How Scientists And Indigenous Groups Can Team Up to Protect Forests and Climate

To say that the history of scientists working in indigenous territories is fraught would be an understatement. Look through the literature and you’ll find stories of researchers setting their own agendas, collecting and publishing data without consent, and failing to include community members as collaborators or coauthors on studies.

“The dominant narrative is that indigenous people are not co-thinkers,” says Kim TallBear, an anthropologist at the University of Alberta who has studied scientist-indigenous relations.

In the context of this troubled history, Mateo-Vega’s work could be the beginnings of a counter-narrative. In 2008, he began working in Ipeti as the director of a project to build communities’ forest restoration capacity. In 2012 he joined the research group of Catherine Potvin, an ecologist with the Smithsonian Institution and McGill University in Montreal who has paved the way for more collaborative research with the Emberá.

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Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-can-team-up-with-indigenous-groups-protect-forests-climate-180963089/#OgwgctdCBIestFyi.99
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