ABOUT
This panel discussion is offered as part of the Contestations in Land and Agriculture conference held at Christ Church College in Oxford from 16 – 18 May. To learn more about the conference and to register to attend the full conference in person, please see the conference website: landcontestations-conference.com
SYNOPSIS
Indigenous communities are today estimated to manage about a quarter of the world’s land surface. In doing so, they bring over their millennia-long tradition of a unique multidimensional bond with nature, with humanity threaded through as an integral part, rather than something separate. ‘We belong to the land, the land does not belong to us’ is an often-heard expression among indigenous communities worldwide. However, today they face intense pressures and persecution in relation to their land tenure rights. In the last decades, thousands of indigenous land and environmental defenders have either been killed or threatened, criminalised, attacked or displaced by powerful industries seeking to maximise the exploitation of natural resources. As more of these communities face increasing struggles to defend their lands and their ways of life tied to them, it is crucial to examine what these communities’ wealth of knowledge and wisdom bring. Inspired by case studies from Brazil and India, hotspots of land conflicts in the world, this panel will examine what role indigenous cosmologies, with their holistic, religious, values-based spiritual understandings of nature can play in the emergence, development and potential resolutions of land conflicts. What has this meant for the way they interact with powerful social actors with vested interests in their lands such as businesses, financiers and governments? What can we learn from the role faith-based actors, and other social actors, play in land contestations, in resolving and reconciling these processes? In this panel, we will hear from the experiences of three social actors who have been involved in mediating land conflicts: the Pan Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM), the Jesuit religious order and Global Witness.
