'With the Salween Peace Park, We Can Survive as a Nation': Karen Environmental Relations and the Politics of an Indigenous Conservation Initiative

Global conservation has a history of displacing Indigenous peoples from their traditional territories, which contain many of the world's most intact and biologically-rich ecosystems. However, this has the potential to change with growing international recognition of Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas and Territories (ICCAs) as a protected area category. Indigenous peoples are declaring protected areas to conserve biodiversity, defend their traditional territories, and resist dispossession. This thesis critically examines the mobilization of Indigenous environmental relations and conservation politics to protect the land in the Salween Peace Park, a 5,485-square kilometre conservation initiative in the autonomous Karen territory of Kawthoolei, otherwise known as Karen State, Burma. I argue that paying attention to spiritual-environmental relations is essential in order to understand Indigenous environmental governance, and that conservation projects offer unique opportunities for Indigenous peoples to mobilize these environmental relations, engage in symbolic politics, and mount a sovereign refusal of state domination.