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North America
Abstract
The colonial history of North America presents a contrast between Mexico and the two predominantly English-speaking countries, the United States and Canada. In Mexico, indigenous and other local communities own considerable forested lands, a consequence of the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century. In the United States, forest land is now primarily in private or federal hands, while in Canada forest land is primarily managed by the provinces. In all three countries, traditional knowledge had little effect upon forestry until the end of the twentieth century. In Mexico and the United States, the central government retained control over forested lands ostensibly held by communities. Policy changes in those two countries have decentralized control to indigenous peoples, and their ideas have started to affect forestry. In Canada, although traditional management of lands in remote regions persisted until the middle of the twentieth century, provincial policies have generally been displacing indigenous control; First Nations knowledge, which has survived well in some areas, is only recently being applied to forest management, and in only a few examples.
... Fire is also considered to be the most important management tool employed by humans; fire technology has been used in routine and controlled ways by hominids since at least the Middle Pleistocene (Bowman et al. 2011). In recent centuries, cessation of Native American burning practices in the western United States, reinforced through Euro-American colonization displacing tribes, has altered forested ecosystems (Christy and Alverson 2011, Trosper et al. 2012, Christy et al. 2014. State and federal policies of fire suppression and exclusion, as well as climate change, have further influenced vegetation and cycles of disturbance (Dale et al. 2001, Walsh et al. 2015, 2018. ...
Understanding how multiple simultaneous drivers interact to influence plant demography is critical for protecting plant diversity in the context of global change. Fire is a key disturbance in forested ecosystems, but the interactive effects of fire and other abiotic and management factors on understory plants are poorly understood. Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) is perennial herb that provides food, habitat, and nesting material for a wide range of animals. Beargrass populations are prescribe‐burned by Native American experts, and leaves are subsequently harvested at low‐intensity for use in weaving. Leaves for weaving are reportedly becoming harder to find due to lack of fire and competition with commercial harvesters. To elucidate the effects of fire and its interactions with leaf harvest and abiotic factors on beargrass populations, we collected demographic data on more than 1000 individuals over three years across fire severities in combination with individual‐level soil moisture and light measurements. We also conducted an experiment simulating low‐intensity leaf harvest. We built mixed‐effects models to test our predictions that fire would increase growth and reproduction, and that it would mediate the effects of soil moisture and leaf harvest on beargrass growth. Fire increased growth as well as sexual and vegetative reproduction, providing evidence that beargrass is fire‐adapted. Leaf harvest both reduced survival probability and increased the probability of vegetative reproduction. Individual growth increased with early growing season soil moisture in unburned and low‐severity fire areas but did not vary with soil moisture in high‐severity areas. In sum, fire is a key driver of beargrass demography and fire interacted with other factors to influence beargrass vital rates. Understanding the impacts of changes to management and abiotic factors on understory species such as beargrass, and the ecosystem services they provide, requires attention to interactions among multiple environmental factors.
... This knowledge incorporates adaptively evolving practice and belief with knowledge of natural systems, which is transmitted culturally through generations over millennia [3][4][5]. It can inform an understanding of local and interconnected patterns and processes of resources embedded within socio-ecological systems over large spatial and temporal scales [6][7][8]. In systems in which we live and study, local people hold knowledge about the interrelationships among bears, salmon and people. ...
Black ash (Fraxinus nigra Marsh.) is an important species for the W8banaki Nation, which uses its wood for traditional basketry. This study aimed to identify the wood properties required for black ash splints used in basketry. Eleven logs were selected and pounded into 26 longitudinal groups of annual wood layers, which were then transformed into splints. A quality class (high, medium, or low) was assigned by W8banakiak knowledge carriers to each group of rings. We measured wood density, ring width, modulus of elasticity, and modulus of rupture on samples located at the same radial position in wood bolts collected adjacently to the logs used for pounding. To investigate which wood properties were best related to the assigned wood quality class, we applied a generalized linear mixed model. Our model revealed a significant effect of ring width and average ring density on the probability to obtain a given wood quality class. Narrow- to medium-sized rings and relatively dense wood offered the best quality for basketry practice. Based on our results, further research on the effects of growth conditions that favour the production of high-quality black ash wood could be conducted to ultimately propose silvicultural treatments and management strategies.
