How Do Local Communities Agree on a Story?

A group of people in Ecuador called the Walani had learned that the Ecuadorian government was planning to create a new oil concession. So they started a process of mapping their lands with the villages, and that enabled people to start to understand how every single part of that area was important in some way to them. Even areas which a particular family wasn't actively using were valuable in terms of where the rivers headwaters were draining into their area. And then if we all have a common story, we're all repeating the common story. That might sort of help add weight to the arguments that they're making or the discussions that they're having.