Sense of Place and Indigenous Peoples Conservation A brief Political Ecology of the Seed and Place.

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Sense of Place and Indigenous Peoples
ConservationA brief Political Ecology of the
Seed and Place.From Modernization to
Globalization from above and from below. Towards
the strengthening re-indigenization of local
epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmovisions

Tirso Gonzales. UC-Berkeley 04/30/04
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Abstract

• For the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) of the
  Americas (North, Meso, and South), the constant
  and mostly violent process of erasure of their
  communal places is associated, from its inception
  to date, with colonization. In particular, with
  coloniality of power, and its latest stage,
  globalization. Colonization has denied the
  existence of the other. This premise paved the
  way to the appropriation of indigenous lands and
  territories in the Americas.
• IPs sense of place has left their profound
  historical imprint in the existing Archeological
  Monuments spread all over the Americas. And it is
  in IPs places where we currently witness an
  enriching and intimate interface b/w cultural and
  biological diversity.
• To highlight and evoke the connection of Sense of
  Place and IPs Conservation I use the term
  Cultures of the Seed as a conceptual,
  methodological and heuristic tool (1) to see
  within specific historical settings, the
  underlying structures, meanings and implications
  for both western and indigenous approaches to
  conservation of plant genetic resources, and (2)
  to highlight the fact that genetic resources are
  neither a simple commodity (something we can buy
  at a store) nor something that evolves in a
  cultural and biological vacuum.
• the symbiotic and intimate rooting and nurturing
  relationship of body-mind-spirit with place and
  the living beings within.

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Sense of Place and Indigenous Peoples
Conservation

• The indigenous movement of Latin America claims
  that the western development model has been (and
  still is) predator of the worlds human and
  cultural resources. (IADB, Deruyttere 2003)
• Ecology, economic production, and reproduction
  all interact in any given society. The global
  ecological crisis is a result of contradictions
  between systems of economic production and
  ecology and between reproduction and production.
  First, Second, and Third World political
  economies interact in ways that exacerbate many
  of the problems inherent in individual countries.
  The political economy of the First World is
  legitimated by a mechanistic world view that has
  been dominant since the seventeenth century and
  an egocentric ethic that assumes that what is
  best for the individual is best for society as a
  whole(Merchant 1992 38-39)
• For the past three hundred years, western
  mechanistic science and capitalism have viewed
  the earth as dead and inert, manipulable from
  outside, and exploitable for profits. The death
  of nature legitimized its domination. Colonial
  extractions of resources combined with industrial
  pollution and depletion have today pushed the
  whole earth to the brink of ecological
  destruction. (Merchant 1992 41-42)

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• In Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, a Quechua Indian
  told me that everything one does in life involves
  looking forward while going backward
  simultaneously. This I didnt understand. I said,
  What do you mean, going backward? And he
  said,Well, its very simple. For us, for the
  Quechua, the past is in front of us. Its in
  front of us because we know the past and we can
  look at it. And the future is behind because we
  dont know what it brings so we move into the
  future, but we move backwards. The expression is
  ñawpaman puni. This idea of moving into the
  future while looking clearly into the past is
  something that is lacking in all these
  considerations about development and alternatives
  to development, and about what is going to happen
  and from where we can create an alternative to
  development.
• This lack of historical depth is what is going
  to prevent us from thinking of real alternatives
  to development.
• (David Tuchsneider 199263-64)

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Who wins and who loses with annexation/modernizati
on?
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Who wins and who loses with annexation/modernizati
on?
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Becoming native to this place

• US Population Today
• Total gt286,000,000
• Native American 4,119,301 (1.5)
• The dominance of Conventional Agriculture in the
  US
• Today, less than 20,000 Indian families in the
  U.S continue farming, and probably only a small
  percentage of these grow the heirloom crops of
  their forefathers (Nabham 198515)

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Sense of Place and Indigenous Peoples
Conservation

• Introduction
• Putting Place, Indigenous Peoples and
  Conservation in Context
• Basic Assumptions
• Key Concepts
• The Cultures of the Seed
• -The Culture of the Native Seed and conservation
  from below
• -The Culture of the Hybrid Seed and conservation
  from above
• Conclusion
• Key concepts Modernization, Coloniality of
  Power, Locality, Cultures of the Seed,
  Globalization, Place, Conservation

