Abstract: Submission #71

Abstract Thirty-five years into democracy and there remains a need for social justice and redress of past injustices. This can be achieved through traditional stewardship and community-based tourism (CBT). These strategic initiatives help communities preserve their heritage and use indigenous knowledge to safeguard their ecology. CBT and Green Social Work (GSW) are aligned through their principles that promote ecological health, social equity, and sustainable community. GSW becomes a critical lens through which one can examine how indigenous communities take back ownership of their culture and land. The author argues that environmental health is better understood when power imbalances are considered, as they highlight the impact that land distribution, use, and ownership have had on South Africa. The forceful removal of black individuals from their land resulted in a silencing of traditional ecological knowledge, which negatively impacted land-based teachings and conservation. This created an absence which was filled by Eurocentric tourism industries, which romanticized, commodified, and exoticized black culture, land, and history without economic benefits for black people. The author used secondary data, academic journals, and published peer reviews to analyse, identify, and select patterns and themes that emerged from them. Indicating how indigenous communities reclaim their identity through heritage preservation and land-based practices. The paper suggests that CBT and GSW are critical resilience strategies that support sustainable development and are a resistance against systems of oppression. Through CBT, GSW offers a lens through which communities can heal and transform from the historical injustices that previously silenced their traditional land preservation techniques and cultural knowledge.