Parks and Arbitration: A leader of Russia’s Udege community describes the decades-long fight to create Bikin National Park, the first to safeguard Indigenous rights

Abstract

B ikin National Park is one of very few areas in the Russian Far East that remain untouched by those I consider the “wild barbarians of civilization.” It is home to the largest cat on the planet, the Amur tiger, and the Bikin River basin, nicknamed “the Russian Amazon.” Its forests are known as the lungs of the Northern Hemisphere, just as the Amazon’s jungles are in the Southern Hemisphere. The Bikin is also the native land of the Udege people, and about 600 of us still live there. AG ÊN C IA B RA SI L FO TO G RA FI AS PARKS AND ARBITRATION A leader of Russia’s Udege community describes the decades-long fight to create Bikin National Park, the first to safeguard Indigenous rights