Talk:Land defender

Strongly one-sided

This article is very poorly written from a neutral perspective. While well sourced and with some content, it appears to just be an extension of other pages in some sort of circular self-referencing diatribe. This article requires considerable cleanup from editors who are not so emotionally involved in the subject matter at hand. Wikipedia can be a great source of information but what it is not is a politically one-sided soap box. Krazytea(talk) 20:24, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I will update my comments that were provided nearly a year ago. This article relies on articles that are almost 100% reliant on the activist and NGO communities, only primary sources. There are appears to be little information from secondary sources or newspapers of record. The closest example is an article from The Guardian which uses the term 'forest guardian' and land defender as provided by the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Association. All of this leads to the question of whether the term land defender is distinct from activist and whether this article should be merged into activism. What neutral readers may wonder is that without the use of secondary sources, is the term land defender actually distinct from activist, or a matter of semantics. Krazytea(talk) 21:12, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

The concept of "Land Defender" is distinct from that of activist. Activist is a "higher level" class term in reference to semantics. I have added numerous secondary sources from academic journals and newspapers using the term land defender. It is a distinct concept, in common usage, and highly connected to the Indigenous rights movement.--Smallison (talk) 04:09, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

+1 to everything Smallison said -- this is a well established term (i.e. the UN defines a varient of this in environmental defender and treated actively in te scholarship: see for example. Trying to treat this as if its subjective or somehow not well documented, is a very selective reading of sources (or google searches). Sadads (talk) 05:27, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

It appears to me that there are now sufficient secondary sources to remove the NPOV tag.Larataguera (talk) 11:38, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Merge land defender and water protector?

Is the difference between land defenders and water protectors sufficient to warrant two separate articles? Perhaps they should be merged and moved to environmental defender (with appropriate redirects). Neither page is well-developed, but if the content were merged it would yield a more complete article.Larataguera (talk) 11:46, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, they are two different things and need different articles. I wrote the original articles for both and the concepts and functions are different, though interrelated. --Smallison (talk) 23:01, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Smallison, thanks for this response and for writing these articles! Can you elaborate on this difference? I notice that some of the sources in this article on Land defenders don't even mention land defenders, but use the term 'water protector' instead. For example: this PRI article is referenced several times. Can you point me toward a source that makes a clear distinction between these terms? The reason I'm asking is that I think these articles could be better connected to other topics, and it's unwieldy to connect to two different pages. I'm not attached to merging them of course, but I'd like to better understand your thoughts about the distinction. If there's an overarching concept like 'environmental defender' that could contain both these concepts (with a clear distinction between them supported by reliable sources), I'd be willing to work on creating a page there instead of the present disambiguation page. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Larataguera (talk • contribs) 21:45, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Water protector tends to be a particular community role within Indigenous communities and a role that is held by women. The connection between women and water is held to be sacred in some communities. And I believe specific to certain Indigenous nations within North America. Land defenders is more general role. I'll see if I can find some sources and then also elaborate the article more.--Smallison (talk) 22:06, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for this clarification. There are certainly some sources to support that position. For instance, there's this article in Social Work describing women's roles as water protectors. That said, the term 'water protector' is quite frequently used more generally to refer to both men and women (as well as people of different races) who act to protect water--and by extension land. I'd like to see (and help work on) an article that addresses the community role of water protectors that you refer to above, while also acknowledging the frequently more general use of the term.

