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Before we begin…. Integrating Historical Secwepemc Knowledge with Contemporary Science. Meeting our aboriginal neighbours again – for the first time First United Church, Salmon Arm, BC Sept. 22, 2012 Warren Bell Past Founding President WA:TER – Wetland Alliance: The Ecological Response.
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Integrating Historical Secwepemc Knowledge with Contemporary Science Meeting our aboriginal neighbours again – for the first time First United Church, Salmon Arm, BC Sept. 22, 2012 Warren Bell Past Founding President WA:TER – Wetland Alliance: The Ecological Response
Thesis: Western industrial science has lost its way. Aboriginal wisdom can show us the way home.
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.
Purposes for gathering knowledge • Aboriginal (50,000 years): • Survival • Sustaining resources • Respect/reverence for natural world • Western industrial society (260 years): • Production of “goods” or “products” (GDP) • Monetary gain • Curiosity about the world
How does the industrial world rate knowledge?
Nobel Prizes = the “pinnacle” of Western scientific knowledge • Physics • Chemistry • Medicine • Literature • Peace • Economic sciences
No award for knowledge of the natural world, or of the human-environmental interface • All Biological sciences • Environmental science • Food and agricultural science • Forestry • Climatology • Atmospheric, water, soil sciences • Ecosystem valuation • Ethnobotany!
No award for knowledge of human conduct or behaviour • All social or psychological sciences • Psychology • Sociology • Anthropology • History • Political science • Linguistics • Ethnobotany!
No award for knowledge of ethics, moral judgement or values • Bioethics • Ethics • “Honesty” studies • “Objectivity” studies • “Integrity” studies • “Carefulness” studies • “Openness” or “transparency” studies
“The Right Livelihood Award evolved from Jakob von Uexküll's opinion that the Nobel Prizes were relatively narrow in scope and usually recognised the work of citizens in industrialized countries. Uexküll first approached the Nobel Foundation with the suggestion that it establish two new awards, one for ecology and one relevant to the lives of the poor majority of the world's population. He offered to contribute financially but his proposal was turned down.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Livelihood_Award
Percy and Louise Schmeiser Maude Barlow David Suzuki
1993 – sisters Mary and Carrie Dann of the Western Shoshone people "...for exemplary courage and perseverance in asserting the rights of indigenous people to their land." “Western Shoshone land - our Mother Earth - is not for sale”
But now there’s a new player… The modern (multinational) corporation
“Global Inc. – An atlas of the multinational corporation” Gabel/BrunerThe New Press 2003
Corporations (100 years) use knowledge to: • Argue the case for their exploitative actions • Defeat critics • Satisfy government regulations • Make money for shareholders
“There are no base files for this project as it is a Greenfield project.” Translation: “We have no real clue how this will actually work because we’re building this in untouched wilderness.”
How “civil society” uses knowledge to address corporate actions
Ecological Footprint(Wackernagel and Rees) “The amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes, and to assimilate associated waste.”
“No archaeological sites were identified within the proposed development area…”
The back story… • No artifacts on the lower south side of the river because First Nations would not have built or stayed where it flooded regularly • There was evidence of FN presence (40-50 year old culturally modified trees) but this didn’t have to be described, by statute, as “archeological evidence” • Proponent unwilling at first to work with FN, and unwilling to disseminate the study to any other parties (eventually agreed to do so)
