Inter‐Indigenous development aid: markets, corporations, and biases

Abstract

The Canadian government and the Meadow Lake Tribal Council sponsored a forest extraction corporation in eastern Nicaragua that restructured 16 Miskitu and Mayangna villages and transformed local human-environment interactions. The Central American aid project demonstrated paternalistic and interventionist tendencies and exposed biases in inter-Indigenous aid that rendered it inseparable from conventional aid. This case encourages reflection on social and ecological impacts from the marketing of collective resources, the creation of Indigenous development corporations, and the decision-making criteria and processes driving foreign aid. The case study demonstrates how foreign aid programs targeting Indigenous Peoples may actually thwart the self-determination that they set out to encourage. Aid agencies and business partners, who had limited knowledge of local cultures and institutions, created externally defined rules that instigated resource conflicts and undermined the authority of customary leaders without resolving poverty or uneven development. L'aide au développement entre indigènes : Marchés, sociétés, et préjugés A l'est du Nicaragua, seize villages Miskitu et Mayangna ontété restructurés par une société forestière parrainée par le gouvernement canadien et le Meadow Lake Tribal Council, ce qui a entraîné des transformations des institutions locales et des interactions homme-environnement. En Amérique centrale, ce projet d'aide internationale a fait découvrir des tendances paternalistes et interventionnistes et révélé despréjugés qui empêchent de distinguer l'aide entre indigènes de l'aide conventionnelle. Cetteétude de cas motive une réflexionà propos des effets sociaux etécologiques de la commercialisation des ressources collectives, de la création de corporations indigènes pour le développement, et des critères de décision liésà l'assistance transnationale pour le développement. Elle montre comment l'aideétrangère qui cible les peuples autochtones peut compromettre leur autonomie, alors même qu'elle viseà l'encourager. Les agences d'aide et les partenaires d'affaires, qui ont une connaissance limitée des cultures locales et des institutions, ont appliqué des règles définies de l'extérieur, ce qui a provoqué des conflits de ressources et sapé l'autorité des leaders traditionnels, sans résoudre les problèmes de pauvreté et d'inégalité de développement.

Territorial ‘Fix’? Tenure Insecurity in Titled Indigenous Territories

“…Historically Prinzu Awala was an area with extensive hardwood and Caribbean pine forests. Timber has been heavily over extracted, but high rates of extreme poverty continue (Brook, ; Finley‐Brook, , ). Corruption and weak communal and state institutions in the area are a significant deterrent to community‐based forestry, agriculture, or tourism projects.…”

“…Corruption and weak communal and state institutions in the area are a significant deterrent to community‐based forestry, agriculture, or tourism projects. Those attempted in the past decade encouraged entrepreneurship focused around communal resources, but projects were unsustainable on economic, ecological and social terms and most failed, although they left inhabitants with goals for market‐based development (Brook, ; Finley‐Brook, , ).…”

“…The failed Limi‐Nawah logging firm (2003–2008) involving Miskitu and Mayangna villages may shed light on some potential concerns from business decisions involving a large intercommunal territory. While a range of variables led to the demise of the project (Brook, ; Finley‐Brook, ), conflicts quickly arose during asset‐sharing negotiations because resources were distributed unevenly across space. Villages with valuable timber assets resisted sharing proceeds with villages that did not hold similar assets.…”