Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

Signposts for the Road Ahead 141
their donors. Obviously the lives of indigenous
peoples do not revolve around a project cycle.
They often need time to assess what is happening
to their environment, absorb new information and
ideas, and develop their own solutions. In the
Brazil case, when the community said they
needed several months to discuss the proposed
management plan, project staff gave them the
space to work through the issues. Developed
more recently, the Namibia project is unique
among conservation and development projects in
that it was designed to be implemented over a
10-year period. This long-term commitment
reflected awareness of the time it takes to understand
the local context, build trust, strengthen
capacity, create a favorable policy environment,
and design appropriate activities. Once a grant
ends, conservation organizations can also support
indigenous groups in other ways, such as providing
them with advice and information and with
links to networks and other resources.
The collaborative process is often as important as
the explicit project goals. Priorities need to be
clearly articulated and discussed at the beginning
of a potential collaboration to ensure that common
ground exists, and to avoid misunderstandings
down the road. In some cases, groups may
have secondary agendas that will emerge through
a process of dialogue. The development of
resource management plans was successful in the
Brazil, Namibia, and Papua New Guinea cases
because of how decisions were reached. All of
them involved a long process of dialogue with
communities, including joint data collection,
which allowed new information to be absorbed
and stimulated the recovery of traditional knowledge.
By working closely with the community,
an outside expert earned peoples’ trust and
helped them identify and assess their options.
Because the community could take the lead role
in developing a strategy, a consensus was formed
that made the strategy easier to implement.
Conservation organization staff or other outside
advisors who play roles as facilitators, acting as
brokers between the community and other stakeholders
and exposing communities to new ideas,
must be sure that the community accepts their
role and is aware that advisors also have their
own priorities.
Recommendations
• Don’t embark on a collaborative effort with
preconceived solutions; be aware that give
and take are needed in order to reach a sustainable
solution.
• Recognize the dynamic change indigenous
cultures are undergoing; outside organizations
seeking to partner with them need to
respect and support, as appropriate, their
efforts toward self-determination and
socioeconomic development.
• Make a long-term commitment to dialogue
and partnership.
• Make sure that communication is two-way;
be clear, transparent, consistent, and honest
in communicating with partners.
• Secure the agreement of all partners
regarding who will facilitate the collaborative
process.
1.2 Strengthening Indigenous Institutions
for Collaboration
In order to manage their resources effectively and
interact equitably with other stakeholders, indigenous
groups need institutions that are able to
identify and articulate their priorities. To
advance their agendas, indigenous groups have in
recent years formed a variety of organizations
including community-level associations and
regional and national federations. The form that
these institutions take is often influenced by outsiders
who promote the democratic structures and
procedures, such as representatives and elections,
with which they are most familiar. As discussed
in the Namibia case, this can result “in the exclusion
of subgroups within the community, particularly
women and elders, and a takeover of
decision making by [young] elites.” New project
staff subsequently facilitated a process in which
the community used traditional values to forge
their own unique institutional structures and
means of communication.
Before becoming involved in modifying old or
establishing new institutional structures, conservation
organizations need to understand the culture,
subgroups within the community, and traditional
decision-making processes. What works will often
be a blend of new and old decision-making mechanisms
that both builds on traditional practices and