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The Approach The Political Ecology of IPs places

• Social and environmental/ ecological issues do
  not happen in a vacuum. Market and non-market
  forces (socio-economic structures, political
  structures, ideological/symbolic and cultural
  structures) historically shape and have an impact
  upon IPs and their places.
• The application of political ecology to the study
  IPs places, lands, cultures and biological
  diversity in contemporary Latin America can
  contribute to unveil the imprints of
  colonialitys violence (1500-2004).
  Colonialitys brutal contemporary profile is
  characterized by the erosion, degradation,
  exploitation, abuse, and disposession of IPs
  integrity and their environments.

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4 Main Positions/Perspectives
1.Putting Place, IPs Conservation.
1.Globalocentric Resource Management (In-situ,
Ex-situ National biodiv. Planning) IPRs
(appropriate mechanism for the compensation
economic use of biodiv.) Promotes
bioprospecting 2.Sovereignty TW governments
challenge dominant globalocentric perspective,
without questioning it in a fundamental way, seek
to renegotiate the terms of biodiv. treaties
strategies 3.Progressive NGOs Soc. Movs. See
globalocentric perspective as a form of
bioimperialism, instead promote biodemocracy.
Reinterpret threats to Biodiv (Roots of Biodiv.
Crisis habitat destruction by megadevelopment
projects, monocultures of the mind, monocrop
agriculture promoted by capital reductionist
science, the consumption habits of the
North) 4.Social Movs. Biodiv. Is part of
political strategy for the defense of territory,
culture, identity. It has many points in common
with 3. However, their view, in particular
Indigenous Peoples view is distinct conceptually
politically. The Ethnic Question
Stable Dominant Transnational Network
International Institutions, NGOs, Botanical
Gardens, Agribusiness, Pharmaceutical Corp.,
scientific experts
Conservation from Above
Biodiv. can be thought of as fostering a
transnational network that encompasses diverse
sites in terms of actors, practices, cultures,
and stakes. Each actors identity affects, is
affected by the network
Movement of resources, knowledge, technology,
objects, materials
Biodiversity
Problem
Genetic Erosion
Conservation from Below
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Contextualizing IPs Place

• IPs places and their five elements of life
  (water, air, land, fire and genetic resources),
  continue being under siege. The Eurocentric
  monoethnic colonial regime, and later the mestizo
  state, and the recent globalizing forces
  (political, economic, science based-technologies)
  have historically excluded if not annihilated
  IPs. Current and past Latin American democracies
  have revealed their structural limitations to
  include IPs in their own cultural and political
  terms.
• In words of Quijano, An effective solution to
  the indigenous problem implies and cannot avoid
  subverting and disintegrating the pattern of
  power as a whole. And, given the relation of the
  social and political forces in the period, the
  real and definitive solution to the problem was
  not consequently viable, not even partially. For
  that reason, with the indigenous problem was
  constituted as the specific historical knot, not
  disentangled to date, which hampers the
  historical movement of Latin America the
  dis-encounter between nation, identity and
  democracy. (Quijano 20048-9)

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Globalization and Place

• In discourses of globalization,
• the global is often equated with space, capital,
  history and agency,
• and the local with place, labor, and tradition
  (Escobar 2001)
• Place has dropped out of sight in the
  globalization craze of recent years, and this
  erasure of place has profound consequences for
  our understanding of culture, knowledge, nature,
  and economy (Escobar 2001)
• It is perhaps time to reverse some asymmetry by
  focusing anewon the continued vitality of place
  and place-making for culture, nature, and
  economy. Not only are scholars confronted with
  social movements that commonly maintain a strong
  reference to place and territory, but are faced
  with the growing realization that any alternative
  course of action must take into account
  place-based models of nature, culture, and
  politics. The reassertion of place thus appears
  as an important arena for rethinking and
  reworking Eurocentric forms of analysis. (Escobar
  2001141)

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The inextricable link IPs, Land, Place, and
Population in South America

