https://www.huffpost.com/entry/national-park-service-anniversary-indigenous-people_n_55dcdd7ce4b0a40aa3ac9998
"Conservation is used as a tool of colonialism," Jacoby told HuffPost. "Conservation is basically trying to say that ‘We the state and the state bureaucracies, have the appropriate knowledge to manage the environment in the best way," rather than indigenous peoples and other prior inhabitants.
"In the 19th century, there is a very strong critique of native environmental practices in a lot of the conservation literature that you read," said Jacoby. "The only way you can come in and say ‘We [the state] need to manage this space and manage the environment,’ is you have to in some ways present the current managers of it -- the native peoples -- as incompetent."
The problem with a neutered history of national parks and conservation, Survival International argues, is that it fails to create the policies that protect the environment.
"Often the real drivers of environmental destruction go unaddressed, things like logging, mining and political corruption, while the lives of the most defenseless people and the least responsible people are ruined or made impossibly difficult," Hurran said. "We are calling for a new model of conservation, a new kind of conservation, that works not against but with tribal peoples who are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world."
An article on the ‘Stop the Con’ campaign
“I love Yosemite. But my love for the place does not excuse the fact that Native Americans were violently evicted or killed when it was created. And it does not excuse the fact that parks around the world now follow its example – from Cameroon to Botswana to India. If we continue to destroy tribes, we’ll continue to destroy nature, and we’ll continue to destroy our future. Together, we can create a new conservation.”
Conservationists continue to claim that tribal peoples’ lands are "wildernesses," even though tribal peoples have been dependent on, and managed them for millennia.
I only skimmed this one but here’s a nice quote :
The National Park Service—a federal organization with well-known racist origins—has a mission statement that almost exclusively highlights the instrumental value of North America’s natural lands: “The National Park Services preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations … to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resources conservation … throughout this country and the world.”
Their mission is painfully anthropocentric, never mind that the very lands it aims to extend were stolen from Indigenous tribes who are now denied access. Missions such as these create a near-impenetrable ideological barrier through which environmentalists of non-Christian cultures cannot pass.
another interesting article that i just sort of skimmed
all emphasis in the above quotes is mine
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