Emmanuel M. Akpabio, UNIVERSITY OF UYO, NIGERIA, Dept of Geography and Regional Planning, emakpabio@yahoo.com
Introduction
Indigenous people the world over represent unique sub-sets of the main population. Variances of names are often utilized to locate such a collective species of people around geographical areas e.g., ‘natives’, ‘locals’, ‘indigenes’, among others. In some sense, these describe ‘a people deeply attached to culture and natural environment’. Apart from helping sustain their harmonious existence with nature, such attachments are critically meaningful and distinctive to their collective identity. Dudley et.al (2005) wrote that indigenous people believe that spirits permeate and animate matter, meaning that natural phenomena encompass spirits. In turn spirits can affect nature, sometimes in response to human actions: for instance moral transgressions can trigger natural calamities. Human-environment relationship as a common characteristics of indigenous people is unique and thoroughly internalized, reinforced by religion and customary values. Most religious faith conceptualize existence as anchored in the tripod of spirits, people and nature ...