Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
In the heavily Indigenous country of Guatemala, Indigenous citizens hold high hopes for the upcoming administration of their newly elected president, as Maria Martin reports.
Anthropologist Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj (Kʼicheʼ Maya), who has taught at Stanford and other U.S. universities, shared in the nationwide euphoria after the upset landslide victory last Sunday of reform candidate Bernardo Arévalo.
”In many ways, this is a dream that come true.”
For Indigenous people, she says, there are now hopes for a different Guatemala, one in which the Maya and other Indigenous groups aren’t marginalized and treated as second-class citizens.
“So this is the opportunity to change the reality, to stop the migration to the United States… this is also a special moment for Indigenous women… Indigenous women in Guatemala have been working very hard for justice.”
Velásquez herself has suffered threats for her work as a columnist in the now closed newspaper El Periodico.
Her hopes for change are tempered by the reality of a Guatemalan system still trying to block Arévalo from taking office.
“We know that Arévalo has many challenges, but we also recognize that it’s possible to start to change and to build another Guatemala.”
Kyla Magdalena and her crew members from the 2022 Forest Stewards Youth Corps summer program in Jemez Pueblo work on installing a wildlife watershed installation. (Courtesy Kyla Magdalena)
There’s plenty of conservation work to do on tribal lands, but it’s not always easy to get Indigenous people into these positions.
Groups such as the Forest Stewards Youth Corps see the value of working with them and it’s made an impact on the community, as Emma VandenEinde of the Mountain West News Bureau reports in part two of her series.
Conservation is interwoven into Indigenous teachings and they know how to care for the land.
A 2021 study showed that Indigenous-managed lands accounted for protecting about 85% of the world’s biodiversity.
Chas Robles is the director of Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps, another conservation group focused on recruiting Indigenous Youth in the Mountain West, like the Forest Stewards Youth Corps.
He says investment in youth training programs is critical.
“So reconnecting those young folks to those places and spaces… is a really powerful opportunity for those young folks to really find a passion for the outdoors and the lands in the waters that their ancestors inhabited.”
And that passion is being pursued. 30 people from Jemez Pueblo have gone through the Youth Corps programs.
Of the 23 people who served on all of the crews this summer, 12 said they are pursuing, or plan to pursue, a career in Natural Resource Management.
Kyla Magdalena works with Antuane Lucero from the 2022 Forest Stewards Youth Corps summer crew in Jemez Pueblo. (Courtesy Kyla Magdalena)
Kyla Magdalena had a similar experience.
She expected to go to work straight out of high school… until she fell in love with tree plot planning.
“It was kind of like a scavenger hunt because they would just give you the map in the coordinates.”
Now, she wants to study Geographic Information Systems.
“That really inspired me, so I plan to get my degree and come back to the community and help out with land.”
That’s critical for people like John Galvan, the tribal forest manager for Jemez Pueblo.
He says the work doesn’t get done without the trainees’ help.
He gives them all the same advice: “Go out and explore the world and see what’s out there and get your education, but do come back again to help our people, our community, our landscape.”
Galvan hopes that more Indigenous people will use their knowledge of the land to help preserve it for years to come.
“That’s what it comes down. What are we leaving for our future generations? So it’s great to have these kids that are interested right now. Hopefully we can direct them to become foresters again.”
Listen to part one of her series:
This two-part series was supported by The Water Desk, an initiative from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our newsletter today.
