Meet Sam, the Earth Jurisprudence Practitioner who is working with Baka Forest Peoples to breathe new life into ‘the lungs of Africa’.
Watch the film:
Read Sam’s story:
Indigenous communities, like Sam’s own Nninong clan, have long lived in balance with the forests of the Congo Basin. But large areas were converted into palm oil and rubber plantations by British authorities and, after the colonial era, handed to the state as part of the Cameroon Development Corporation.
The legacy of colonialism continues through logging, mining and poaching. This ‘development’ is unravelling the ancestral lands and thereby nutrition, medicine and refuge of 75 million people, the home of more other creatures than we can count, and the biggest forest carbon sink in the world.
This new story of decolonisation from the African Earth Jurisprudence Collective is a tale of awakening, of the cycles that gifted Sam new beginnings from death, and of the path that he is helping us all to track towards recognising Earth’s best custodians. In their rich reciprocal relationship with the forest, there lies hope for reweaving the biocultural diversity that ensures abundance for the entire community of life.
More stories of decolonisation:
Earth Jurisprudence explained:
About the African Earth Jurisprudence Collective:
The Collective brings together dedicated Earth Jurisprudence Practitioners working locally across the continent. It emerged as a home for graduates and facilitators of our unique, UN-recognised Trainings for Transformation.
These practitioners are accompanying Indigenous communities on journeys of revival, using methodologies learnt from the Colombian Amazon. Storytelling, elder-centred dialogues and eco-cultural mapping unearth wisdom that predates colonialism, which is guiding these communities through the restoration of seed diversity, agroecological farming, sacred ritual and intergenerational learning. Wherever a community starts their journey of decolonisation, these processes ultimately reweave holistic biocultural systems.
