Our Land, Our Stories - Voices from the Edges

This event was facilitated by Nessie Reid, with speakers Rosebell Abwonji, Francesca Masoero and Maritza Arizaga. Together, they share their insights on justice, displacement, and environmental crises within their own experience in the community conservation field. They also open the discussion up to invite participants' positions within the conservation landscape, considering where they see themselves in relation to power, land, and decision-making.

00:00 Welcome & panel overview
00:21 Facilitator & panelist bios (Nessie, Rosebell, Francesca, Marita)
01:21 Nessie opens: St Ethelburga’s, spiritual/deep ecology & the “grandmother test”
02:42 Who gets to be a conservationist? Seat at the table
03:13 “Decolonising conservation” — why the term, and how we’ll approach it
04:02 Global Diversity Foundation: work, fellows & High Atlas program
05:44 Has conservation widened the human–nature gap? Half-Earth & fortress conservation
07:43 Framing today: reconciliation, restitution & reparations
08:44 Marita: US park history, land-grant universities & displacement
12:20 Rosebell: Maasai lifeways, exclusion from land & national parks narrative
17:25 Francesca: belonging, art as vessel & Conservation Justice at GDF
23:24 Funding inequity (5% to African-led orgs) & the Gujarat water-well lesson
25:43 Unlearning & the “recovering conservationist”
26:32 Marita: immigrant journey, learning burden & rights-holders vs stakeholders
32:02 Reparations in practice: Mount Blue Sky renaming & rematriation/co-management
34:59 Rosebell: building trust, positionality & making space for community voices
38:07 Francesca: time, trust & project funding limits; seed grants & High Atlas
43:29 Nessie: seasonality, rest & aligning philanthropy with community reality
46:49 Patchwork of Belonging — invitation to participate
47:42 Belonging reflections — being present & authentic (Marita)
50:04 Belonging reflections — authenticity, shared values & empathy (Rosebell)
51:50 Belonging reflections — past/present/future & collective imagining (Francesca)
53:15 Monarch butterfly metaphor: being “both/and”; facilitator identity (Marita)
54:58 Audience Q: Amazigh language — context & clarification
57:39 Audience Q: “giving back” — hungry ghosts, planting seeds & disrupting power
01:00:22 Closing thanks & applause