Indigenous people in environmental activities: stakeholders or victims?

Despite the fact that the interaction between indigenous peoples and their natural environment has always been an example of true harmony, their representatives today are often pushed aside the process of decision-making in the field of environmental policy, the main role in which still belongs to officials and ecologists. This paper explores two scenarios of the involvement of the indigenous people in nature conservation efforts. One of them takes place in Heilongjiang province of China, where environmental activities are planned and supervised by the ecologists and officials, while the second story originates in Russian Federation’s Altai Republic, where a nature conservation project has been designed and promoted by the representatives of the local community. The author comes to the conclusion that the success of the latter scenario considering both people and natures proves, that only involvement of the local communities can guarantee that nature conservation efforts can bring benefit to both people and the nature itself.