Starting claim: Our job is to change how modern human societies work?

Contemporary Western cultures and even industrial governments of China and India make a distinction between nature and man.

Bateson - dichotomy between mind and nature

Taylor - more, better, faster

Olympic motto - faster, higher, stronger

Wolfgang Sachs - Wuppertal Institute "American psyche is at grave odds with realistic environmental constraints"

How do we understand what natural resources are and what is natural?

from Berkes 1999. Sacred Ecology

Is "traditional knowledge" (about management) "science"?

Western scientific methodology has very specific structure and types of claims.

sometimes the assumptions end up in a "black box" and are hidden

often there is misplaced concreteness - where the model is mistaken for the real thing

i.e. "exponential growth"

What we now call "ecosystem level" management, indigenous cultures learned long ago and might have "black boxed" it.

an example of a "black box" is a taboo

you can't do that but we really don't know why or want to explain it too you right now

 

main point: it is taboo to harvest from some sacred groves

 

Management is wrapped up in language and culture.

examples where this has been a problem

Do Eskimos really have > 20 words for snow?

USFWS vs. Sahaptin

trout --- steelhead --- salmon

mistranslations from Salish to Nez Perce to English for camas root varieties

 

Is "wilderness" a universal concept or a Western concept (stemming from the nature/mind dichotomy)?

current preservationists believe that there is an inverse relationship between the number of people and wilderness

seems to be a paradigm shift taking place - conservation will require that people are able to use the resources

Berkes claims that: there is no universal indigenous ethic except for the sacred refuges