Forests & Oceans for the Future Discussion and News

It was one of those moments that you wonder why bother, what’s the point of intervening, yet you do it anyway.  Here I was enjoying myself skipping from session to session -marine protected areas in one session, women and democracy at a poster session, forestry, public anthropology and then -why not- a session on the circulation of indigenous though it’s others.  It looked engaging.  I knew some of the people.  Why not go and have a listen to a set of papers that ranged from research in Labrador to research in Australia through Hawaiian soldiers and Navajo country singers.

I realized that my patience was being tested when my long time friend and fellow graduate of CUNY’s Grad Centre started talking about the parochialism of the sort of research that I engage in.  That is, anthropological study of Indigenous issues is locked in a vantage point that reproduces elite knowledge within Indigenous communities and which does not examine the realities of violence, class, and social disruption.   Fair enough, I’d be the first to agree that most of the research with and on behalf of First Nations is of limited appeal in the rarified worlds academic knowledge production and rarely rates the press given to sexy (literally and figuratively) subjects that inspire the many overheard corridor conversations.

Yet there was something about Kirk’s take that didn’t sit well with me.  I can’t really put a finger on it, even now as I roll the words and ideas around in my mind, reflecting on them, reconsidering them.  I agree with much of with Kirk said, yet, yet, somehow, somewhere there’s something amiss in the idea he presented.  Perhaps it’s because I’m part of the Indigenous elite that he so strenuously critiques.  I would like to think not; but I’ll at least consider it.

A few papers later came a paper on Labrador with the engaging title: “Hardly anybody never goes off anymore: time and belonging in a Labrador Inuit community.” The paper picked up from the title quote – “hardly anybody never goes off any more”- and chased down the idea that of the 300 people interviewed barely a half dozen or so actually engaged in hunting or ‘going off’ beyond the boundary of Nairn, Labrador.  Fact was, those who were presented internally as knowledgeable either couldn’t or wouldn’t “go off.”  Those who made it off were apparently part of the disinterested elites who were able to control or monopolize sufficient resources to buy fuel and supplies.  Though the network plots presented (but not truly described) seemed to suggest a fairly wide distribution of food even if harvested by a handful of people, the focus was upon the dysfunction and abdication of responsibility by the elite. This is when I really started to connect the dots between my friend Kirk’s introduction and the apparent underlying theme.

The ‘we don’t go off’ paper picked up on the critique of the parochialism of Indigenous studies. This was achieved with a thorough going critique of the immorality of the political leadership (erstwhile called elites by the panelists). Not to miss a stone unturned traditional ecological knowledge literature was also soundly criticized.  The fault – it doesn’t reflect the reality of practice.  The critique – it is romantic nonsense. Yes there is a lot written by natural resource management types that takes a rather naive and simplistic perspective on TEK.  But, I’m not certain that I’d be so quick to dismiss the reality of engaged and longstanding relationships with ecological and related social knowledge and then suggest that traditional knowledge is bunk.

Rather than sit silent and then leave I stood up and spoke.  Usually, the extent of conference commentary is the ‘thank you for your paper, you did a great job, can you tell more about this or that.’   Sometimes there is a sharing of a similar case.  People might even call some minor parts of a paper into question.  Rarely does one stand up and, as I did this time,  and lay out a full-blown critique of the panel and papers within it.

I began by saying straight out that my comment was a criticism.

“I’m not able to comment directly on the Labrador case but I can say from a decade of research and a lifetime of experience that there is something wrong with the picture being painted here today.”

Three points figure in my comments:

(1)  The pattern of resource harvesting was presented as unusual.  In fact is a fairly common and longstanding one of the development of community ‘experts’ in harvesting –the practitioners- on one side and the knowledge holders –best thought of as local intellectuals- on the other.  Thus the model in the paper was fairly ahistorical –a snapshot in time- rather than one that placed the data into the sweep of history.  Had the full sweep of time been considered it would have gone a long way toward explaining and then through explanation toward solution (if that was what was needed) of the problem presented.

