Text by Felipe Rodríguez Moreno & Norma Constanza Castaño Cuéllar Photos by Felipe Rodríguez Moreno Bahía Solano is a municipality located in the Chocó District on the Pacific coast of Colombia, which over the past decades has undergone profound social and cultural transformations. A decree by the Colombian government created Bahía Solano as an agricultural

by Beñat Garaio Mendizabal This magazine, and this “People’s Issue” in particular, are the loudspeakers and meeting point for those of us who believe that there is an alternative in this world, another way to understand our lives. We resist thinking that we will live and die on the same errant planet, a planet that

by Jordan Engel “More indigenous territory has been claimed by maps than by guns. This assertion has its corollary: more indigenous territory can be defended and reclaimed by maps than by guns.” — Bernard Nietschmann, geographer Throughout time and across cultures, the thing that is often most important to a people is land. While global industrial society’s

by Heidi Simper “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.” —Marcus Garvey During the rainy season in the bush of the Great African Rift Valley in Eastern Tanzania, amid Maasai culture, acacia trees, and cries of hyenas in the night, I was conducting my

by Irene Teixidor Toneu Isafarn nudrar means “medicinal plants from the mountains” in Tashelhit, one of the three Berber languages spoken in Morocco. Recently, in collaboration with the Global Diversity Foundation, I spent six months documenting medicinal plant use in the High Atlas and understanding the environmental and cultural landscapes in which plants are used.

by Felipe Montoya-Greenheck . Throughout history, peasants around the world have faced the threats of empire, urban expansion and the lure of urban opportunities, over-taxation, and both abandonment and persecution by the state. In our generation, they have also been confronted with dispossession by the corporate machinery, lubricated by neo-liberal international agreements favoring free trade.

by Tom Corcoran . To Walk in the Gamaran Protected Forest Given the myriad of contradictions, spending time in the ancient forests of West Sumatra with Minangkabau people (Minang) is perhaps a challenge for the mind and spirit of any conservationist. Traditionally a people of the forest, the Minang are the world’s largest matrilineal society, with

by Aleksandra Bocharnikova The Sikhote-Alin is a mountain range in Russia’s Pacific Far East. This territory contains one of the largest unmodified temperate forests in the Northern hemisphere. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) states that its protected areas are “considered to contain the greatest plant and animal diversity on the north-western

by Sara Shneiderman and Mark Turin “My heart is still shaking,” said Ram Bahadur when we spoke with him the day after the first massive earthquake  —  7.9 on the Richter Scale  —  struck Nepal on April 25, 2015. Almost five months later, he and other members of the Indigenous Thangmi community in Nepal are still

by Jeanine M. Canty Everything interesting happens at the edges. As we are moving to restore our relationships with nature, including one another, in an extremely diverse and globally connected planet, the knowledge we need is held by those who are crossing boundaries between fixed viewpoints, restoring relationship with place, holding multiple ways of being, and