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'Contaminated' cultures: Can conservation protect nature while excluding Indigenous peoples?
- June 17, 2026 at 10:00 PM
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At an international heritage symposium in Japan, I heard a word that stayed with me: "contaminated." The discussion concerned whether Indigenous peoples needed to be named explicitly in a new World Heritage framework. One argument was that Indigenous cultures had changed through contact, survival and adaptation, and therefore no longer required distinct recognition. I found that deeply troubling.
Originally published at Phys.org