13 Policy Matters.qxp

Colonial Histories and Conservation

Encounters

“We were told to sign. It was never

explained to us. None of the elders knew

how to read or write. You white people are

very tough.” A signatory of the 1958 agree-

ment stipulating that the Maasai would

leave the Serengeti National Park, speaking

to investigative journalist Raymond Bonner

(1993: 175)

“The Park Service have been dragging their

feet. We do have something in common

and should try to develop it to the point

that it is an asset to both groups. They

have not followed what they committed

themselves to do.” Johnson Holy Rock,

Oglala Sioux tribal council member, speak-

ing to investigative journalist Phillip

Burnham (2000: 228) about the agreement

between the tribe and the administration of

Badlands National Park

Whatever local conservation models may

have existed prior to the 19thcentury have

now been subsumed, or at least profoundly

influenced, by colonialism, the rise of the

nation state, and the global spread of capi-

talism.^3 Any study of the relationship

between culture and conservation at the

local level will be incomplete

without taking these global

historical processes into

account.

The global historical develop-

ment with the most direct rel-

evance to community-based

conservation, however, is the

rise of the national park as a

conservation model.^4 Much

has been written recently on

the history of parks and

European expansion, so the

details of these encounters

need not detain us here.

However, four important points

need to be made:

1. the national park model incorporates a
   western view of the world, which posits
   a radical separation of humans and
   nature;


2. as such, parks were frequently created
   without regard for local people and their
   relationship to the environment;


3. their rigid boundaries also ignored the
   interconnectedness of ecosystems, and
   especially ecological processes that
   occurred beyond them; and


4. in spite of rhetoric to the contrary, this
   conservation model has remained a cen-
   tral component of conservation in the
   way that it affects indigenous communi-
   ties around the world.

For those of us who are concerned about

community-based conservation, one of the

most important implications of this history is

the ways in which the creation of parks on

a global scale has transformed ecosystems

and resource management practices at the

local level. In Tanzania, for instance, the

creation of Tarangire National Park has con-

tributed to the transformation of the Maasai

herding economy towards settled subsis-

tence and commercial agriculture. This

transformation is distressing to western con-

servationists, since Maasai farms block

wildlife migration routes, bringing local peo-

ple into conflict with migrating wildlife.^5

In the American west, the creation of parks

was part of the process by which the state

contained Native Americans on reservations.

This, in turn, transformed their livelihood

activities in ways that bring them into con-

flicts with national parks.^6 At Mesa Verde

National Park, for instance, park administra-

tors have been consistently concerned

about the activities of the Ute Mountain Ute

Tribe, especially natural gas exploration,

cattle ranching, and helicopter tours. The

administration of Badlands National Park

has long sought to convince the Oglala

Sioux Tribe to abandon cattle ranching, pro-

History, cculture aand cconservation

Any sstudy oof
the rrelationship
between cculture
and cconservation
at tthe llocal llevel
will bbe iincom-
plete wwithout ttak-
ing iinto aaccount
colonialism, tthe
rise oof tthe nnation
state, aand tthe
global sspread oof
capitalism.