The lack of engagement with indigenous communities is also notable given the fashion industry’s increased focus on biodiversity, leading experts to question how the industry can develop effective conservation strategies without consulting the people who are doing it best.
There are connections between the two, too. “Indigenous peoples are essential to successful biodiversity and climate strategies, and a lot of design is influenced by or emerges from natural nexuses,” says Quinn Buchwald, a citizen of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana and director of Conservation International’s Indigenous and Traditional Peoples Program. “Big companies have their own departments, but these principles are there to advise all of them. I’m not saying that biodiversity or intellectual property is more important than the other. Companies should be working in all of these areas. I think they’re connected, and they are.”
This mentoring isn’t a one-way street: Indigenous communities have a lot to learn from fashion, including marketing, consumer education and supply chain logistics.
Photo: Pedro Laguna
This guide is not about specific change, but about fundamentally shifting the relationship between fashion and Indigenous communities. While there is room to right past wrongs and create hopeful opportunities, the underlying goal is much simpler: to open lines of communication and move beyond the point where fashion and Indigenous and local communities are mutually exclusive.
“We hope this will encourage more innovation, collaboration and communication between the Global North and the Global South. We have a lot to learn from each other,” Onwuka said. “Only by working together can we find more lasting and appropriate solutions to the environmental crisis we face.”
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