Indigenous Land-Based Ethics and the Contradiction of Settler-Colonial Ideologies on Biodiversity Conservation

For millennia, Indigenous people have been guided by the values of co-existence, interconnectedness, and mutual respect between human and non-human relatives. There were no words for conservation, restoration, even philosophy; these were simply inherent in the relationship with land, which kept everything in a healthy state of balance. As settler colonialism persists, those values have faced an ongoing battle against Western ideologies of anthropocentric biodiversity conservation. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe faces ongoing challenges to the philosophical and political ethics that drive conservation efforts. Settler-colonialism prompted a forced attempt at the destruction of Indigenous land-based knowledge systems and replaced them with maximizing material value as the primary motive for conservation. This settler ideology continues to bring devastation to Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s wellbeing. Less than two centuries ago, massive resource extraction began in the area, leaving little undamaged, beginning with the fur-trading near extirpation of beaver by the mid-19th century; the removal of salmon and decimation of trout in Tribal waters; and widespread contamination of Tribal waters from upstream silver/lead mining. Forest biodiversity obliteration through removal of 78% of forest cover; the native Palouse prairie, which contained myriad plants of Tribal cultural significance, experienced a 99% conversion to monoculture agriculture with a 98% loss of biodiversity in the last century, inflicting near irreparable physical and spiritual damage.

Despite decades of landscape-scale restoration work and relationship-building, the Tribe faces continued opposition, most often from external partners’ unwillingness to acknowledge the values driving Tribal land management. The continued erasure of the destruction that accompanied Euro American settlement is apparent in Western conservation movements that still exclude the Tribe and are intertwined with the global environmental dispossession of Indigenous people by continuing to privilege extractive industries. The Tribe experiences the settler expectation of obligatory Indigenous accommodation to settler colonial philosophies in our efforts for biodiversity conservation on our own lands. Purchasing land back, competing for scarce funding, being diplomatic in predominately western realms, or compromising our own values to satisfy opposing players, are all present effects of settler colonial ideologies that threaten Tribal sovereignty and pervade the success of long-lasting biodiversity conservation efforts.