Once Sacred Fruits

Indigenous communities worldwide are facing cultural extinction, a process paralleled by the loss of biological diversity within their ancestral territories; yet these same communities are proactively working to restore and revitalize languages, knowledge, and traditions, and to steward their ancestral lands and waters. Native ecologies and Native cultures are intrinsically connected: if native ecosystems are reshaped, eroded, or destroyed, the indigenous cultures are also restructured or diminished, and may eventually disintegrate as the links between indigenous traditions and culturally important species disappear. The reverse is also true. The urgent need for proactive, participatory, community-based, conservation programs is underscored by worldwide studies reporting the erosion of biocultural diversity, as native cultures and ecosystems are assimilated and transformed by an increasingly homogenous global economy. This volume of field studies co-authored by a USA-based scientist in collaboration with indigenous experts and research associates of the Tado Community, outlines ongoing challenges and locally-based solutions to conserving and revitalizing biocultural diversity.