154 Garrett Graddy-Lovelace
Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and
Caribbean, which explicitly protects land and water defenders from criminalization and state-sanctioned or corporate-backed violence (Graddy-Lovelace 2021).
In this way, the Atateken Declaration continues the long tradition of contesting colonialism and coloniality at the level of the law, working to wrest
the contested terrain of legality from its colonial and imperial origins toward
emancipatory and reparative directions. It lays out sweeping array of Next
Steps Forwards in terms of Actions at Local, Provincial, Indigenous Territorial,
National, and International Levels – steps that in the aggregate would radically
transform practice, policy, and landscapes from colonial settler, to decolonial,
on to r e-indigenized worldviews and biocultural principles and protocols writ
large. The Atateken Declaration produced four addendum Policy Briefs to help
activate the vision, the first for “Measuring Biocultural Diversity: Biocultural
Indicators and the Nexus of Nature, Culture, and Well-Being” (Vaziri et al.,
2020). It begins with the 1988 Declaration of Belem, which indigenous leaders launched at the first International Conference of Ethnobiology to demand
scientists recompense indigenous communities for the knowledge they gain
from them (Posey & D utfield, 1996). The brief warns against “(Mis)appropriating and using Indigenous Knowledge” reductively, through “romanticization,
decontextualization, asymmetrical power relations” and such interventions as
Ecological Services, which reduce multi-dimensional value of ancient, placebased indigenous ecological knowledges and practices to “recreational” value
(Vaziri et al., 2020, p. 1). The brief then lays out explicit steps for “Weaving
knowledge systems for effective conservation and resource management”. These
necessitate biocultural restoration of indigenous languages concurrently with
sacred landscapes: “healing the river as part of the process of healing itself from
colonial trauma” (ibid: 4). The brief specifies that weaving together indigenous
and “Western” sciences requires respecting indigenous institutions and authority. Socio-ecological well-being demands recovery of customary governance and
affiliated epistemologies, and thus a transformation of policy and research at large
toward indigenous knowledge, Elders, and frameworks.
The second Policy Brief moved to “Nurturing Biocultural Diversity:
Livelihoods, Food Sovereignty, Health and Well-Being” (Sarrazin & Scott,
2020a) which requires “Control over and management of lands and waters”.
Restrictions on indigenous governance, management, and use of natural
resources threaten indigenous livelihoods and food sovereignty. In many contexts, indigenous ownership and stewardship on their traditional territory are
denied or are only partially recognized by the state, and indigenous institutions
have limited participation, if any, in determining how their ancestral lands and
waters are used and managed. One example of such issues is the criminalization
of traditional harvesting in national or provincial parks located on ancestral lands
and waters. This brief lays out how indigenous well-being and landscape-based
food sovereignty diminishes precipitously with the violence of “Extractives and
other ‘development’ pressures” (ibid.: 2). Climate change aggravates the injustices
Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and
Caribbean, which explicitly protects land and water defenders from criminalization and state-sanctioned or corporate-backed violence (Graddy-Lovelace 2021).
In this way, the Atateken Declaration continues the long tradition of contesting colonialism and coloniality at the level of the law, working to wrest
the contested terrain of legality from its colonial and imperial origins toward
emancipatory and reparative directions. It lays out sweeping array of Next
Steps Forwards in terms of Actions at Local, Provincial, Indigenous Territorial,
National, and International Levels – steps that in the aggregate would radically
transform practice, policy, and landscapes from colonial settler, to decolonial,
on to r e-indigenized worldviews and biocultural principles and protocols writ
large. The Atateken Declaration produced four addendum Policy Briefs to help
activate the vision, the first for “Measuring Biocultural Diversity: Biocultural
Indicators and the Nexus of Nature, Culture, and Well-Being” (Vaziri et al.,
2020). It begins with the 1988 Declaration of Belem, which indigenous leaders launched at the first International Conference of Ethnobiology to demand
scientists recompense indigenous communities for the knowledge they gain
from them (Posey & D utfield, 1996). The brief warns against “(Mis)appropriating and using Indigenous Knowledge” reductively, through “romanticization,
decontextualization, asymmetrical power relations” and such interventions as
Ecological Services, which reduce multi-dimensional value of ancient, placebased indigenous ecological knowledges and practices to “recreational” value
(Vaziri et al., 2020, p. 1). The brief then lays out explicit steps for “Weaving
knowledge systems for effective conservation and resource management”. These
necessitate biocultural restoration of indigenous languages concurrently with
sacred landscapes: “healing the river as part of the process of healing itself from
colonial trauma” (ibid: 4). The brief specifies that weaving together indigenous
and “Western” sciences requires respecting indigenous institutions and authority. Socio-ecological well-being demands recovery of customary governance and
affiliated epistemologies, and thus a transformation of policy and research at large
toward indigenous knowledge, Elders, and frameworks.
The second Policy Brief moved to “Nurturing Biocultural Diversity:
Livelihoods, Food Sovereignty, Health and Well-Being” (Sarrazin & Scott,
2020a) which requires “Control over and management of lands and waters”.
Restrictions on indigenous governance, management, and use of natural
resources threaten indigenous livelihoods and food sovereignty. In many contexts, indigenous ownership and stewardship on their traditional territory are
denied or are only partially recognized by the state, and indigenous institutions
have limited participation, if any, in determining how their ancestral lands and
waters are used and managed. One example of such issues is the criminalization
of traditional harvesting in national or provincial parks located on ancestral lands
and waters. This brief lays out how indigenous well-being and landscape-based
food sovereignty diminishes precipitously with the violence of “Extractives and
other ‘development’ pressures” (ibid.: 2). Climate change aggravates the injustices