Over recent decades, Indigenous knowledge (IK) systems, people, and territories have increasingly been recognized in mainstream conservation practice. However, recognition of the value of IK by governing bodies varies and is often a result of colonial and “development” history and the strength of hegemonic attitudes. Through regional case studies, this chapter explores the progress and challenges of integrating IK in conservation action which is key to narrowing the knowledge-implementation gap in this discipline. Key enabling factors allow IK integration into conservation action at national levels including: recognition of Indigenous land ownership; development and acceptance of cross-cultural or Indigenous methods; devolution of power to include Indigenous People in decision-making processes; acknowledgment of Indigenous groups and their rights; and acknowledgment of the benefits of using IK in biodiversity conservation. The regional case studies presented in this chapter suggest that the recognition of IK systems in conservation programs is greatly facilitated by adopting three pillars of Indigenous empowerment (Indigenous land ownership, acknowledgment of Indigenous peoples and their rights, and acknowledgment of the value of Indigenous knowledge systems) with concomitant benefit to narrow the knowledge-implementation gap in conservation science.
Co-management frameworks are intended to facilitate sustainable resource management and more equitable power sharing between state agencies and Indigenous communities. However, there is significant debate about who benefits from co-management in practice. This article addresses two competing perspectives in the literature, which alternately portrays co-management as an instrument for co-optation or for transformation. Through a case study of co-management negotiations involving the Karuk Tribe and the U.S. Forest Service in the Klamath Basin of Northern California, this study examines how Indigenous communities use co-management to build greater equity in environmental decision-making, despite its limitations. The concept of pivot points is developed to describe how Indigenous communities like the Karuk Tribe are simultaneously following existing state policies and subverting them to shift federal forest management. The pivot point analytic demonstrates one mechanism by which communities are addressing Indigenous self-determination goals and colonial legacies through environmental policy and management.
A new approach to economic development is emerging among the First Nations in Canada. This approach emphasizes the creation of profitable businesses competing in the global economy. These businesses are expected to help First Nations achieve their broader objectives that include: (i) greater control of activities on their traditional lands, (ii) self-determination, and (iii) an end to dependency through economic self-sufficiency. Two key elements of the First Nations economic development strategy are: (i) capacity building through education, institution building and the acquisition of land and resources, and (ii) the formation of business alliances among First Nations and with non-First Nation companies. At the same time, and at least in part in response to these two elements of the First Nations' development strategy, a growing number of non-Aboriginal corporations are adopting business alliances with Aboriginal people as a part of their strategy for long-term corporate survival. The economic development activities of the nine First Nations of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council provide an excellent example of this approach to development 'in action'.
It is a common assumption that game animal hunters exercise little control over the resources on which they depend or the environments in which they live, unlike agriculturalists and pastoralists. But many biological and ethnographic studies show that it is possible to anticipate the consequences of hunting or harvesting practices on animal populations of some species in a territory. It is therefore possible for hunters to control some of the critical parameters of the harvested animal populations on their hunting territories through their choice of hunting strategies and their decisions. Hunters can exercise some control over the distribution and reproduction of the animal populations which they harvest, and they in this sense manage their resources. This paper indicates how one group of sub-arctic hunters, the Waswanipi Cree, utilize the animal resources available to them on their hunting territories. The paper summarizes parts of a more detailed doctoral thesis study. It demonstrates that the Cree hunting leaders on their territories are managing their resources in accordance with culturally distinct ethno-ecological system of knowledge, some of which I formulate as hunting recipes and strategies. They use techniques such as rotational harvesting of lands, hunting mainly at highly efficient seasons, using alternative animals for subsistence when they want to limit harvests of the most efficiently hunted game, and monitoring visible indicators of the reproductive conditions of the most intensively hunted animals to decide whether and when to limit harvests of that animal (indicators that are often also recognized and used by wildlife biologists or managers). In a 1986 Postscript the original data from 1968-70 are supplemented by new research from 1978-82 indicating how both Cree hunting effort has significantly increased and how commercial logging has increasingly disrupted game populations. These new data, plus additional government game surveys, confirm that Waswanipi harvests of the most intensively hunted species varied modestly, were not in long-term decline, and continued to be harvested within sustainable yields, a finding compatible with hunter conservation. Among other issues the Postscript explores the possibility that hunters seek to hunt in ways that moderate the variability of game populations, thus stressing again that hunters intentionally modify their environments, an issue not adequately considered in the literature. In the Afterword of 1973 I indicate that the Cree people of the region must effectively shape the decisions about regional development. Their agreement should be obtained before their lands are affected by industrial resource developments.
