III. Engaging Ethnobiology through Communities and Practices

Inspired by the conference theme (and indeed the conference theme was in part  inspired by this project),  we share some of the voices of the landscape of Húy̓at — a cultural keystone place of  Heiltsuk Nation in central  BC coast.    The voices of Húy̓at can be heard in Heiltsuk songs, language, place names, oral traditions, archaeological sites, and memories.  We bring together these voices in a web site designed with and for the Heiltsuk (www.hauyat.ca).  The website reflects the culmination of eight years of community-centred research on the millennia-old history of Húy̓at  documented through ethnoecological, archaeological, anthropological, and audio-visual techniques.    We discuss here how in creating the website we grappled with how to represent the diverse voices and techniques in respectful, honest, and engaging ways. 

Since 2012, we have been learning about cultural and ecological relationships between people and plants in the Inuit Community of Makkovik (Nunatsiavut; Labrador, Canada). This work focuses on understanding how cultural practices shape plant communities in a sub-Arctic region, and on communicating the knowledge of plant mentors more widely within Makkovik. Regional approaches for teaching and learning plant knowledge have shifted over time in response to changes in community settlement patterns and education systems. More recent approaches to connecting youth with their community’s plant knowledge include plant-themed treasure hunts, photos safaris, weekly nature nights, illustrated calendars, and a youth plant book. In this presentation, we feature The Amazing Plant Race Makkovik, a racing challenge based on The Amazing Race format of deciphering clues, solving puzzles, and completing active challenges as an innovative teaching approach for the next generation of Makkovik plant mentors.

Much of science, including some of ethnobiology, is driven by the intellectual curiosity of scientists than by community needs and learning goals. In many Indigenous communities, this is compounded by the history of colonization, which included imposition of a top-down, western paradigm of science. Here, our goal was to reinvent this scientific paradigm by developing community-university partnerships that supported six Alaskan Native communities to work with Indigenous and non-Indigenous students on the research identified by communities. Communities chose to work on the effects of climate change on the availability of berries and on moose habitat and hunting success, traditional place name mapping, food security and sovereignty, and local and non-local hunting competition. Here, we describe how communities defined sustainable harvest practices, their findings and how they intend to use their results. We then describe the challenges of community-university partnerships and how to improve them in the future.

As part of a Franco-Canadian project aiming at fostering our respective reflections, several discussions were enthused by a team of Teko, Palikur, Wabenaki,Ilnu, Cree, and ethnoecologists, from French Guiana and Quebec. Our objectives were 1) empowerment First Nations through meetings and experience sharing, 2) implementation of Indigenous methodologies in French Guianese communities inspired by Canadian experiences, 3) definition of a shared research agenda between ethnobiologists and First Nations.

Meetings were organized in Odanak, Mashteuiatsh with a visit in Oujé-Bougoumou and this year meeting will happen in French Guiana. Differences and similarities among Nations resulted in shared tools to cope with problems.

Implementing fair processes of knowledge access and benefit sharing is wanting in French Guiana, but Canadian communities offered stories that resonated with Teko and Palikur members.

Priorities in terms of research are mapping and land claims, natural resource management, conflicts over mining, traditional medicine recognition, and transmission of knowledge.

The Viking Age is perhaps the most well known era in Scandinavian history. People’s mobility during the Viking Age was likely due to a favourable climate and did not only result in extensive raiding and trading, but also in plants being moved around and beyond Europe.

In this project we are taking a two-fold approach that combines research with public outreach. On the one hand, we have established a Viking Garden at the Oslo Botanical Garden that showcases the variety of plants that were important during the Viking Age. It is used as a platform to discuss migration, oral traditions, agrobiodiversity, traditional food plants and invasive species with the general public. On the other hand, the establishment of the Viking Garden has resulted in a number of externally funded research projects.

In this talk I would like to present the research aspects, and how this is combined with the outreach.

This research grew from the Gitga’at First Nation’s Oceans and Lands Department desire to formally include the knowledge and observations of their land and sea users as part of contemporary stewardship initiatives. We used a participatory case study approach to design data collection methods that would meet Gitga’at objectives of monitoring to inform stewardship and climate change adaptation, intergenerational knowledge transfer, health and wellness programming, and support Gitga’at Rights and Title. We iteratively tested these methods over the course of two traditional food harvest seasons. Key outcomes are a harvest logbook and interview guide that continue to be administered by community researchers. An interconnected set of social-ecological concepts and indicators also emerged, highlighting the importance of maintaining and revitalizing Indigenous knowledge and harvesting practices in order to continue social-ecological monitoring, and encouraging scientific monitoring approaches to situate themselves within Indigenous frameworks and priorities.

Indigenous knowledge and traditional practices around indigenous small grains are critical tools in the quest to improve food sovereignty and to adapt to climate change. As a scholar and an artist, I work with Indigenous communities in Sikkim in the Indian Himalayas and in Mazvihwa, Zimbabwe, documenting Indigenous small grains using arts-based methodologies, such as drawing. In Sikkim, I documented 36 neglected traditional food plants, including 16 traditional cultivated crops such as millet and rice varieties, and 20 gathered plants, representing 14 different plant families. In Mazvihwa, I conducted drawing workshops, created an opportunity for community members to reconnect to the neglected plants, and provided a space for the elders to talk about the plants with the youth. My project builds a collective community resource as communities reflect on their traditional skills and knowledge around neglected small grains, contributing to maintaining agricultural biodiversity and in improving their food sovereignty.

On an annual basis, the Hualapai Tribe’s Cultural Department embarks on a two week river rafting trip in the Grand Canyon where Tribal elders and youth engage in resource monitoring activities related to botany, archaeology and cultural resources. One plant in particular, the mescal agave, is always given special attention due to its long history of use. The agave was used for numerous utilitarian items that were used by virtually all members of the tribe. Mescal also served as a valuable food source that is still being harvested and prepared to this day. This presentation shares about the Tribe’s annual river trip, the life history of mescal, and the multitude of Tribal uses of this intriguing plant from centuries ago to the modern era. The river trips provide an opportunity to teach the ancient knowledge of the landscape better understood through hands on activities within the ancestral homelands.

During the summers of 2014 to 2018, we conducted an archaeological project in the rural town of El Progreso. It is the site of a sugarcane plantation which operated from the 1880s to the 1920s, and became one of the most important companies in Ecuador. The legacy of the plantation molded local identities of Galápagos despite conflicting considerations of the past. After our project, the local past began to attract attention.

Local collaboration on our project including local authorities and community leaders, none of them related to the original occupants of the island or the plantation. Today, the local community is trying to build its identity based on the historical importance of the plantation. We examine the non-academic social outcomes of our project, discuss the lessons learned from interaction between archaeologists, authorities, government, and the local community, and evaluate the consequences of implementing an archaeology project in the Galápagos Islands.

This study implements and proposes a research approach based on the combined use of conventional anthropological methodologies and indigenous methodologies, in search of 'true collaboration' between researcher and local indigenous communities. I analyze the collaborative ethnography and indigenous epistemologies paradigms, then use my experiences collaborating with the Tsimane’ people of Bolivian Amazonia while studying Tsimane’ traditional hunting to bridge components from both paradigms. Results demonstrate that identifying and combining indigenous methodologies, such as so’baqui, with the use of participant observation, interviewing, and focus groups (based on local formats for discussion), creates a comfortable and familiar environment for the local people while maintaining the rigor and structure of academic research. I conclude that a true collaborative approach bridging both academic paradigms results in relevant and beneficial research for everyone involved.