Native, Indigenous or Rootless: A conversation between Sulemana Abudulai and Alastair McIntosh

Join us for this event at the Big Tent Festival on Saturday the 24th from 1:45 to 2:45pm in The Lounge.

Native, Indigenous or Rootless:
A conversation between Sulemana Abudulai and Alastair McIntosh.

Sharing stories from their native places, our speakers will explore
issues of identity, land rights and strategies for building community
in a globalised world.

Background
By following the laws of the Earth – Earth Jurisprudence – indigenous
communities have evolved over centuries in mutually enhancing
relationships with their land. Abdulai’s work is dedicated to reviving
this knowledge and practices, which embrace intergenerational equity,
living with ecological integrity, the recognition of ecosystem rights
and more. It is these relationships, bound in oral customary lores,
that form the basis for living with ecological integrity. Abdulai is
keen to promote learning between the North and South as he believes
there are complementary lessons to be learnt. Alastair has long been a
campaigner for land rights in Scotland and he explores similar issues
in a Scottish context.

Biographies
Dr Sulemana Abudulai is the son of a Ghanian chief and was brought up
in that tradition. He worked for many years as international grants
officer with Comic Relief and is now Head of Fundraising at the Gaia
Foundation. Before that, he was involved in the establishment of
programmes for various British NGOs. He is also involved in a
voluntary capacity with work around environment, youth, and maternal
health.

He has a PhD in Land Economy, MSc in Rural and Regional Resources
Planning and BSc in Land Economy. Sulemana has worked for nearly 21
years in development, is also a Research Associate at the Centre for
African Studies, University of Cambridge and a member of the Board of
Trustees of various NGOs in the UK and Africa.

Alastair McIntosh
Alastair McIntosh was brought up on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer
Hebrides.  He is a writer and campaigner for social justice and
environmental sustainability. He holds fellowships at the Centre for
Human Ecology, the E. F. Schumacher Society and the Academy of Irish
Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster. In 2005 the University
of Strathclyde gave him an honorary post as Scotland's first professor
of human ecology. He lectures around the world at institutions
including the Russian Academy of Sciences, the World Council of
Churches, WWF International and, for the past decade, teaching
nonviolence on the Advanced Command & Staff Course at Britain's
leading military staff college. His books include: Hell and High
Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition and Soil and Soul:
People Versus Corporate Power.