Abstract
Reporting on the nutritional, botanical and ethnological data of more than one thousand species of edible plants, this reference guide addresses an academic audience with a variety of backgrounds and needs. In addition to providing nutrition information, it describes regions where plants are available and presents patterns of use of particular species of Canadian Indigenous Peoples. Several cross-referencing tables containing common English plant names, botanical names and composite information about each species are accompanied by chapters giving an overview of the known ethnic uses of the most important and universally used species. In addition, a thorough index is supplied. Biologists, ethnologists, Indigenous Peoples, nutritionists, wildlife enthusiasts and health care professionals should all find this volume irreplaceable.
La presencia de selvas altas dominadas por árboles útiles en la zona Maya se utiliza como punto de partida para reconstruir un sistema de silvicultura hipotético de los antiguos may as. Este sistema posiblemente se utilizó para construir y manejar distintos tipos de ecosistemas. La reconstrucción está basada un una serie de técnicas agrícolas y silvícolas que utilizan los may as actuates en distintas zonas del área Maya. La silvicultura antigua Maya cuestiona seriamente las tendencias actuales del uso del suelo y los recursos bióticos de las zonas tropicales, y sugiere un nuevo enfoque para la conservación y el desarrollo de estas zonas, que puede mejorar notablemente el manejo de los recursos de las selvas en algunas regiones tropicales para beneficio de sus habitantes.
Les traités modernes instituent un partenariat entre les Autochtones et l’État en vue de la gestion des ressources ; ce dernier se concrétise dans les expériences de cogestion des " ressources renouvelables ". Le malentendu commence avec cette dénomination. La nature est-elle une " ressource " ou un milieu de vie ? Est-on les gestionnaires ou seulement les gardiens du territoire ? Doit-on maximiser le rendement des ressources ou respecter la relation entre les hommes et la nature ? Toutes ces questions sont au cœur de l’expérience de cogestion. Cet ouvrage explore la capacité des autochtones à survivre à la négociation et au partenariat avec l’État. Assiste-t-on à une forme d’assimilation et de domination ? Se crée-t-il plutôt un échange entre la vision autochtone et la vision occidentale de la nature ? La cogestion n’est-elle qu’un grand malentendu ?
Pour répondre à ces questions, l’auteur analyse les relations de pouvoir qui se sont établies dans cinq expériences de cogestion " des ressources " au Canada : la Convention de la Baie-James et du Nord québécois ; le Beverly and Qaminirjuak Caribou Management Board et la Convention définitive des Inuvialuit dans les Territoires du Nord-Ouest, le Wendaban Stewardship Authority en Ontario et le Nunavut Wildlife Management Board.
Although still posing challenges, science-based knowledge (including interdisciplinary work) is leading current forest-management planning. How then can indigenous communities mobilize their own knowledge to support their desire to develop new ways of managing the forest? In northern Ontario, the provincial government has developed a cross-scale planning approach that allocates certain responsibilities to First Nations in order to support their vision and knowledge, yet at the same time addresses provincial planning goals.
Within this context, research on woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus) was conducted in collaboration with Pikangikum First Nation to support their participation in forest-management planning. The outcomes of this research are used as a focal point for discussing some of the stressors that influence cross-scale planning for forestry in northern Ontario. The paper concludes that resolving cultural differences in a forest-management planning context is not entirely necessary to move forward with collaborative planning for the conservation of woodland caribou habitat.
This article highlights the findings of the literature on aboriginal fire from the human-and the land-centered disciplines, and suggests that the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples be incorporated into plans for reintroducing fire to the nation's forests. Traditional knowledge represents the outcome of long experimentation with application of fire by indigenous people, which can inform contemporary policy discussions.
