X. Conserving Cultural Keystone Species

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In our rapidly changing World, we need standardised datasets to asses the endangerment of cultural keystones essential for populations' well-being. Worldwide, curated, homogeneous datasets facilitate the communication between agencies, institutions and decision-makers to plan and design actions to safeguard communities. Such datasets need accessible, low-uncertainty, systematic measurement strategies. Drawing inspiration from ICUN's Red List of Threatened Species, on top of our work on cultural keystones and modelling of the basic cultural loss mechanisms, we make an initial proposal for standardised measurement of key cultural items (be it species, practices or places) affecting communities wellbeing. We propose a basic methodology to measure four elements defining a cultural keystone usage: frequency, variability, category of knowledge needed, and number of experts. Longitudinal data on these, as well as information on last use and the training of new experts, form the basis of our proposed threatened index for Endangered Cultural Keystones.

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Birds have deep significance in cultures across the world. What happens, though, when a bird migrates between landscapes where it holds very different cultural meanings? This talk presents a case study from the East Atlantic Flyway, with examples from work in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Morocco, Ghana and Nigeria. We will explore cultural and artistic representations of various long-distance migrants including cuckoos, swallows, turtle doves and nightjars. These will be compared with resident bird species, and with stylised and idealised birds. The idea of ‘ethnobiomigratory space,’ with its own depths and heights, will be presented to conceptualise the journeys of migrant species. The talk will end by considering the implications of this concept for bird conservation, especially in the context of global change. In the spirit of arts and culture, this talk will be delivered entirely as a performance poem.

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The availability of Secwépemc cultural keystone species like sxúsem (Shepherdia canadensis) and other berries, as well as various historically and nutritionally important root plants, and cambium (e.g. Pinus contorta) has greatly diminished in past decades. This has been due to a combination of cumulative impacts that have affected key harvesting areas, including logging, mining, diminished access to harvesting areas, as well as pine beetle kill and subsequently wildfires. Recorded ethnobotanical knowledge about Indigenous fire stewardship has clearly shown the positive impacts of cultural burning practices on species and ecosystems, with burning practices depending on landscape, ecology and weather conditions in specific areas. We show here how by “walking on two legs” of Indigenous knowledge and western scientific documentation, we can revive and continue of age-old cultural burning practices and the detailed knowledge underlying it, to create better food security, wellbeing and ecological resilience on Secwepemcúlecw (Secwepemc land).

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Sweetgrass (Hierochloe odorata) is an essential basketry material to many Indigenous communities of the Northeastern United States, but basketmakers have reported its decline in traditional gathering sites.  This presentation will highlight some of the work that I’ve conducted over the past three decades in collaboration with the Haudenosaunee (New York State) and Lenni-Lenape (New Jersey) to understand changes in the population dynamics and restoration potential of sweetgrass. My work began in the early 2000s with a focus on documenting population trends throughout the Northeast and reestablishing sweetgrass to the Mohawk Community of Kanatsiohareke. Over the past decade, I’ve focused more on working with communities in New Jersey to weave this plant into Lenapehoking as part of recovery from heavy contamination, through incorporating it into microforests, and as part of a land-back program with the Native American Advancement Corporation. These ongoing projects will be briefly introduced.

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The concept of Cultural Keystone Species (CKS) was introduced into ethnobiology twenty years ago and has been adopted by academics, Indigenous cultural specialists, Indigenous governments and land rights legal professionals as a powerful metaphor and methodology for expressing culturally salient species that shape in a major way the cultural identity of a people. In my own research I find the CKS concept to be both useful and problematic. On the one hand, the method is a transparent way for Indigenous peoples to foreground significant and special relationships with certain plant, animal, and fungi species. On the other hand, I struggle with the quantification of cultural significance and, while clearly not the intent of the original researchers, I believe the method can be misappropriated to promote a positivistic and narrowing form of cultural significance. While celebrating the obvious strengths of this concept, I propose ways that practitioners should be mindful of the potential for its misapplication and misinterpretation.