By Nicole Findlay
Adele Michon knows a thing or two about living off the grid. Michon spent her childhood in rural France where her family was living off the land, growing vegetables and foraging for wild mushrooms and medicinal plants. Her family’s eventual move to Montreal didn’t diminish her passion for the land.
Ever since, the MA student in geography has harboured a fascination for the environment and peoples whose lives are intrinsically tied to it.
Michon recently concluded the research stage of her MA. She spent four months living among the indigenous Ngöbe community in the cloud forests of Panama. Her graduate advisor, Derek Smith, had included her on a project he had been coordinating in the region.
“It was a dream opportunity to see my main academic interests – indigenous rights, forest conservation and participatory mapping, integrated into a very concrete project,” Michon said. When she received funding from the International Development Research Centre’s John G. Bene Fellowship fund, that dream became a reality. Although fluent in Spanish, the fact that she could not speak the local language, Ngöbere, didn’t deter her in the least.
“I learned it by myself with a Spanish- Ngöbere book, and practiced with a Peace Corp volunteer who was living in the area,” she said.
Armed with rudimentary knowledge of the language, Michon settled in with a local family in a small village to conduct her research.
“The region provided an ideal setting for my study as the indigenous communities depend on the forest for food, medicine and house construction materials.”
However, the world is encroaching on the Ngöbe’s land. Canadian mining companies have been lobbying the Panamanian government for the right to mine copper on indigenous land. Old growth forests would be cut down threatening the existence of the already endangered and endemic wildlife and the people they support.
Through a combination of field work techniques that included participant observation, interviews, focus groups and questionnaires and community meetings, Michon recorded the community’s perspectives and priorities on the conservation of their land, and the preservation of their ancient way of life.
Next, she will turn her attention to analyzing the data she has collected and will return to the community in the summer to discuss the results of the research with them.
“I hope that this will promote a discussion about the importance of their knowledge of the area, and help them protect the diminishing old growth-forest of which they are the stewards.”