• Indigenous Population Ethnolinguistic Groups
  in South America in Different Periods
• Period Indigenous Pop. Ethnolinguistic
• 
  Groups
• In 1492 24,300,000(1) 1,200
• Demographic collapse 2 million Peru
• In 1940 9,228,735(2) 600
• In 1988 10,129,300(3) 422
• In 1996 10,028,980(4) 422
• Denevan 1992370. (2)Steward 1949665. (3)
  Lizarralde 199310. (4) Based on Lizarralde 1993
  Ricardo 1996.
• Source Adapted from Lizarralde 2001269

• Key Question
• What are the implications of the demographic
  collapse in regards to IPs places, lands,
  agri-cultures,individual collective memory,
  cultures, local/regional historys and stories,
  languages, sense of place, innovations, local
  epistemologies/ontologies/ cosmovisions and
  spiritual life?
• In other words What are the implications of the
  demographic collapse for IPs cultural and
  biological diversity?

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2.Basic assumptions

• Place and IPs conservation, like cultural and
  biological diversity, are intimately related
• Long lasting conservation involves both
  IPscultures and the resolution of the Ethnic
  Question
• Local and IPs communities practice conservation
  from below (CFB). This unique type of
  conservation is embedded within the Culture of
  the Native Seed (CNS)
• Corporations, States, major international
  national agricultural research related
  institutions practice conservation from above
  (CFA). This type of reductionist dominant
  science-based conservation is embedded within the
  Culture of the Hybrid Seed (CHS)
• CFA and CFB are two major and fundamentally
  different strategies that serve two fundamentally
  different goals.
• Underlying the clash and dis-encounter between
  CFA and CFB there are two fundamentally different
  ways of knowing (epistemologies), being
  (ontologies) and being related to the world
  (worldviews/cosmovisions)
• Modernization (Colonial and Post-colonial) has
  been, and still is, a major violent, dislocating,
  dis-placing, erosive force for local and IPs
  lives, cultures, native languages, communities,
  lands, territories, resources (genetic, natural,
  intellectual)

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2.Basic assumptions

• The above recognition should highlight the
  non-ending clash between the Euro-american
  centered dominant societies and local and IPs
  subaltern, dominated societies.
• Place, Land, Biodiversity, Territory,
  Environment, Nature and related concepts have
  specific meanings according to such worldviews
• The eurocentric colonizers episteme, ontology,
  and worldview is produced and reproduced by a
  variety of networks within the First, Second,
  Third, and Fourth World
• No single discipline in Social/Biological
  Sciences is able to give an account of IPs
  (local, regional) present and past agri-cultural
  histories

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3.Key Concepts

• Coloniality of Power. What is termed
  globalization is the culmination of a process
  that began with the constitution of America and
  colonial/modern Eurocentered capitalism as a new
  global power. One of the fundamental axes of this
  model of power is the social classification of
  the worlds population around the idea of race, a
  mental construction that expresses the basic
  experience of colonial domination and pervades
  the more important dimensions of global power,
  including its specific rationality Eurocentrism.
  The racial axis has a colonial origin and
  character, but it has proven to be more durable
  and stable than the colonialism in whose matrix
  it was established. Therefore, the model of power
  that is globally hegemonic today presupposes an
  element of coloniality. (Quijano 2000533)
• Ethnic Question. It comprises the struggles of
  the IPs all over the world for self-determination
  and for autonomy, control over their lands,
  territories and resources--natural and
  intellectual. (Stavenhagen 1990)
• Transmodernity. Refers to the self-affirmation
  and critical reactivation of epistemologies that
  have been occluded by Western modernity.
  Transmodern dialogues is meant here as the
  activity of trying to think beyond the horizon of
  modernity/coloniality. It refers to the epistemic
  task of decolonization, which is central for any
  reflection on liberation. (Dussel 2004)

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3.Indigenous Peoples, Place, Placelessness

• Indigenous Peoples
• The IPs of L.A. today are the descendants of
  those who inhabited the Latin American continent
  before the European colonizer arrived in the
  lands of the New World. Wider and comprehensive
  similar definitions ILO Convention 169, the
  American Declaration on the Rights of IPs
  project, the United Nations Universal Declaration
  on the Rights of IPs project
• Place
• The fact remains that place continues to be
  important in the lives of many people, perhaps
  most, if we understand by place the experience of
  a particular location with some measure of
  groundedness (however, unstable), sense of
  boundaries (however, permeable), and connection
  to everyday life, even if its identity is
  constructed, traversed by power, and never fixed.
  (Escobar 2001140)
• Placelessness
• the parallel phenomenon of placelessnessthat is,
  the casual eradication of distinctive places and
  the making of standardised landscapes that
  results from an insensitivity to the significance
  of place (Relph 1975)

