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Environmental Vigilance: An Intercultural Endeavor – Part I

von Hannah Ritchie 1

Introduction

As climate change and human activities threaten the Amazon rainforest, people from all walks of life are working together to protect these essential forests. Many projects use varying forms of vigilance to achieve that goal. These often require diverse groups with different worldviews, such as nongovernmental organizations and Indigenous groups who have lived in the Amazon for millennia, to work together. The former are often based in Western countries with conceptions of nature and its relationship to humanity that differ greatly from those espoused by Indigenous peoples. The use of the term Western, which could rightfully be considered an overbroad categorization, nonetheless reflects how some Indigenous groups differentiate themselves from their moneyed partners. The relationship between Western NGOs and Indigenous groups in the Amazon is heavily influenced by the colonial history of the region. A desire to explore the many cultural differences between them and the exacerbating effects of a historical power imbalance led to the following research question: What characterizes the relationship between Western-influenced NGOs and Indigenous groups in the Amazon when they work together on conservation projects? The results of the study show a certain degree of reciprocal positive feelings between the groups, but the relationship continues to face various obstacles.

The focus on conservation projects was inspired by my work with the CRC subproject A10 “Jaguar, Drone, Human: Indigenous Vigilance in the Amazon” led by Prof. Dr. Anna Meiser and doctoral candidate Jonas Bauschert, M.A. Although that project focuses on how the introduction of international organizations and technology in Indigenous monitoring of the Amazon forest change traditional concepts and practices of vigilance, my research more broadly defines conservation projects between Western-based NGOs and Indigenous groups. For example, not all joint endeavours I examined focused on vigilance or required the implementation of technology. My work as a student research assistant on the CRC project, however, did play an essential role in contacting potential interview partners and in establishing one of the primary research methods, as will be explained below.

Methodology

Qualitative methods were utilized for this research in the interest of allowing individual actors to express their points of view clearly. The primary method was semi-structured individual interviews conducted online with representatives from four Western NGOs and three Indigenous groups. A final online interview was also conducted with a Quecha expert with the aim of gaining meaning and context from the results of the other conversations. At the time of the interview, Dr. Juan Luis Camacho Cueva taught at the Universidad Nacional Intercultural de Quillabamba in Peru and is now a full-time lecturer with the Humanities Faculty at the Universidad Continental in Peru. Through his research, he is familiar with both Western and Indigenous worldviews and ontologies. However, he made clear that he answered my questions from the perspective of his Indigenous origins. In the interest of maintaining anonymity, the names of participating NGOs and Indigenous organizations have been excluded from this summary.

The secondary method was a semi-structured, passive participant observation conducted during an online conference organized by the CRC subproject. Participants included representatives of Indigenous organizations in Peru and Ecuador, Indigenous environmental monitors, staff of the Universidad Nacional Intercultural Quillabamba in Peru, people from civil society organizations, officials from a Peruvian government program, and colleagues from the CRC subproject.

Image 1: A waterfall (in Shuar “tuna”) within the Bosque y Vegetación Protector Arutam, part of the Shuar community’s territory.2 (Ecuador, Pastaza province). © Anna Meiser

Contexts: Disciplinary, ontological, and historical

The contextual foundation of the research begins with the discipline of intercultural communication, specifically the field’s critical turn. Critical intercultural communication does not simply look at interactions between cultures but rather examines them considering power relations and other macro-contexts, including social and historical contexts.3 A more recent development in this field is the ecological turn, whereby the relationship between humans and nature is considered a primary source of intercultural difference.4

Understanding this relationship between humans and nature represents a second foundational piece of context for my research. The distinction between nature and culture, as well as how they interact, are key components of the relevant ontological systems, namely Amazonian animism and Western naturalism. Animism maintains that humans and nonhumans share a common humanity, or culture, rather than a common animality or physical form; it can therefore be said that the relationship between humans and nature has a social character.5 On the other hand, naturalism holds that humans and nonhumans have different cultures but are physically similar in that they are all subject to the same laws of nature.6 According to this ontology, only humans can be subjects and have a complex culture, which exists separately from nature. Therefore, according to this ontology, only human societies can produce social relations.7 These opposing ontologies clearly play a role in partnerships aimed at environmental conservation.

That said, it is unlikely to encounter people in this globalized world adhering strictly to a “pure” ontology. People who interact interculturally on a regular basis are familiar with the ontologies of others and may adapt to them. Specific examples of this adaptation are processes described by the concept of Indigenous Modernities, or realities that result from heterogeneous Indigenous societies being shaped by their traditional ways of life as well as by interactions with Western cultures.8 Indigenous Modernities may involve Indigenous people incorporating parts of the naturalist ontology into their lives or simply using Western language. Western actors can similarly incorporate Indigenous knowledge, for example in conservation projects. The book The Falling Sky by Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami shaman from the Brazilian Amazon provides a good example of Western and Indigenous actors finding common ground in seeking to protect the Amazon:

Image 2: Peque-peque motorboats on the Río Manchari (Peru, Department of Loreto). © Anna Meiser

We were born in the middle of the “ecology” and we grew up in it. […] This is why we understood these new white people words as soon as they reached us. I explained them to my people and they thought: “Haixopé! This is good! The white people call these things ‘ecology’!”9

The actors met “in the middle,”10 and from there they were able to spread their common message promoting nature conservation.

