SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Whereas little research has traced the displacement and relocation of Indigenous peoples engaged in subsistence agriculture generally in Africa, even less has examined what happens to Indigenous knowledge when such communities are forced to relocate, particularly with respect to their knowledge about traditional farming practices. Yet, when we consider the cultural capacities, skills, and knowledges brought by Indigenous peoples who are forced to relocate, we can begin to inquire about their untapped potential, and their agency to pursue their own (agricultural) development, and to bolster their own resilience and adaptation strategies to the impacts of environmental change, as active participants and co-creators of borderwork. This article seeks to respond to gaps in decolonial migration and development literature, policy, and practice by asserting the need to consider the role that Indigenous knowledge could play in advancing the sustainable agricultural development, and thus climate-resilience, of Indigenous peoples who are displaced and the societies and areas that they relocate to. Offering a case study of three districts (Isingiro, Ntungamo and Rakai) in the climate-vulnerable, ethnically rich, and migrant and refugee-dense southwestern region of Uganda, this article concludes with a call for re-imagining, and for further research into, the role that displaced Indigenous peoples and communities—their agricultural knowledge, capacities, and ties to the land—could play in expanding the hermeneutic capacity and usefulness of the notion of borderwork for sustainable development policies and practices.