“Whenever I think of conflict between humans and elephants, I think it's in the mind. My organic space is in conflict with my imagined space.”– Nishant Srinivasaiah, Frontier Elephant Programme.

The Bannerghatta National Park is situated right on the outskirts of the city of Bengaluru, which is one of the fastest-expanding urban centers of the last decade. This episode explores the challenges of communities and elephants living in and around the eco-sensitive zone around the Bannerghatta National Park. They experience shifts in climate, food systems, development, and forest management, all of which are altering their traditional ways of living and relationships with one another.

The Landscape Has Changed For Them Too explores the ancient cohabitation of people and Asian elephants in a beautiful recognition of the land rights of both humans and more than human, and how climate change is experienced as a dual and connected trauma between elephants and people sharing the same lands. This podcast is the final episode of Season 1 of our award-winning Land Body Ecologies Podcast.

Land Body Ecologies Podcast is produced by Invisible Flock and this episode is produced with Quicksand.

Land Body Ecologies Podcast is a series of six stand-alone episodes sharing stories of solastalgia from land-dependent and Indigenous communities affected by environmental change. In Episode 5, Born From Here, we travel to the edges of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forests in Kanungu district in Southwestern Uganda. Looking to the dense green hills that hold fields of sunflowers and ridges overlooking sacred trees, listeners hear stories of the ancestral land of the Batwa community.

Clouds constantly rise and fall in the hills of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. This is known as Muntaba and is a place the Batwa would not visit as it is meant to be spiritual and sited with gold. The Batwa were once forest dwellers who used to live in Ekyuya, Semuliki, Bwindi, and Mgahinga, their ancestral lands in Uganda. In the early 1990s, government authorities evicted the Batwa from the forest and their home in the name of free land for wildlife and forest conservation. The evictions left the Batwa struggling to survive and facing extreme discrimination on the margins of their former home. These forests lie within the biodiversity-rich Albertine Rift eco-region and are sites of global biodiversity importance, famously home to half of the world’s population of endangered mountain gorillas.

In Born From Here, we hear the lasting impacts on their health, culture, and livelihoods 30 years on from evictions. The episode features Batwa herbalists, artists, and rare insights from elders on their experiences of living in and out of the forest.

Land Body Ecologies Podcast is produced by Invisible Flock and this episode, Born from Here, is also produced with Action for Batwa Empowerment Group.

The Crying Place shares a story of the Pgak’yau (Karen) community from the hilly regions of Ban Nong Tao, held at the base of rocky mountain faces and green forests. In this episode, listeners are invited to experience the harvest season of the Pgak’yau (Karen) community and encouraged to slow down for the earth.In Pgak’yau, Haku (ฮากุ) means the crying place. That is what we call the earth. In all important moments, we cry. When we are born we cry, when we feel happy we cry, and we cry because we suffer. Pgak’yau philosophy expresses the need to slow down for the earth, and the need to take care and take accountability for our world. This episode is narrated by legendary activist and campaigner Joni Odochao and his son Siwakorn Odochao on the ongoing land rights of the Pgak’yau community and their advocacy for traditional rotational farming. Both land rights and advocacy are realised “heu”, meaning little by little, step by step.The Crying Place is produced by Invisible Flock with Joni Odochao, Siwakorn Odochao, Jennifer Katanyoutanant and Land Body Ecologies. For further details, transcript and images from the process please visit the show notes. The B-side of this podcast is also available. To listen to this, please find it on our podcast page.

Learn more: https://www.landbodyecologies.com/podcast