Land Rights and Resource Management in Indigenous Societies

Chapter 5 centres land as the foundation of Indigenous cultural, spiritual, economic, and political life, contrasting Indigenous relational land ethics with Western commodification, enclosure, and extractive development. It surveys Indigenous stewardship practices—rotational farming, controlled burning, agroforestry—grounded in Indigenous ecological knowledge, with illustrative cases such as Zuni water management, Inca terracing, and bison stewardship. The chapter traces how European legal doctrines (notably terra nullius and the Doctrine of Discovery) institutionalized dispossession and epistemic erasure, producing enduring consequences: poverty, weakened food sovereignty, and heightened vulnerability to climate change and resource extraction. It then maps contemporary resistance and renewal through legal challenges, advocacy, cultural revitalization, ecological restoration, and governance innovations such as native title recognition (e.g., Mabo), co-management arrangements, and the normative influence of UNDRIP. The chapter argues that securing land rights is both a justice imperative and a practical pathway for sustainable environmental futures.