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3.1 IPs, Place, Placelessness GlobalizationHybri
dization

• Total World Pop. 6.1 billion
• Total IPs Pop. b/w 300-700 million
• Total of Cultures in the World b/w 5000-7000
  (From a linguistic point of view)
• Total of IPs Cultures b/w 4000-5000 (b/w 80
  90 of the worlds cultural diversity)

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3.1 IPs, Place, Placelessness Globalization in
LA?

• IPs are all over L.A.
• Total population 40 million (according to
  conservative estimates)
• The majority of them live in the country side
• Economically they are the poorest among the poor
• Socially, Politically, Ethnically, Culturally
  excluded/marginalized
• There is not a fraction of the planet that has
  not been inhabited, modified or manipulated
  throughout history. Though they may seem
  pristine, much of the last regions with
  wilderness in remote or isolated places, are
  inhabited by human groups or have been for
  milenia. IPs live and have real or implicit
  rights over those territories which, in many
  cases, host outstandingly high levels of
  biodiversity.
• More than 400 ethnic groups, each one with its
  own distinct language, social organization, and
  cosmovision as well as diverse forms of economic
  organization and ways of production adapted to
  the ecosystems in which they inhabit.
• IPs cultural diversity is highly correlated with
  biodiversity/agro-biodiversity and gene-rich
  areas
• IPs live in 80 of protected areas, PAs, in
  Latin America. In Central America the number
  increases to 85
• In Latin America most of the IPs are also
  peasants.
• The L.A. nations considered as megadiverse
  countries are Brasil, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador,
  Peru, Venezuela
• South America is the richest continent in terms
  of biodiversity

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Near 60 of the recommended areas for protection
are inhabited in Central and Southern Mexico by
IPs
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4. The Cultures of the Native and Hybrid Seed
CNS / CHS

• I explore the cultures of the seed as a framework
  to understand that the seed does not have the
  same meaning, or play the same role, in Western
  contemporary dominant agriculture as in IPs
  agri-cultures.
• The CNS is embedded within IPs agri-cultures
• The CHS is embedded within western conventional
  agriculture

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4. Conservation from Above (CHS) Andean
Conservation from Below (Planetary Erasure
of place) (Sense of place
authentic place-making)
CGIAR
World Bank
FAO
Ford F., Rockefeller F.
IARCs
IPGRI
ISNAR
Private Schools, LGCs
NARs
Schools of Agriculture
Local/IPs agri-cultures
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4.2 Two Contemporary Templates of Conservation

• Colonizers Model (From Above)
• Western epistemology, ontology, cosmovision
• Grounded in the Judeo-Christian Cartesian
  cosmovision
• Man dissociates from nature (Subject-Object)
• Anthropocentric vision of the world Man is the
  center of the world
• Mechanistic worldview
• Life moves around mens material needs
• Egocentric ethic what is best for the individual
  is best for society as a whole
• Based on western mechanistic science and
  capitalism. Lab based
• Earth is dead and inert, manipulable from
  outside, and exploitable for profits
• Innovation protected by Individual Property
  Rights
• Linear vision of history (Past-Present-Future)
• Specialized/fragmented
• Homogenizing/standardizing

• Subaltern Place-based Model (From Below) (Andean
  IPs)
• IPs epistemologies, ontologies, cosmovisions
• Grounded in indigenous, pre-colonial cosmovision
• Human beings are part of life as a whole (We all
  are but one)
• Human beings are parte of a community of
  equivalents
• - 9.- Multiple interaction among the community of
  human beings, the community of nature, and the
  community the deities/gods. Their relation is
  among equivalents. All beings are incomplete
  therefore the possibility of complementing each
  other and sharing. Where knowledge is hold
  temporarily, and it circulates through the
  community of human beings. In this view
  everything is alive
• 10.Innovation takes place within the interaction
  of the 3 major communities. Emerges within a
  tradition
• 11.Circular vision of history
• 12.Holistic
• 13.Place-Diversity oriented

