Pursuing a "Good Life" within Contested Landscapes: Ethnoecologies of Practice in Contemporary Perspective

Session Organizers and Chairs: Iain Davidson-Hunt and Leslie Johnson

We are interested in connections between environmental change and human understanding of the influence of the environment on well-being, health, and identity. Among indigenous and local communities across the globe, human well-being often includes an association between a life on the land, health and identity. These connections cannot be understood outside of historic and political economic factors that have influenced both the places people undertake practice and their mobility within such landscapes. This panel explores land-based practice to understand the linkages between the process of “going out and being on the land” and human well-being. By considering a number of Aboriginal/Indigenous cases that have explored these ideas we seek to develop an improved understanding of both the material and non-material ways that local ecosystems contribute to human well-being, or "a good life," and how these insights require new approaches for contemporary ecosystem management at local, regional and global scales.

The panel as currently constituted will include five papers. The opening paper will provide a conceptual piece to introduce the session and will be followed by four case studies, three from sub-arctic Canada and one from the tropics (East Kalimantan). If this topic is of interest to others we would be particularly interested in adding on a panel and in particular through inclusion of cases from locations other then the sub-arctic. If interested please email Iain Davidson-Hunt (davidso4@cc.umanitoba.ca) and Leslie Johnson (lmainjohnson@gmail.com) and also indicate this panel when you submit your individual abstract.