Colonialism, Healing, and Growth: the role of community-led narratives
Tania Ocampo-Garcia, our Learning and Trainings Officer, reflects on her four years with InsightShare, on the cusp of starting a PhD.
As an international student coming to the UK for an MSc in Environmental Change and International Development, I set myself the goal of absorbing as much knowledge as I could from my professors that year to make my transition into the non-profit sector easier after graduation. A couple of months later, I found myself reading reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and academic articles from top journals as I prepared to conduct online interviews during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020.
I was passionate about learning why some farmers, especially women, lacked access to weather information systems (WIS) in the Moshi Rural District, Tanzania, and whether having access to them could improve their agricultural productivity. I naively assumed that weather forecasting technology could help bridge the gender gap in this context and that women in the community could anticipate and adapt to climate change conditions affecting their agricultural production. Everything seemed very promising until one of our class tutors, Prof. Dorothea Kleine, challenged me to reflect on my assumptions: why do you believe that women farmers want to use WIS to predict the weather in this context? Have you thought about what else they need to improve their livelihoods?
Upon reflection, my research group partners and I added questions to explore Indigenous traditional knowledge and better understand why rural farmers preferred to use traditional knowledge instead of weather forecasting technology. This allowed me to connect with the interviewees at another level, listening to Mr Shirima, Mr Nashoni, and Mr Sabas’s experiences. They shared personal stories and examples to explain why farmers in the Moshi rural areas relied on Indigenous knowledge by observing the behaviour of animals, insects, and birds.
The OG climate experts
This experience made me reflect on the importance of deeply listening to the communities we work with instead of relying entirely on environmental science to find practical solutions to climate change challenges. Fast-forward four years, and I am a Learning and Training Officer at InsightShare, a non-profit social enterprise Doing Development Differently. Throughout my journey at InsightShare, I learned that Indigenous Peoples already have answers to the questions that academics and governments bring every year to the COPs.
“Though Indigenous Peoples comprise only around 6% of the global population, they protect 80% of biodiversity left in the world. Preserving biodiversity is also key to turning around the climate crisis, as these areas are major carbon sinks.”
Through supporting and learning from other activists in the InsightShare family, like Anabela Carlón Flores (Yaqui, Mexico), Seno Tsuhah (Naga, India), Samwel Nangiria (Maasai, Tanzania), Scola Kukutia (Maasai, Kenya), Sinegugu Zukulu (Mpondo, South Africa) and Elias Kimaiyo (Sengwer, Kenya), I firmly believe that Indigenous Peoples are walking the talk and leading by example when it comes to environmental conservation, primarily due to their cosmovision and connection to the land.
Decolonising myself
The not-so-exciting part of walking the talk is obviously the price that comes with it. Growing up in Mexico, which has been listed as one of the most dangerous countries worldwide to be an environmental rights defender, made it challenging for me to be more vocal about these issues.
Communities in Colima and Jalisco have suffered from environmental harms linked to Mexico’s largest iron mining company, which has international links in Europe. “Guardianas” from Hopelchén, Homún and Nuevo Jerusalén in the Yucatán Peninsula, where I grew up, are facing significant lifestyle changes due to monoculture farming and mega pork farms, leading to environmental degradation, health issues, and displacement. The assassination of activist Homero Gómez, who played a crucial role in protecting the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacán, remains unpunished. There’s a documentary on Netflix about Homero’s case, by the way.
An unexpected outcome of supporting Indigenous activists in documenting their rich traditional culture and struggles as land defenders through Participatory Video encouraged me to look back and reflect on where this injustice and violence stems from. In 2023, I attended the final gathering and screening event of the BREATHE! project in Paris, France.
Photo by Fadi Elias & Salman Abdo – In-Haus Media 2023
This experiential learning process, accompanying incredibly talented young people from Black and ethnically diverse backgrounds to present their artistic outputs, inspired me to begin a journey to decolonise myself.
“Looted, stolen, disrespected. Why do I feel disconnected to the sounds of safety, home and laughter? … As long as strangers are in charge of me, nothing will change. And without change, there is no future.”
– Quote from Poetry & Music video (BREATHE! project).
After screening films from various projects on the themes of community-led narratives, healing processes, and the role of participatory art forms in transitional justice at the Marmalade Festival in Oxford and the Development Studies Association (DSA2024) Conference in London this year, I learned the importance of embracing healing to move forward in processes that involve re-opening wounds that date back to colonial times but remain fresh and deep in the present.
Photo by Laure Davis – ADVA Photography 2024
What’s next?
Presenting powerful projects like the Maasai Living Cultures at these events, facilitating discussions and engaging in questions with the audience made me reflect on my positionality in this arena. Ana Paz, a spoken word artist who also presented her Capoeira research and practice at the DSA24 Conference, nailed this with a question about how I process engaging in these projects without necessarily having roots in African countries – and my feelings about it.
All the experiences and connections I made in the past four years at InsightShare have made me grow professionally and personally to the extent that I am soon embarking on a PhD journey to explore social inequalities in coastal urban environments that are more prone to the effects of climate change. I will have the opportunity to conduct this research project with participatory methods back in my hometown in Mexico, being able to pass on some of the knowledge I have gained from Indigenous activists, researchers pushing themselves to embed participatory approaches in their work, and my colleagues at InsightShare who often wear multiple hats.
Without pushing myself out of my comfort zone, I cannot radically advocate for decolonisation in the development sector or academia. I am excited for this new chapter and immensely proud of my young self for sending that e-mail to Soledad Muniz, Director of Programmes at InsightShare, after she ran a PV teaser workshop when I was still in my MSc programme at the University of Sheffield. Who knows what path I would have ended up on had I not reached out back then?
