Ayonghe Akonwi
The question of how to go about sacred sites or places of spiritual importance to a people has been widely debated within the anthropological literature. As it stands, there are often no obvious or concrete answers, especially when we think about the different actors that shape the use of such places. This is similarly observed in the example of collaborative management (co-management) which Grazia Borrini, Paul Nadasdy, Fikret Berkes to name a few, have explored broadly in their work. While this question remains a challenge and certainly, an issue of interest, for many scholars in anthropology, I would like to situate this problem in my work with people of the Mount Cameroon National Park (MCNP) in Sub-Saharan West Africa.
I focus on ethnographic experiences, drawing excerpts from an earlier study I published in 2022 entitled “Knowledge Integration in Co-management: A Study on the People of the Mount Cameroon National Park”. Some of my thoughts on this matter, I have briefly shared through a contribution “Preserving Sacred Sites in the Arctic: Lessons from elsewhere?” published in 2022 in the Journal Nordicum – Mediterraneum. However, I hope to advance this discussion even further with the subject of “reconciling the ‘sacred’ in state-protected forests”, using a book chapter publication. I believe there are many lessons we can gain from the MCNP case. In this example, I was opportune to work with the Bakweri people for over seven years, understanding their coping mechanisms, and capability to continue their spiritual use of forest despite the complex nature of a State-induced system for managing forest. From my work with them, I was able to reveal some of the knowledge they mask beneath their day-to-day practices allowing them to maintain certain spiritual practices without jeopardizing the preservation of biodiversity which is often of difficulty as observed in previous literature.
Within this chapter, I explore how and why modern forms of land-use such as tourism and extractive industries can co-exist with people’s spiritual practices, and its relevance to maintaining biodiversity and a culture. By differentiating between conservation specialists’ perceptions and local people’s spiritual meanings, I discuss how spiritual places are categorized, used, and managed. One revelation from this chapter, is that, in complex settings of co-managing State-protected forests, it is possible to promote multifaceted uses among diverse actors such that people’s connection to sacred sites may endure even when sacred sites incorporate other interests at hand. This observation, however, depends on what kind of norms, values, and taboos people associate with such places. I hope the chapter will be a useful contribution to the problem of going about sacred sites as well as adding to advance scholarly literature on the subject matter.