152 Garrett Graddy-Lovelace
level processes, empowers local resource managers, and channels benefits to local
levels to create incentives.
In this way, biocultural rights assertions parallel indigenous-led manifestos,
declarations, and portions of treaties that assert collective self-governance. A key
recent example is the 2019 Atateken North American Regional Declaration on
Biocultural Diversity and Recommended Actions (Atateken Declaration).
In May 2019, more than 100 participants, Indigenous Peoples of North
America, together with partners and supporters, “united by their passion and
concern for nature and culture”, gathered on traditional lands of Kanien’keha:ka
Nation (Mohawk of Canada) for the first North American Dialogue on
Biocultural Diversity. Institutional affiliations ranged from the UN to governmental to First Nations tribal to scholarly consortiums to NGOs (Figure 5.1).
The Declaration begins with land acknowledgment, allegiance to the Canadian
Truth and Reconciliation process, and contextualization within other major policies for indigenous rights and justice, most notably the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP).
In this way, the Atateken Declaration follows a long, undervalued, but potent
lineage of grassroots, frontline, indigenous, and Black-led collective articulations
of political demands firmly and explicitly rooted in cosmovisions and indigenous
worldviews. Kabir Bavikatte and Daniel Robinson point to this phenomenon as
the crucial “concept of (subaltern) ‘cosmopolitan legality’, which posits law as a
site of struggle and implicates a grassroots movement that “seeks to expand the
legal canon beyond individual rights and focuses on the importance of political
mobilisation for the success of rights centered strategies” (Bavikatte & Robinson,
2011, p. 43: quoting de Sousa Santos & Rodríguez-Garavito, 2005). This comprises an “insurgent cosmopolitanism” (de Sousa Santos, 2006) grounded in
agrarian justice and cosmological principles.
This work of mobilizing worldviews that have been systematically ravaged by
colonialism, objectified by developmentalism, and appropriated by academia –
and re-asserting their legitimacy and agency in international policy fora – is hard
work. And yet, it has been key part of international negotiations for seed, food,
FIGURE 5.1 Atateken Declaration.
Source: CICADA, used with permission of CICADA.
level processes, empowers local resource managers, and channels benefits to local
levels to create incentives.
In this way, biocultural rights assertions parallel indigenous-led manifestos,
declarations, and portions of treaties that assert collective self-governance. A key
recent example is the 2019 Atateken North American Regional Declaration on
Biocultural Diversity and Recommended Actions (Atateken Declaration).
In May 2019, more than 100 participants, Indigenous Peoples of North
America, together with partners and supporters, “united by their passion and
concern for nature and culture”, gathered on traditional lands of Kanien’keha:ka
Nation (Mohawk of Canada) for the first North American Dialogue on
Biocultural Diversity. Institutional affiliations ranged from the UN to governmental to First Nations tribal to scholarly consortiums to NGOs (Figure 5.1).
The Declaration begins with land acknowledgment, allegiance to the Canadian
Truth and Reconciliation process, and contextualization within other major policies for indigenous rights and justice, most notably the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP).
In this way, the Atateken Declaration follows a long, undervalued, but potent
lineage of grassroots, frontline, indigenous, and Black-led collective articulations
of political demands firmly and explicitly rooted in cosmovisions and indigenous
worldviews. Kabir Bavikatte and Daniel Robinson point to this phenomenon as
the crucial “concept of (subaltern) ‘cosmopolitan legality’, which posits law as a
site of struggle and implicates a grassroots movement that “seeks to expand the
legal canon beyond individual rights and focuses on the importance of political
mobilisation for the success of rights centered strategies” (Bavikatte & Robinson,
2011, p. 43: quoting de Sousa Santos & Rodríguez-Garavito, 2005). This comprises an “insurgent cosmopolitanism” (de Sousa Santos, 2006) grounded in
agrarian justice and cosmological principles.
This work of mobilizing worldviews that have been systematically ravaged by
colonialism, objectified by developmentalism, and appropriated by academia –
and re-asserting their legitimacy and agency in international policy fora – is hard
work. And yet, it has been key part of international negotiations for seed, food,
FIGURE 5.1 Atateken Declaration.
Source: CICADA, used with permission of CICADA.