(2)  The critique of traditional ecological knowledge seemed to fetishize the idea of ‘tradition’ in the moniker.   I suggested that we should not allow ourselves to be confused by the label of ‘traditional’ in the tag TEK.  Traditional Ecological Knowledge is a process of knowledge making that is dynamic.  It is a process through which people actively shift and change.  Irrespective of the internal discourses on cultural loss (a discourse that is in reality produced by the external process of colonials ideology represented in histories of salvage ethnography) the researcher would be well served by consider the nature of knowledge required to navigate the social world (which includes whether or not ‘one goes off’).

(3)  In response to the idea that Indigenous Studies is parochial and thus those of us engaged in it are in some way self serving and blinded by the Elites I offered this –the forces shaping what kind of research to do are controlled by the colonizing states.  That is, in the creation of legal frameworks for rights and title Indigenous communities in Canada and Australia are completed to engage researchers and to commission particular types of studies to prove that they are in fact real social beings with history, law, culture, and personhood.  It is only from a narcissistic sense of one’s own academic importance that one can actually overlook this social reality.

No one -I think- is denying the existence of real problems in Indigenous communities.  But what defines the situation is not really crises and mayhem. There are good things, positive things, things to pride and pleasure in. Of course the world is not all rosy.  What I am questioning is whether the focus on Elites as the source of the real problems in Indigenous communities makes any real sense.  I think that my anger arises at this point .  It is so easy to cast blame and to find fault.  But unless you are dealing with this on a day-to-day basis trying to work out real answers that work now I questions your criticisms that seem more suitable to the rarefied audiences of lecterns and classrooms.

What, I wonder, is the difference between conservative commentators who blame all the problems on corrupt leaders and self-serving Elites and  academic radicals who identify corrupt and disinterested Elites as the source of the problem. If only things were so simple as giving free gas to impoverished hunters so that they could ‘go off again.’

I’ve had a series of blog discussion with Tad McIlwraith as a result of his call for a list of BC ethnographies (see: http://tinyurl.com/29squal ).  What has piqued my curiosity is that all of the ethnographies that have been listed are about First Nations people.

So, my question to you:  Can you suggest ethnographies about British Columbia that focus on non-aboriginal peoples.  I am looking for works that are clearly anthropological.  There are books by sociologists, historians, geographers, about non-aboriginal peoples.  But what I would like to find are those ethnographies written by anthropologists set in BC, the Yukon, or Alaska that are not about aboriginal people.

I’ll post the results here (if any come in).

Originally published in the Georgia Straight

By rob mcmahon

Publish Date: 19-Aug-2004

The Gitga’at community of Hartley Bay is located 145 kilometres southeast of Prince Rupert. The school there houses just 55 students from kindergarten to Grade 12. Tiny and remote, with a close relationship with the local Tsimshian band council, Hartley Bay is perfectly suited for an experiment in a new style of teaching.

Instead of taking notes from a chalkboard, First Nations students at Hartley Bay learn from their elders by visiting members of the community to learn the traditional names and uses of plants. By interviewing local authorities, the students discover how blueberries–or smmaay, as they are known in the Tsimshian language, Sm’algyax–can be eaten during feasts or used to dye clothes or treat diabetes. Each fact is carefully recorded in a field notebook, which is then used to create a summary of the plant that incorporates both scientific and aboriginal-based knowledge.

“One year I went out with the kids as they interviewed elders,” said Judy Thompson, a First Nations instructor and curriculum developer working at Hartley Bay school. “Some were scared and didn’t feel like it. Some found out their aunties and uncles and the elders knew a lot.”

Thompson, who is Tahltan, created a series of six lesson plans on traditional plant knowledge for students at Hartley Bay. In it, she outlined a series of exercises that teach the youth to become researchers. Each student was assigned a culturally important plant, and then went into the community to learn about it. Along with the traditional, botanical, and common names of each plant, they recorded whether it was used for food, medicinal, material, or ceremonial purposes, eventually creating a Gitga’at plant booklet. Results have been encouraging. Thompson remembered one student who returned after interviewing the chief’s wife.

