Indigenous Landscapes: A Study in Ethnocartography (review)

Indigenous Landscapes: A Study in Ethnocartography, by Mac Chapin & Bill Threlkeld (Center for the Support of Native Lands, 2001).

Indigenous peoples maintain a highly balanced and sensitive relationship with their lands and the natural resources these lands provide. The land provides food for subsistence, plants for both medicinal and ceremonial uses, and plays a significant role in indigenous peoples' cultural, religious and social systems. Indigenous peoples often serve as custodians and stewards of their lands and environments, and have been successful in caring for them through successive generations.

But the biological resources that sustain indigenous people around the world are constantly being threatened. Traditional food sources and medicinal plants are threatened by external pressures on land resources, over-harvesting, deforestation, and bioprospecting. Indigenous agricultural practices and genetic resources are rapidly disappearing through international development projects, moves towards large-scale production systems, and uncertain or disenfranchising land tenure policies. Industries such as pharmaceuticals are quickly beginning to use and exploit indigenous knowledge of natural resources as well as monopolize these resources themselves.

These issues have been given much attention in the international human rights arena and there are numerous declarations addressing the rights of indigenous peoples to use and protect their natural resources. There are two legally binding international human rights instruments that address these rights: the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Convention (169) Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (1989) and the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). ¹ ILO Convention 169 addresses the vital importance of the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples to, inter alia, the ownership and possession over the lands they traditionally occupy, their rights to natural resources, including the right to participate in the use, management and conservation of these resources, and not to be displaced or alienated from their lands. The Convention on Biological Diversity calls for states to establish mechanisms to ensure the effective participation of indigenous and local communities in decision-making and policy planning relating to their natural wealth, resources and knowledge.

Addressing these issues is a matter of considerable urgency. First, traditional biological resources remain extremely important for the welfare of many communities. According to the World Health Organization, up to eighty percent of the world population still relies on traditional medicinal plants for their primary health care. Much of the developing world's rural population, having been bypassed by the Green Revolution, still relies on local, small-scale food production systems and a sustainable diversity of plants and animals. In addition, the World Trade Organization, through its Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), seeks to strengthen the mechanisms for private ownership/appropriation of the same resources that the CBD seeks to protect. Many countries are signatories to both agreements, raising important concerns over ownership, access, and benefit-sharing of natural resources. By signing both TRIPS and the CBD, countries risk increased internal conflicts between the needs of local populations, regional, national, and international forces.

What then are the options for indigenous populations to take preemptive measures to protect their land and natural resources and to help ensure their involvement in decisions affecting these resources? One option is ethnocartography, or community or participatory mapping, where the land and natural resources used by indigenous communities is mapped from a local perspective. These maps often combine geographic and spatial information with folklore and history that helps to describe and delineate a universe of natural resource use and dependence.

Ethnocartography represents a transition in how information about land and natural resource use is communicated to outside the community itself. Traditionally, indigenous knowledge systems relating to their lands and natural resources has been maintained and transmitted orally through community elders, specialists (breeders, healers, etc.), or through other traditional information exchange mechanisms, and sometimes to only a select few people. This manner of maintaining and sharing essential information in undocumented form, or as "mental maps," exposes communities to an ever-growing risk of unfair or unjust competition for natural...