Ethnobiological Justice

Environmental justice is now a large field with a generation of hard work behind it. The time has come to interface Euro-American ideas of environmental justice with the extremely sophisticated and long-developed environmental ethics of our traditional partners, the small-scale cultural groups of the world. Descriptions of traditional ethical systems are amazingly few, but several good ones now exist. This paper considers Hopi, Navaho and Nuu-chah-nulth ethics, including concepts of respect, appropriateness, and sustainability. Concepts such as Nuu-chah-nulth isaak (respect) and Navaho hoozho (beauty-and-harmony) are examples of important ethical concepts that have no real equivalent in Euro-American ethical systems but have enormous potential for environmental ethics.