“It was first thing in the morning, and her eyes were so bright,” Thompson said. “She said, ‘I didn’t know yew wood was so important.’ ”

Hartley Bay principal Ernie Hill, who is also a hereditary chief, stressed the importance of such knowledge. “As First Nations people, we have to know ourselves,” Hill said. “If you do that, you can have a better chance of success.”

Although multicultural education in the past has attempted to do this, some researchers are coming to the conclusion that it has not gone far enough.

Statistics from B.C.’s Ministry of Education state that in the 2001-02 school year, more than four times as many nonaboriginal students passed the mathematics 12 provincial exam compared with aboriginal students.

First Nations curriculum developer Veronica Ignas said that this is partly because aboriginal and nonaboriginal students see the world differently. Classes like mathematics and science, as they are usually taught, focus on abstract concepts that are divorced from daily experience. This approach can be difficult for aboriginal people, who often have a world-view that is more connected to concrete manifestations of nature.

“Students are motivated and do best if the information they’re taught is relevant,” Ignas said.

Rather than look at this difference in perception, Ignas said, multicultural education typically focuses on the “four Ds”: diet, dress, dance, and dialect. What is needed, she argued, is a more fundamental acceptance of alternative ways of knowing.

“Research says that meaningful differences go beyond just infusing content [with the four D’s],” she said. “We need to say there’s a different way of thinking about the land and the people’s relationship with it.”

Now, a handful of schools in rural towns like Hartley Bay and Gitxaała are working with researchers from UVic and UBC to integrate traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) into their curriculum.

UBC anthropologist Charles Menzies has been working four-and-a-half years with Ignas, Thompson, and other academics and First Nations representatives on Forests for the Future, a project that collects TEK for use in both resource management and education. Menzies’s project stems from recent attempts by researchers to give something back to the communities they study.

Traditionally, anthropologists visited a community, extracted the information they needed, and left. This expropriation of knowledge is now recognized by some as being just as problematic as the removal of gold and other physical resources during the colonial era.

Now, researchers such as Menzies are trying to change this process by returning the information they collect in the form of educational resources such as those developed by Ignas and Thompson.

“People are trying to be more responsive to the community they work with,” Ignas said. “[They also] want to make sure the information collected doesn’t sit in a static filing cabinet somewhere, but [as] curriculum goes back into the community.”

Menzies is supervising the creation of seven unit plans by Ignas, Thompson, and others to be used as learning resources for teachers.

Simply put, traditional ecological knowledge is an ever-evolving body of knowledge about the environment and its relationship with human beings that is passed down through generations.

In a typical class, community elders teach the children about the ways of living that have been passed down in the community for centuries. Within the Tsimshian world, humans have social relationships with plants and animals.

“It’s a different way of making sense of the natural world,” Ignas said. “You need to cross the bridge between abstract understanding and their more ‘hands-on’ learning.”

For example, in math class students learn the different Tsimshian ways of counting (people, long objects, people inside a canoe, size of animal catches, and general). As well as learning their Latin names and scientific characteristics, students discover traditional names and medical and ritual uses of plants.

Some critics argue about the validity of TEK, because it is inherently different than western science. Being based on oral testimony and holistic in nature, it has also faced opposition from scientists.

Today, TEK is becoming more widespread in fields such as natural-resource management. Starting in the 1980s, it began to be used in fisheries management as a complementary source of knowledge to that gathered by western-trained biologists.

Part of this process is due to a realization that science does not have all the answers, at least with respect to managing natural resources.

“Past practices have proven that science is not the be all and end all,” said John Lewis, chief treaty negotiator for the Gitxaała First Nation. Lewis has been trying to incorporate TEK within local resource management since 2001. “At the end of the day, you have to look at what science-based management has done to our resources since [European] contact.”

For example, in B.C. federal fisheries management makes predictions of how many salmon will arrive every year, forecasts that are based on empirical evidence collected by biologists. However, the actual returns often don’t match these predictions.

In the 1980s and ’90s, that system started to change.

