People Parks Protecting Indigenous Wilderness
Most histories of national parks and Indigenous peoples focus on "fortress conservation," dispossession, and the creation of human-free wilderness. This project explores a very different tradition: reserves designed to integrate people as subjects of conservation itself.
Swiss conservationist Paul Sarasin once termed this approach anthropologischer Naturschutz ("anthropological nature preservation"). From George Catlin's 1830s vision of a "nation's park, containing man and beast" to early 20th-century European conservation networks, the project studies the convergence of environmental and ethnographic salvage. Global case studies include efforts to preserve supposedly co-endangered pygmies and gorillas in 1920s Belgian Congo, Verrier Elwin's 1939 call for a "sort of national park" for the "tribes of Central India," and the Xingu Indigenous Park in 1960s Brazil.
Tracking the metamorphosis of these "people parks" into "postcolonial parks," the project analyzes how Indigenous-led initiatives are today reclaiming protected areas for political sovereignty. Ultimately, this transdisciplinary research exposes the colonial logics that continue to shape global debates over biocultural diversity and Indigenous rights.