Diverse relations have developed between Indigenous peoples and the institutions of nation-states and markets shaped by the globalization of neoliberal visions and practices. In this chapter I analyze James Bay Cree governance in relation to state and neoliberal forms of governance in Québec and Canada. In the early 1970s Crees fought their exclusion from regional governance and a say in a hydro-electric project. They created dialogues and negotiations with governments that led to a 1975 agreement that very imperfectly acknowledged fragments of Cree governance as well as a established practices of messy co-governance that went back decades. When the 1975 co-governance agreement provisions were ignored, the Crees opposed major government and corporate projects from the mid-1980s to 2000 and they stopped a new hydro-electric project. Their continuing opposition was also intended to, and did, create renewed dialogues and in 2001-02 negotiations addressing Cree agendas. These negotiations were entered into by the governments and developers partly because Cree posed a significant risk to new large-scale natural resource developments and partly because the growing dominance of neoliberal discourses and practices made new state arrangements with non-state entities possible and desirable. The Crees are now trying to implement another imperfect co-governance and co-development funding agreement. When Crees signed the 1975 agreement, they were not denying themselves other options for action if they later decided they needed them. Governments, corporations, and numerous social analysts and Indigenous rights critics thought that Crees had compromised themselves irrevocably and had weakened their capacity for the kind of autonomy and political campaigns that Crees did later develop effectively. For many Crees, the agreements express: their lived self-governance even in the midst of fragmented recognition; their relational cosmology of acknowledging coexistence; their historical experience with co-governance and its messy possibilities; and the need to develop new economic opportunities in co-governance with non-Crees. Giving up on agreements to adopt the positions urged by critiques who emphasize cosmopolitan or more totally oppositional strategies would diminish Crees, for it would devalue their visions, historical experiences, and their achievements. It would shift their struggle for collective survival more to the terrain of neoliberal governmentalities and the equally modernist critical theories of neoliberalism embedded in universalist visions. Cree engagements embody decades of lived experiences of Cree governance and co-governance as well as visions for the future.
The European explorers who first visited the Northwest Coast of North America assumed that the entire region was virtually untouched wilderness whose occupants used the land only minimally, hunting and gathering shoots, roots, and berries that were peripheral to a diet and culture focused on salmon. Colonizers who followed the explorers used these claims to justify the displacement of Native groups from their lands. Scholars now understand, however, that Northwest Coast peoples were actively cultivating plants well before their first contact with Europeans. This book is the first comprehensive overview of how Northwest Coast Native Americans managed the landscape and cared for the plant communities on which they depended.
Bringing together some of the world's most prominent specialists on Northwest Coast cultures, Keeping It Living tells the story of traditional plant cultivation practices found from the Oregon coast to Southeast Alaska. It explores tobacco gardens among the Haida and Tlingit, managed camas plots among the Coast Salish of Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia, estuarine root gardens along the central coast of British Columbia, wapato maintenance on the Columbia and Fraser Rivers, and tended berry plots up and down the entire coast.
With contributions from ethnobotanists, archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, ecologists, and Native American scholars and elders, Keeping It Living documents practices, many unknown to European peoples, that involve manipulating plants as well as their environments in ways that enhanced culturally preferred plants and plant communities. It describes how indigenous peoples of this region used and cared for over 300 different species of plants, from the lofty red cedar to diminutive plants of backwater bogs.
Canada's Indigenous Constitution reflects on the nature and sources of law in Canada, beginning with the conviction that the Canadian legal system has helped to engender the high level of wealth and security enjoyed by people across the country. However, longstanding disputes about the origins, legitimacy, and applicability of certain aspects of the legal system have led John Borrows to argue that Canada's constitution is incomplete without a broader acceptance of Indigenous legal traditions. With characteristic richness and eloquence, John Borrows explores legal traditions, the role of governments and courts, and the prospect of a multi-juridical legal culture, all with a view to understanding and improving legal processes in Canada. He discusses the place of individuals, families, and communities in recovering and extending the role of Indigenous law within both Indigenous communities and Canadian society more broadly. This is a major work by one of Canada's leading legal scholars, and an essential companion to Drawing Out Law: A Spirit's Guide.
In 1985 and 1986, Ninety-Year-Old Witsuwit’en Chief, Maxlaxlex-Or Johnny David as he is better Known-Was the first Witsuwit’en to give Commission Evidence in the Delgamuukw land claims case in which the Witsuwit’en and Gitxsan of Northern British Columbia were battling for title to their traditional territories. ‘Hang on to These Words’ presents the actual transcripts of the questions and answers between lawyers working on both sides and this knowledgeable and outspoken Native elder who spoke in his own language and whose words were then translated by an interpreter into English. The evidence was given in a makeshift courtroom set up in David’s own home. Anthropologist Antonia Mills was present during these proceedings, and in this book, she introduces and contextualizes the evidence within the Delgamuukw case. In his testimony, David provides a rich description of the Witsuwit’en way of life as well as the injustices suffered at the hands of Indian agents and settlers. He ends his testimony saying, ‘If you hang on to these words, everything will be all right.’ The challenge of hearing his voice, and using it to negotiate the meaning and substance of Aboriginal rights remains unresolved and resonant.