I think it would be nice if these articles could somehow be consolidated so that we can more efficiently link this concept into the rest of wikipedia. It would also make the articles easier to expand. For instance, right now the land defender page has some information about dangers threatening land defenders. These dangers could be said to apply equally to water protectors, and a very similar section on dangers could be added to the water protector page. Likewise, the water protector page has some information about actions taken by water protectors; but we could equally say that these actions are undertaken by land defenders. It seems like much of the information on these pages could be duplicated. Would it be sufficient to merge the pages and provide a section describing the community role of women as water protectors? If not, do you have any suggestions for how to efficiently handle the overlap between these topics if we were to fill out the articles more completely? Thanks again!!Larataguera (talk) 02:23, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@Smallison: I have drafted a proposed structure that I think might work well to organize these concepts. The way I see it, the most general term related to this topic is human rights defender. Land defender is a more precise term for people that specifically fight to defend the right to a healthy environment (generally fighting against resource extraction). As discussed above, water protector is sometimes used generally but may also refer to a more specific community role associated with women in some indigenous communities. I have put my proposed drafts in my userspace Land defender and userspace Water protector. I have moved much of the more general content from the water protector article to the land defender article in keeping with the scheme described above. These drafts are really just to demonstrate the proposed structure of the articles. I would like to expand them and address a few awkward places. A summary of land defender should go in an appropriate section at Human rights defender. Thanks again! Larataguera (talk) 06:49, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Larataguera: I strongly disagree with your proposal and I do not understand your motivation for these mergers. These articles were deliberately written as separate articles. You are missing important aspects of both the role of water protectors and land defenders within Indigenous communities. Both articles should not be rolled up into a perceived higher level / more general topic. Land defender aren't merely people who are advocates for a healthy environment, but are people with roles strongly connected with Indigenous sovereignty and rights. These are people defending their home and traditional territories or standing in solidarity with those who do. They are facing violence in a way that is very different from non-Indigenous human rights advocates because of the tie to colonialism / land dispossession. Equally water protectors are not just people who care about clean water, but have important community roles. Water protectors deserve their own article. Again, I do not understand the motivation for these moves. Wikipedia is not running out of room and the category structure and Wikilinks provide ample space for understanding a perceived hierarchy. These are understood as separate roles within Canada and even the United States.Smallison (talk) 00:51, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Smallison: I'm actually pretty familiar with the role of land defenders and water protectors within indigenous communities, and I'm very clear about the violence that land defenders face. I would like these articles to highlight and examine the differences between land defenders and other human rights defenders. My purpose here is precisely to bring that contrast out more clearly. I don't think the current article structure does this. My motivation is also to expand these articles without a great deal of redundancy and to connect them to existing human rights concepts as defined in peer reviewed sources such as this one. For example, I recently added the Stop line 3 protests to the water protectors page, but really this campaign could and should also be listed on the land defenders page. There are land defenders at Line 3. It's troublesome to add every relevant campaign to both pages. How would you propose that we handle this redundancy? Likewise, the water protector page currently doesn't have any information about the dangers facing water protectors. We could expand water protectors to describe these dangers, but much of that information already exists at land defenders. How would you propose that we handle this redundancy? I understand that you do not like the scheme that I have proposed, and I am not attached to this scheme, but you haven't made any suggestions as to how the substantial overlap between these topics should be handled. Thanks again! Larataguera (talk) 01:40, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Larataguera:In the grand scheme of this kind of work on Wikipedia I am not that concerned with some redundancies, especially with good links. I would rather put my effort to outlining the articles in a way that compliments rather than spending a whole bunch of time trying to sort out some kind of hierarchical scheme (and I know a whole lot about categorization). I added a section on the Water Protectors article on literature and media. As there are several children's books on the topic as well as films. This article could also be a place for images of water protectors in art, which I think is distinctive. I also believe the water walks offer a distinctive section that could be further developed, as is a new area of tourism. I understand (somewhat) your motivation to try to collapse and organize, but I don't think it's a good way to proceed. I don't think we need a very long and detailed article on land defenders that also includes water protectors. I also believe it's also easier for people to engage with something of shorter length.Smallison (talk) 01:49, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Smallison: Alright. Maybe some of the more redundant content can eventually end up in another spin-off that we link to from both pages, like a 'list of actions by water protectors and land defenders'. I just don't want to have to write everything twice. But I won't pursue it any further for now. Thanks for your input. Larataguera (talk) 02:04, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Larataguera:Thanks. I feel there's enough distinction for two articles, but I do feel like there's been a shift to use "land defender" for more actions recently so it could be an issue of trying to be mindful of some nuance and some shifts in terminology. I haven't done any real research on this idea and we can see where it goes.Smallison (talk) 02:13, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Smallison: Sure. And to be clear, the scheme I had proposed still had two articles. Larataguera (talk) 02:16, 2 November 2021 (UTC)