Indigenous women-led conservation: How land rights and matrilineal stewardship could save elephants and ecosystems
Original framing: “The women putting community at the heart of elephant conservation” — bing news
The narrative centers 'elephant keepers' while silencing women in *extractive industries* (e.g., charcoal burners, miners) who are often blamed for 'poaching' but lack alternatives. In *DR Congo*, women make up *70% of the charcoal trade*, a survival economy enabled by conservation policies that restrict their access to firewood. Similarly, *San* women in Botswana are criminalized for gathering *mopane worms* (a protein source), while their knowledge of elephant behavior is celebrated. Marginalized voices here include *landless women*, *youth*, and *disabled community members*—groups systematically excluded from conservation leadership. Their inclusion would require *universal basic resources* (not just 'jobs') and *disability-inclusive* wildlife management.
The story of Indigenous women leading elephant conservation is not a feel-good tale of individual heroism but a *revelation of systemic theft*—where colonial land grabs, patriarchal institutions, and neoliberal conservation have systematically erased the very systems that could save elephants.
The solution lies not in co-opting these women into existing frameworks but in *decolonizing conservation entirely*: returning land to matrilineal governance, integrating Indigenous science into climate modeling, and funding artistic resistance to dismantle the power structures that profit from both poaching and performative conservation. Historical precedents—like the *Maasai’s* pre-colonial wildlife management or the *San’s* sacred groves—prove that Indigenous women have always been the architects of elephant survival, but their knowledge was stolen along with their land. The trickster here is the system itself, which turns stewards into 'keepers' while maintaining control. To restore balance, we must follow the *Coyote’s* lesson: *destroy the rigid systems, and the stories will return to their rightful owners.