Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management

By Charles R. Menzies

Book Overview

Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management examines how traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is taught and practiced today among Native communities. Of special interest is the complex relationship between indigenous ecological practices and other ways of interacting with the environment, particularly regional and national programs of natural resource management.

Focusing primarily on the northwest coast of North America, scholars look at the challenges and opportunities confronting the local practice of indigenous ecological knowledge in a range of communities, including the Tsimshian, the Nisga'a, the Tlingit, the Gitksan, the Kwagult, the Sto: lo, and the northern Dene in the Yukon. The experts consider how traditional knowledge is taught and learned and address the cultural importance of different subsistence practices using natural elements such as seaweed (Gitga'a), pine mushrooms (Tsimshian), and salmon (Tlingit). Several contributors discuss the extent to which national and regional programs of resource management need to include models of TEK in their planning and execution.

This volume highlights the different ways of seeing and engaging with the natural world and underscores the need to acknowledge and honor the ways that indigenous peoples have done so for generations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803283199
• ISBN13: 9780803283190
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 274 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A reply to Franzen

There is indeed a '600 pound gorilla' in the room, but I'm not so certain that it has much to do with 'expressive science.' The profit motive within a market economy is a major driving force that has the potential to undermine erstwhile good intentions. But without descending into a back and forth on whether human behaviour is totally controlled by 'material force' (of which the economy would be one) or humans totally shape these same material forces, etc. . . ., let's at least point to some of the strengths of understanding and making sense out of ways that human beings, acting under conditions they haven't selected but shaping, nonetheless their own histories. In many of the chapters in my edited book the subject matter focuses on how people make collective choices to act differently. Rather than falling prey to despair we would rather look to examples where thigns work. The government official (who was defeated in election after serving only one term) couldn't see any other future except one that involved large industry (incidentally, he worked for that industry for many years and then found himself summarily dismissed after he lost his election.) This failure of vision is a form of social entrapment that plagues many human systems unable to change or adapt to new circumstances. I won't say that economy has no effect, but I will say that human action can -at times- go against the current and make changes that are durable. That is what I hope is the underlying message of this edited collection.