Restoration Network. In advocating for Indigenous fire management regimes in those quintessentially "Western" settings, national parks and protected areas, IPRN works at the juncture of policy formulation and the environment. After years of steady participation in scientific conferences, IPRN’s success has been slow but measurable. Traditional Ecological Knowledge of fire management would have been unthinkable, even 10 years ago, in study courses and park management schemes that are now in place in Canada and the United States.
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First Peoples Worldwide
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