Decolonizing Development: Learning from Long-term Relationships with Forest Communities

“Development comes in so many spectrums depending on our experiences and our upbringing…” 

- Heidi Majano

In the quote above Heidi Majano, Executive Director of the Peaceful World Foundation, reminds us about diverse understandings of development around the world. This is especially important when considering development in the Global South, as Heidi told us through her experiences working with forest communities in Papua New Guinea. She learned about development through the forest communities’ local ways of sustainable living. 

The YVC Social Media Team crafted Instagram posts about the meeting with Heidi and Juli. Check them out here: @rootsroutesic!

On the 24th of April 2022, the Youth Visionary Collective (YVC) welcomed back Heidi Majano, and Roots & Routes (R&R) very own  Executive Director Juli Hazlewood to talk about their experiences working with Indigenous and Black communities who actively question and decolonize development with youth around the world on our up and coming podcast, “Re-storying the World”.

When the YVC was asked what development means to them, Intern Aryan Trehan responded “Development really stems from people who live on soil and know the land and know the problems and solutions that come with it”. Both Heidi and Juli endorse this idea of a deep connection that forest communities have with Nature and their surroundings. Heidi told the YVC about her experience living with the forest communities in Papua New Guinea for 10 years, and Juli talked about her deep and ongoing relationships with Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities in the Ecuadorian Chocó Rainforest Esmeraldas Province for the past 25 years. Both shared with the youth what they had learned about diverse and decolonial ways of living and developing with Nature.

Here Juli Hazlewood shares an insight she picked up by living with Indigenous communities: Respecting self-determination in development is paramount.

Western perspectives of development are imposed on the Global South through colonial capitalist histories and systems. The day-to-day “right ways” to be modern in the world constitute conventional perspectives of development. These work in colonizing ways to invisibilize and ignore different interpretations and understandings of development around the world. 

In fact, Heidi and Juli told the YVC that Indigenous and Black communities in Papua New Guinea and Ecuador are actively working to challenge and decolonize Western ideas of development. They insist that although some may see them as “poor”, they have a distinct value system where they see themselves as wealthy because of long term relationships to their land. 

Heidi explained how forest communities in Papua New Guinea have been developing separate from Western understandings of development through their innovations in environmental practices and navigation skills. For instance, Papua New Guineans are one of the first gardeners of our time, and their vast garden and food forest cultivation practices date back to over 50,000 years! Therefore, all humans have developed in their own way and on their own time - and they always will be. You can find out more about what Heidi shares about distinct environmental practices in this reel.

Both Heidi and Juli shared inspiring advice to youth about working with Indigenous, ancestral, and land stewards around the world as allies. Development, they say, is a complicated word that is defined, according to Global North perspectives, based on what progress and success is. This is because during the colonial domination of the world by the West, alternative non-western knowledge and ways of living were ignored and replaced by European ones. The word development can, therefore, have negative connotations for colonized countries in the Global South, who have other visions of the world. 

This is why the only way forward is to decolonize development by following the lead of community-initiated projects, and lending a hand, when asked, through collaboration and allyship. Being an ally is based in friendship, in the desire to establish meaningful and long-term relationships, as opposed to going in to gather (or extract) something. One thing that visitors to communities can do is work in collaboration to build platforms where people can amplify their own voices and where their messages can be expanded even further. Therefore, coming with an open heart and mind and without an agenda. Willingness to go along with what the community prioritizes or asks, according to one’s skill set, is key to intercultural collaborations.

These quotes express the heart of Heidi and Juli’s messages: when working as allies with Indigenous, ancestral, and land steward communities, it is important to immerse yourself in the culture with open arms and be ready to learn. Instagram, 31st of May 2022.

As Juli’s long relationship is based in working and living with the Awá, Chachi Indigenous, and Afro-descendant communities in the Ecuadorian Chocó Rainforests, she talked about the importance to delve into the coloniality of one’s own mind when joining a distinct cultural context. She referred to the socialized colonial layers that have shaped everyone’s personhood and worldview, especially those from Western cultures. For example, how wealth, advancement, or well-being is dependent on our cultures. Only by continually working to peel back the layers of this internalized colonial mindset can one actually hear what Indigenous people are trying to say. 

Both Heidi and Juli recounted the values and lessons they learned from the forest communities they lived in. While living with the Chocó community and immersing into their lifestyles, Juli learned about a whole other way of being in and seeing the world, known as “watershed thinking,” which she talks about in the Instagram posts below. “Acknowledging that we all belong to “basins of relations' ' within distinct watersheds around the world for which we can better learn to care, is vital for intercultural understanding and for water justice (access to clean water) for all.

Roots & Routes Instagram, 7th of June 2022.

Throughout the conversation, a greater understanding of colonial aspects of development unfolded through story-telling, and how the pieces fit together became more obvious. The beginning of the conversation featured varying definitions of what development means with many YVC interns providing both positive and negative definitions of the word. However, Heidi explained that Western cultural interpretations of development often focus on economic values from the Global North. When explaining her experience living in forest communities, who told her that they needed development, Heidi recounted asking them “Who told you that you're not developed? That’s what I would ask them in (native language), who told you you were not developed?” [Tok Pisin translation "Husait i tokim yupela, yu no divelop?"] The question in itself reveals that “being undeveloped” is a myth that is imposed upon people by outsiders; it’s not something original forest inhabitants pick up from within their culture. 

As the late great Gustavo Esteva taught, when the word developed is muttered, there are people who are designated as undeveloped, and that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is an act that colonizes and makes people feel “lesser than” or less legitimate in their worldview and everyday life practices.  Heidi’s story highlights how her experience living with Indigenous communities showed one way of decolonizing development by rooting back to one’s history and starting again with new ways forward from there.

YVC Intern Annalise M Rice’s response about what development is to her demonstrates two sides to the story. See more by following us on Instagram.

Hearing about the lessons that Heidi and Juli learned from living with forest communities has opened up new pathways for youth who want to pursue environmental and racial justice work in the world, for there is no doubt that there are inequities in relation to opportunities and suffering. 

Let us embrace a new perspective: Instead of development from outside, what does it look like from the inside, from each community, from individuals, when given the space to define it for themselves? As Gustavo Esteva asked, can we even decolonize development, or does the concept itself carry too much dominant “it means to be like us” baggage?   In the face of development pressures, how can we reconnect to values that we have forgotten? How do we contribute to strengthening communities' cultural roots that carry forward their values, instead of forcing solutions that don’t address their needs? 

The conversation left all of us inspired and hoping to venture on similar experiences living with forest communities one day! 

Finally, the YVC would like to leave this question for you: What does development mean to you? Knowing now what you learned in this article, in what ways do you think we can decolonize development in your community?