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Contemporary Conservation Strategies

• International and National Conservation from
  Above
• Ex situ has been and is being done/supported
  by a network of well funded and technologically
  endowed international and national agricultural
  research related institutions (IARCs, ISNAR,
  CGIAR, FAO)
• In situ is a complementary strategy (e.g.
  farmer curator system, protected areas) aiming to
  tackle the failure of ex situ strategies to
  capture evolutionary processes
• Problem Both are too narrow, abstract or naive
  when related to IPs
• Mainly serve the needs of mainstream
  conservation, corporations--agribusiness,
  pharmaceutical industry.

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4. The dominance of the CHS and CFA Agricultural
Research Budget
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4. Conservation from above
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4. Conservation from above The Ethnic Question
untouched
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4. Conservation from above The dominance of the
Green Revolution I II. Deepening the
industrialization of agric.
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4. Conservation In situ and Ex situ

• The term conservation, like Western science,
  is not a universal one. Thus there is not just
  one view and strategy of conservation.
• Western science. Conservation Biology has a
  rigorous and circumscribed definition, which
  contrasts in various critical respects with that
  of IPs.
• IPs are assessing/deconstructing the Western
  scientific concept of conservation. After which
  in participatory fashion they have substantiated
  such concept based on their own cultural view.
• The terms In situ and Ex situ conservation
  are part of specific recent contemporary policies
  and disciplines (agro-ecology, conservation
  biology, botany). Those western disciplines and
  their respective theories share and are grounded
  in similar theories of the self (ontology)
  theories of knowledge (epistemology), and
  theories of the universe (worldview)
• In situ and Ex situ conservation are
  contemporary strategies which the Western
  dominant institutions propose to counteract
  genetic erosion

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4. Contemporary Conservation Strategies

• Conservation from Below
• Dealing with agro-biodiversity and IPs
  requires an integral view. This view implies
  the consideration of the indigenous cultural and
  environmental/ ecological context in which
  agrobiodiversity is produced, reproduced and
  enriched.
• Real, coherent and long lasting conservation
  from below implies an integral approach to IPs
  development indigenous development,
  development with identity or autonomous
  indigenous development.

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• http//www.ifg.org/
• Globalization
• GMO Map

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4. Colonization from above/ Digesting
Colonization from below Challenges in the
21st century

• 1940- Present
• Industrial Agriculture
• BIOPIRACY
• CATTL
• DAM
• TRANSMIGRATION
• FISHERIES
• WATER
• DRUG INTERDICTION
• LOSS OF LAND
• MINING
• NUCLEAR
• OIL
• ROADS
• SHIPPING
• LOGGING
• TOURISM
• MILITARIZATION
• POLLUTION

• Past (20th Century-1940)
• Encomienda
• Colonial Hacienda
• Republican Hacienda
• Agrarian Reforms

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Conclusion
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Conclusions

• Sense of place and IPs conservation continue
  being threatened. In addition to the well known
  threats of modernization (Development, extractive
  activities) today IPs face the threat of
  globalization (economic and technological)
• In the context of a transition to post-fossil
  fuel societies, should the current Globalocentric
  planetary structure of Conservation and AREE
  remain?. That is, should the CHS remain in place
  with some minor changes in its mandates.
• In other words
• Would it be possible a change in dominant
  paradigms (of Agricultural Research,
  Conservation) without shifting from the
  hegemonic reductionist scientific paradigm?
• What could be the sociopolitical conditions for
  a shift in paradigm from the CHS to a more
  pluralistic, holistic, interethnic, sustainable
  paradigm?
• What needs to be done for a fundamental
  transmodernizing/ intercultural epistemic
  dialogue? Is it enough changes at the structural
  institutional level? What about the personal
  body-mind-spirit level?
• Can local/IPs conservation survive within the
  current state of affairs (International,
  Regional, National)
• The process of hybridization (urban and rural,
  food systems) has reached global proportions.
  Today in Latin America we are witnessing pockets
  of what might be called the Cultures of the
  Native Seed, cultural affirmation, and cultural
  resistance.
• The way I see it implies a process of
  decolonization that involves, land, territory,

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