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