Vital Forest Graphics

The relationship between indigenous people and forests

? ndigenous forest people use their land in many different ways – for fishing, hunting, shifting agriculture, the gathering of wild forest products and other activities. For them, the for- est is the very basis of survival and its resources have to be harvested in a sustainable manner. But when trad- itional life styles change and, for exam- ple, industrial logging or mining takes place, over use of resources can lead to conflict. Although indigenous people around the world often have very different sets of beliefs and traditions, a special bond with the land is a common factor. For example, the semi-nomadic Matses

More than 1.6 billion people around the world depend to varying degrees on forests for their livelihoods – not just for food but also for fuel, for livestock grazing areas and for medicine. At least 350 million people live inside or close to dense forests, largely dependent on these areas for subsistence and income, while about 60 million indigenous people are almost wholly dependent on forests (World Bank 2006c).

people of the Peruvian Amazon call the rainforest Titá, or mother (Krogh 2006), referring to Titá as if to a person, who can be happy as well as sad, angry as well as indifferent. Titá provides the Matses with every- thing they need – as long as they fol- low her rules, including never taking more from the forest than is needed and treating all things belonging to it with respect. Traditionally, the Matses perform hunting ceremonies to ask the animal spirits for permission to kill animals for food. As with the Matses, indigenous peo- ples’ ideas of territory are not only con- cerned with controlling a geographical area or using forest resources: territory also embodies fundamental aspects of culture and geography (Franky 2000). Indigenous forest people see them- selves as inseparably linked to the for- est and everything in it – trees, plants, rivers, animals and mountains. It is impossible, according to community beliefs, to separate any single object or living thing in the forest – such as a par- ticular plant, animal or mineral – from its symbolic position in the cosmology of the people (Olsen 2006). These ideas are expressed through mythology, reli- gious practices, and systems of social regulation, including management of the environment and systems of pro- duction and exchange (Sanchez et al . 2000). Because of their special relationship with the land, many indigenous people

Forest concessions and protected areas, Democratic Republic of the Congo

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

Rainforest Protected area Forest concession Capital city County town

SUDAN

Ksangani

UGANDA

Mbandaka

Buluk

RWANDA

Democratic Republic of the Congo

BURUNDI

CONGO

Bandundu

Kinshasa

BANDUNU PROVINCE

TANZANIA

Mbuji-Mayi

Kananga

Kahemba

ANGOLA

ZAMBIA

0

400 km

200

Source: CBFP 2006.

14 VITAL FOREST GRAPHICS