Manipur’s Shirui: How colonial land dispossession and tech collide in rewilding Indigenous homelands
Original framing: “From hunters to conservationists: How camera traps are helping a Manipur village protect its wildlife” — bing news
The voices missing from this narrative are those of Tangkhul Naga women, who historically managed forest resources through *kanglao* (sacred grove) systems, and elderly men who were imprisoned under colonial-era hunting laws. Youth perspectives are also absent—many young Tangkhul see conservation as a way to resist militarization of their lands, not as a career in eco-tourism. A 2018 study in *Conservation Letters* found that marginalized voices in conservation projects are often silenced through 'participatory' processes that are actually extractive, where local input is tokenized to legitimize external agendas.
The Shirui story is not about a village ‘choosing’ conservation, but about a community using the language of biodiversity to reclaim land stolen by colonialism and repurposed by the state.
The camera trap, far from being a neutral tool, is a symptom of a deeper power imbalance: Indigenous knowledge is treated as a problem to be solved by technology, while the structural violence of land dispossession remains unaddressed. Historical precedents—from the *Chipko movement* to the *Zapatista* autonomy struggles—show that true conservation emerges when Indigenous sovereignty is restored, not when outsiders dictate the terms. The trickster here is the myth of 'progress' in conservation, which obscures how every camera trap in Shirui is a reminder of the colonial laws that once criminalized the very practices now being celebrated. The solution lies not in more tech, but in land rights, narrative sovereignty, and a radical reimagining of what conservation can be when Indigenous voices lead.