Indigenous peoples and the collaborative stewardship of nature : knowledge binds and institutional conflicts /

Indigenous peoples worldwide have been evicted, in the name of "conservation," from newly established national parks and game reserves on lands that they have used and maintained for thousands of years, a model established in the late 19th century in the western US. This book asks an important question: why are so many indigenous peoples excluded from resource management in their homelands, where their knowledge would be vital? The book's core consists of four very incisive case studies--the Dandrubin Gorenpul (Queensland, Australia); Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota (Sioux), in the US; Adivasi, southern Rajasthan, India; and the Nan Province of northern Thailand--that provide straightforward accounts of collaborative efforts to forge stewardship, but not without frequent conflict and intercultural misunderstandings. The authors propose to organize what has been a patchwork collaborative effort into an Indigenous Stewardship Model, "a co-management system in which both sides are truly equal in their contributions ... [in] a society in which all knowledge systems are respected." This book contains an important message that shines through sometimes-dense verbiage. Summing Up: Recommended. Environmental collections, graduate level. B. E. Johansen University of Nebraska at Omaha