Guest Editors’ Introduction

Indigenous peoples around the world revere their environment's trees, rivers, grasses, stones, hills, and forests. Often labeled 'Animists', 1 indigenous peoples also personify their environments, treating both their lands and the non-human denizens occupying those lands as persons to be related to as cognizant and communicative subjects rather than as inert or insignificant objects. One would imagine that this reverence and personification of their surroundings would lead indigenous peoples to conscious conservation thought and practice: that they would do everything in their power, logic would seem to dictate, to protect the deities; likewise, that they would strive not to harm plant and animal persons who, in many respects, possess a right to life equal to that of humans.