Views of the forest: Local people and indigenous knowledge in the Adirondack Park land-use conflict

Participation in land-use decision making provides a crucial link between local cultures, their knowledge of forest ecology, and the political processes that control land-use. The Adirondack Park in the State of New York offers a case study of the role of local people and indigenous knowledge in land-use decision making for forest lands. This research provides a window on the conflict between different cultures and socio-economic classes as they wrestle over control of the decision-making process.; This study examines the worldviews of the different groups, and the attitudes, values, and beliefs toward the forest that engender different decisions about the uses of forest land. Indigenous knowledge of the forest, represented by woodspeople who are locally recognized as repositories of that knowledge, provides a way for the worldviews of local people to operate in the land-use decision-making process. Yet disregard for their rights to democratic participation in the decision-making process has given rise to an imbalance of power. Special interest groups and regulatory agencies have neglected the potential role of local people and indigenous knowledge of the forests in Adirondack land-use management, resulting in conflict between local people and outsiders, whom locals perceive to be controlling the land-use decision-making process.; When minority voices are consistently ignored, conflict escalates and can stalemate the process of decision-making and problem-solving in any sphere. The more powerful interests in Adirondack land-use regulation have defined democratic participation in ways which are not acceptable to the minority. This paradox must be discussed openly, and definitions of participation reconstructed in order for the process to move beyond stalemate.; An examination of the zones of conflict through interviews, meetings, and controversial incidents also reveals that fundamental differences between the languages of zoning, ecology, and aesthetics has given rise to deep misunderstandings. When lack of recognition of these differences persists, bargaining positions remain far apart, even when underlying interests may be similar.; Resolution will only occur when minority voices and the worldviews they represent are recognized as having legitimacy, and become part of the process of decision-making, and when a conscious decision is made to adopt a unifying language of land-management.