Mexico leads the world in community management of forests for the commercial production of timber. Yet this success story is not widely known, even in Mexico, despite the fact that communities around the globe are increasingly involved in managing their own forest resources. To assess the achievements and shortcomings of Mexico's community forest management programs and to offer approaches that can be applied in other parts of the world, this book collects fourteen articles that explore community forest management from historical, policy, economic, ecological, sociological, and political perspectives. The contributors to this book are established researchers in the field, as well as many of the important actors in Mexico's nongovernmental organization sector. Some articles are case studies of community forest management programs in the states of Michoacán, Oaxaca, Durango, Quintana Roo, and Guerrero. Others provide broader historical and contemporary overviews of various aspects of community forest management. As a whole, this volume clearly establishes that the community forest sector in Mexico is large, diverse, and has achieved unusual maturity in doing what communities in the rest of the world are only beginning to explore: how to balance community income with forest conservation. In this process, Mexican communities are also managing for sustainable landscapes and livelihoods.
Over the past century, forest use in Mexico has been subject to almost continual debate. Both state and federal governments have frequently intervened in the sector, to a much greater degree than in other areas of rural life. These interventions have included direct government participation in logging, the control and concession of resource user rights, regulatory action, and conservation strategies, among others. This paper's main objective is to analyze the forest policies implemented by various Mexican governments over the second half of the twentieth century and to comment on their impact. The general areas tackled by this research are as follows: • The debate regarding forest resources and the main issues that have informed political action and policy making • The ways in which government institutions have intervened in the forestry sector, including industry, silvicultural practices, and forest communities • The form and levels of control that the state has placed on forests and, in contrast, the margin of control that communities have maintained over their forests • The impact of public policies and the responses developed by communities Even though specific analysis of the different forest laws that existed during the twentieth century does not form part of this research, reference will be made to these laws for each of the periods examined. We will examine state policy using the four analytical themes mentioned above, and place it in the context of the political and economic conditions of the different historical periods. After discussing the pre-1940 historical background, we will focus on the following periods. The proposed time periods are only suggestive; the processes overlap in time in complex ways and in different regions of the country. • Concessions to private companies and forest bans (1940-1972) • Concessions to state-owned companies (1972-1982) • The rise of community forest enterprises (CFEs) (1982-1992) • Economic globalization and policy uncertainty (1992-2002) • Development of innovative forest policies in the context of political transition (2003-present).
Forestlands on reservations owned by Native Americans (14.2 million acres, of which 5.9 million acres are classified as commercial) are held in trust by the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, and are managed to improve the economic, social and cultural benefits of reservation life. In recent years the input by Native Americans into management has increased. A number of examples of tribal enterprise are shown, eg more than 40% of the annual Indian timber harvest volume is now processed in tribal mills. -P.J.Jarvis
This article reports and takes up Aboriginal perspectives on co-management that highlight the intrinsic linkages between the environmental and socio-political dimensions of natural resources. In doing so, it explores the capacity of comanagement to address Aboriginal claims for self-determination and increased control over traditional territories within liberal-democratic state systems. Analysis of the Interim Measures Agreement between the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations and British Columbia demonstrates how co-management involving Aboriginal peoples in a negotiated framework of substantive power-sharing provides a venue for augmented levels of confidence in indigenous-state decision-making processes. Additionally, it advances Aboriginal participants' rights claims against the state. Negotiating such "empowered" co-management represents a positive shift in relations between indigenous peoples and governments within settler states in the absence of constitutional change.
How did one group of indigenous societies, on the Northwest Coast of North America, manage to live sustainably with their ecosystems for over two thousand years? Can the answer to this question inform the current debate about sustainability in today's social ecological systems? The answer to the first question involves identification of the key institutions that characterized those societies. It also involves explaining why these institutions, through their interactions with each other and with the non-human components, provided both sustainability and its necessary corollary, resilience. Answering the second question involves investigating ways in which key features of today's social ecological systems can be changed to move toward sustainability, using some of the rules that proved successful on the Northwest Coast of North America. Ronald L. Trosper shows how human systems connect environmental ethics and sustainable ecological practices through institutions.
John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today-that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning. Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts.M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably.