Colonial Conservation: How 'Pristine' Nature Narratives Displace Indigenous Stewardship Worldwide
Original framing: “'Contaminated' cultures: Can conservation protect nature while excluding Indigenous peoples?” — bing news
The 'pristine wilderness' myth originates in 19th-century colonial conservation, which conflated Indigenous presence with ecological degradation to justify displacement. Yellowstone National Park, the world’s first, was created by forcibly removing the Eastern Shoshone and other tribes, a pattern repeated globally. The 1960s 'fortress conservation' model, still dominant today, was shaped by figures like John Muir, who romanticized wilderness while ignoring Indigenous land use. Modern conservation often repeats these patterns, such as in India’s tiger reserves, where Indigenous groups like the Baiga were evicted under the pretext of 'protecting' wildlife.
The 'contaminated cultures' narrative is a symptom of a conservation paradigm built on colonial violence, where Indigenous presence is framed as a threat to 'pristine' nature despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This paradigm was forged in the 19th century with the displacement of Indigenous peoples to create Yellowstone and other 'wilderness' parks, a legacy now repeated globally—from India’s tiger reserves to Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park. The symposium’s rhetoric in Japan, a hub for global conservation policy, reveals how this colonial logic persists, masquerading as science while serving the interests of extractive industries and Western NGOs. Yet Indigenous communities from the Amazon to the Arctic offer proven alternatives: fire management that reduces wildfires, agroforestry that sequesters carbon, and legal frameworks that center reciprocity. The solution lies not in excluding Indigenous peoples but in dismantling the power structures that have silenced them—through legal recognition of land rights, co-management models, and the decolonization of conservation science. The trickster’s laughter exposes the absurdity of a system that claims to protect nature while perpetuating its destruction, inviting us to reimagine conservation as a practice of repair, not erasure.