Monday was a full day of activities that stared with the opening general assembly (at 8 am) which was followed by a series of sessions and forums right though until the late evening. I was a participant in a session called “Documenting the northern landscape.” The participants were Thomas Thornton, Lynne MacDonald, Brenda Parlee, Janelle Baker, Alvin Many Chief, and myself. Leslie Main Johnson was the session organizer.
In the afternoon I sat in on a panel discussion of biocultural diversity. I was left wondering about the nature of the ‘actual’ link between cultural diversity and biological diversity -a link assumed and asserted through much of the discussion. Aside from a graph showing the decline of languages and a statement that a similar graph could be produced that would show the same ‘trend’ line for the decline of species the link between biological and cultural diversity seemed to be accepted as a first principle without the need to actually document a causative linkage between the two.
I am not certain that one can definitively ‘prove’ one way or the other the existence of this link. I suspect that there are as many examples of biodiversity co-existing with cultural uniformity as there are with cultural diversity. There is likely a gradient of situations. At the core, at least as presented by the panelists and in comments from the floor, seems to be a belief that small-scale indigenous societies represent a diversity of culture and that associated with these cultures is a diversity of lifeforms. As a corollary, large-scale industrial society tends toward a mono-culture of human society and associated ecologies. When belief systems govern research practice, however, the utility of the results is limited to the circle of believers.