Forests & Oceans for the Future Discussion and News

This past week I have been participating in a week long seminar hosted by the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe.  Organized by Ben Columbi (Arizona)  and SAR President James Brooks, our seminar has been discussing the linkages, threats, possibilities for the ‘people of the salmon’ from the Columbia River Basin through BC and Alaska to Kamchatka, Russia.

In addition to our seminar discussions we have also had the good fortune to learn a bit about the world surrounding us with a trip to the Pecos National Monument and the Lisboa Springs State fish hatchery earlier this week.   The park sign warning of snakes caught my attention.  The necessity of posting such a sign documents both an interest in our environment and the ways in which our contemporary society has progressively disengaged us from an understanding of our immediate environments.

Our session has been discussing the various ways in which our human societies have had this sort of direct connection; how these connections are being broken, but also -and more importantly- how we might envision a future in which we regain a meaningful connection with the world within which we live.

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.

The Congress opened Sunday evening with a welcome and presentation from the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation.  The hall at the Tin Wis Hotel was filled to standing room only from 7pm until past 10 in the evening.

The Congress continues until Friday, May14.  Sessions and themes include Indigenous Forums, panels on food security, and a range of associated activities.