The final piece of contextual foundation for this research is the colonial history and historical interactions between Western NGOs and Indigenous people in the Amazon. The specifics of five hundred years of colonization do not bear repeating here; suffice it to say that colonialism, in this research understood as the structures erected to maintain the distribution of power and resources established centuries ago,11 continues to influence modern relationships and deeply affects the environment. Within these enduring structures, Indigenous peoples and their cultures in the past were often reduced to objects from a Western perspective, since only those exhibiting a “rational,” Western way of thinking could be considered subjects.12 Therefore, in a strict interpretation of the naturalist ontology, Western cultures are the only rational subjects, and these stand in contrast to the natural world. Indigenous cultures, on the other hand, are objects of discrimination. Although there are always exceptions, one sees this pattern often in these groups’ shared history. Modern ontology, according to which only objective and universal knowledge is legitimate,13 similarly assigns subject status exclusively to Western actors. However, it should be noted that Indigenous population groups in the Amazon do not consider themselves to be victims of history or simple objects; from this perspective, Indigenous people are subjects who act in the world and do not exist separately from their cultural ancestors.14

Nevertheless, interactions between Western NGOs looking to protect the Amazon and the Indigenous people who live there reflect historical tensions. One early form of conservation pursued by NGOs in the mid-20th century was “fortress conservation,” in which all people were meant to be kept out of protected natural areas, leading to Indigenous people becoming “conservation refugees.”15 In the 1970s, NGOs started viewing Indigenous peoples as allies in conservation, viewing them as natural “forest stewards”16 who would share Western goals of protecting the rainforest.17 This view of Indigenous peoples, however, ignores their cultural complexities and their territorial sovereignty.18 The hope of Indigenous peoples for territorial solutions that support their own conservation efforts remains. However, international actors, including conservationists, often advocate “depoliticized titling projects” that create a “landlord-tenant relationship with the state” and thus undermine the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples.19

Examining the context from the perspective of critical intercultural communications, it is clear the relationship between Western NGOs and Indigenous groups in the Amazon is far from easy. Collaborating on conservation projects in a setting marked by different ontological understandings of nature, the power asymmetry caused by colonialism, and the continuing effects of that asymmetry on recent interactions creates the potential for fraught relationships; that has global consequences in the fight against climate change. Therefore, it is necessary to examine how these relationships unfold currently to see what works well and what requires improvement.

(Click here for Part II of the article)


  1. Hannah Ritchie, M.A., is former research assistant in the sub-project A10 Jaguar, drone, human being: Indigenous vigilance in Amazonia – SFB 1369 Cultures of vigilance – LMU Munich, CRC 1369 (2023–2025) ↩︎
  2. Note: In the Shuar cosmology, waterfalls in the topographically quite hilly rainforest area are of great importance; the “Tuna” is regarded as as a place of encounter with the transcendental entity “Arutam.” ↩︎
  3. Halualani, Rona Tamiko & Nakayama, Thomas K. (2024). Critical Intercultural Communication Studies: Formation: From Crossroads to Trajectories and Urgencies on Shifting Terrain. In Thomas K. Nakayama & Rona Tamiko Halualani (Hrgs.), The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (1–27). Wiley-Blackwell. ↩︎
  4. Mendoza, S. Lily & Kinefuchi, Etsuko (2024). The Challenge of the “More-than-human World”: Toward an Ecological Turn in Intercultural Communication. In Thomas K. Nakayama & Rona Tamiko Halualani (Hrgs.), The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (577–594). Wiley-Blackwell. ↩︎
  5. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2019). Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies. Common Knowledge, 25(1–3), 463–484. ↩︎
  6. Descola, Philippe (2013). Between Nature and Culture (J. Lloyd, Übers.). University of Chicago Press. ↩︎
  7. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (1998). Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4, 468–488. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3034157 ↩︎
  8. Halbmayer, Ernst (2018). ‘More than modern’ indigenous modernities: Tautology, paradox, excess. In Ernst Halbmayer (Hrsg.), Indigenous Modernities in South America (206–229). Sean Kingston Publishing. ↩︎
  9. Kopenawa, Davi & Albert, Bruce (2013). The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman (N. Elliott & A. Dundy, Übers.). Harvard University Press, 393–394. ↩︎
  10. Conklin, Beth A. & Graham, Laura R. (1995). The Shifting Middle Ground: Amazonian Indians and Eco-Politics. American Anthropologist, 97(4), 695–710. ↩︎
  11. Wolfe, Patrick. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 386–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240 ↩︎
  12. Quijano, Aníbal (2007). Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 168–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353 ↩︎
  13. Ibid. ↩︎
  14. High, Casey (2023). Civilized Elders and Isolated Ancestors: The Multiple Histories of Contemporary Amazonia. Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.70845/2572-3626.1342 ↩︎
  15. Dowie, Mark. (2009). Conservation refugees: The hundred-year conflict between global conservation and native peoples. MIT Press. ↩︎
  16. Merino, Roger (2022). The Angry Earth: Wellbeing, Place and Extractivism in the Amazon. Global environmental politics, 22(2), 95–116. https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2016.230305 ↩︎
  17. Conklin, Beth A. & Graham, Laura R. (1995). The Shifting Middle Ground: Amazonian Indians and Eco-Politics. American Anthropologist, 97(4), 695–710. ↩︎
  18. Merino, Roger (2022). The Angry Earth: Wellbeing, Place and Extractivism in the Amazon. Global environmental politics, 22(2), 95–116. https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2016.230305  ↩︎
  19. Ibid. ↩︎

 


OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Hannah Ritchie (9. Juli 2025). Environmental Vigilance: An Intercultural Endeavor – Part I. Vigilanzkulturen. Abgerufen am 14. Januar 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/14axx


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Eine Antwort

  1. 16/07/2025

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