Forest indigenous peoples: concept, critique and cases

Abstract

SynopsisThis chapter has two linked objectives. The first is to sketch the process of human occupance of the lowland rain forest zone in West Africa, and illustrate (by means of a case study) the current circumstances of human settlement at the forest margins. The second is to bring the category ‘indigenous peoples’ under review, and to point out some of the pitfalls associated with the use of this term in the context of the West African forest frontier. All parts of the forest zone in West Africa have a long and complex history of occupation and use. In consequence, I shall argue that it is rarely, if ever, realistic to think of forest country as a residuum of empty land not yet passed into human ownership and use, but that it is equally distorting to treat the local groups currently found in possession of the forest edge as sole custodians. Forest resources have over time become part of the fabric of wider community life in West Africa, up to and beyond the national level, and narrow definitions of the category ‘indigenous peoples’ are to be avoided. Rather than search for putative forest indigenes, living in greater harmony with nature than incoming settlers (a usage reflecting Amazonian experience) it would be better, I suggest, to consider the term ‘indigenous peoples’ as covering all groups in West Africa with effective local knowledge of the forest. An eventual aim should be to understand how the experience of forest occupance has passed into the make-up of the institutions and values of civil society throughout the forest zone in West Africa today, regardless of whether or not these groups have a current direct connection to surviving areas of high forest. This is a much broader sociological agenda than conservationists have been prepared to tackle so far, but the threatened forests of West Africa are also complex human landscapes of considerable historical depth, and this human complexity is, in my judgement, no less worthy of understanding and conservation than the envelope of non-human biodiversity from which is has emerged. In fact, the two sets of issues are inextricably intertwined.