“Fisheries began listening to what local-level fishermen were saying [and finding] it was as good as or better than what the managers were saying,” Menzies said.

When applying TEK, a fisherman would watch a particular fishing spot for years, observing when the salmon arrive and then acting on his observations. By accumulating this observational evidence over decades, and sometimes generations, a body of traditional ecological knowledge is formed and can be used to predict the levels and activities of fish in a given area. Variables such as shifting weather patterns or other environmental changes are observed by the fisherman and noted with regards to their effect on the fish population. By using such long-range data, the TEK can sometimes be more effective in predicting salmon stocks than biological data, which is often collected during intermittent field research trips over a short period of time.

Even though scientists were skeptical of the storytelling format of TEK, when collected and distilled into a form of data that can be manipulated in the same way scientific field data is, it became easier for them to use.

“When you incorporate and mesh science-based managerial systems with local and traditional knowledge…it gives you more tools to manage the resources,” Lewis said.

TEK has also gained popularity due to an increased desire on the part of government to include First Nations groups in the decision-making processes that affect their lives.

“[First Nations people] see TEK as a validation of what they know,” Menzies said. “But it’s also something they can take to the table in negotiations…TEK demonstrates their ability to manage their own resources.”

Now that some scientists are validating the claims made by TEK, it is being used more commonly and has found its way into schools like Hartley Bay.

All of the TEK-based curriculum is designed to fit into the mainstream school system. In order to do this, each lesson plan is designed to fit with the province’s “prescribed learning outcomes”.

For example, Ignas’s unit Two Ways of Knowing: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge fits the province’s prescribed learning outcome “describe how scientific principles are applied in technology.” To assist teachers, each lesson plan includes a list of its corresponding learning outcomes.

However, even with relatively simple integration within the provincial system, it is up to the judgment of individual teachers to actually use the material. The Ministry of Education currently allows educational professionals to select their own learning resources, as long as the material passes a formal evaluation process at the provincial or the district level and fits within the learning outcomes set by the province. This system, which has been in place since 1989, is designed to allow schools more autonomy to choose resources that meet their individual needs.

Since there are relatively few First Nations teachers, the more nonaboriginal teachers who attempt to integrate the curriculum, the better.

Yet it can be hard for western-trained teachers to impart indigenous knowledge, both politically and conceptually. They must be taught to look at the world in a new way, which can be difficult, so alternative learning sources often sit on the shelves, unused.

Peter Freeman is a nonaboriginal teacher who integrated TEK curriculum in his science classes at Charles Hays secondary school in Prince Rupert. Although he felt the material was more applicable to communities such as Hartley Bay that have more direct access to the environment, he said it was still useful. Freeman’s classes held discussions on the pros and cons of traditional knowledge, and students were generally interested in the material.

“Some of the students may know and understand a lot more than I do, and they enlighten all of us,” Freeman said.

A big part of incorporating TEK into the classroom is gaining the acceptance and respect of the community–something that can be difficult for an outsider.

“You have to prove to the people that you know and understand and are empathetic to traditional education,” Hill said. “If you get elder approval, it’ll be okay…That’s the way it should be.”

As well as gaining acceptance from the community, teachers are often afraid to use First Nations material because of concerns over political correctness. However, Menzies said that feeling bad about the effects of colonization should not be an issue.

“I don’t know how making a teacher feel guilty will make the world a better place,” he said. By using a prepackaged learning resource, Menzies said, the worry is gone. “[A teacher] would just grab it, open it up, and work with it,” he said, adding that mainstream society has much to learn from incorporating this kind of material into regular schools. “I want to see beyond First Nations,” he said.

For example, when studying Canadian history, students focus on the story of the nation from a strictly European point of view. There is a profound lack of any sense of the past as seen by the country’s First Nations, Menzies said.

“The lack of awareness in society is really strong.”

By sharing ways of perceiving the world, Hill said he thought that education could help these groups reconcile what has been, at times, a difficult relationship.

“Maybe these little courses give a little bit of understanding, rather than the stereotypical view that seems to exist out there.