Save the planet! : indigenous peoples, conservation discourse and the politics of a messiah complex

TL;DRAbstract

This research contributes to critical anthropology in the field of indigenous politics. It addresses the problem of indigenous peoples’ continuing disempowerment and disadvantage by investigating representations of indigenous peoples in conservation discourse. From a social ecological perspective, which argues that the domination of people precedes environmental degradation, I employ discourse analysis across a range of texts spanning the political spectrum. I investigate written and visual texts produced by a variety of agents for ‘conventional’ developmentalist environmentalism and by a ‘radical’ ecological movement called ‘deep ecology’. Indigenous ecological knowledge is increasingly valued in conservation circles, but evidently, indigenous peoples themselves are not accorded similar respect. Social Darwinist assumptions were found to inform these competing ecopolitical narratives which might serve to subordinate indigenous nations to Western interests. Resting on the premise that

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