Browsing by Author "Davidson-Hunt, Iain J."

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Anishinaabe Adaptation to Environmental Change in Northwestern Ontario: a Case Study in Knowledge Coproduction for Nontimber Forest Products
(2013) Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.; Idrobo, C. Julián; Pengelly, Ryan D.; Sylvester, Olivia
"Interaction, negotiation, and sharing knowledge are at the heart of indigenous response to global environmental change. We consider Anishinaabe efforts to devise new institutional arrangements in response to the process of colonialism and changing global markets. Our findings are based on collaborative research undertaken with Anishinaabe colleagues from Pikangikum First Nation, northwestern Ontario. We worked with elders to understand their knowledge, preferences, and opinions regarding appropriate institutional arrangements for the co-production of knowledge required to develop nontimber forest products. We began our research by asking about the values, institutions, and conditions that guide plant harvesting, and then the conditions necessary to coproduce new knowledge regarding plant products with external partners. Results were discussed during focus groups and community meetings, and were modified based on that feedback. This research resulted in a framework based on the values, institutions, and conditions that are necessary for the coproduction of new knowledge. In this framework, Pikangikum people--through Anishinaabe teachings and collaborative partnerships--guide knowledge coproduction through meaningful participation as research advisors in the development of knowledge, institutions, and technologies. Coproducing knowledge in response to environmental change requires new institutional arrangements that provide community control, meaningful collaboration and partnerships, and significant benefit sharing with Pikangikum people."
Community-based Enterprises and the Commons: The Case of San Juan Nuevo Parangaricutiro, Mexico
(2010) Orozco-Quintero, Alejandra; Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
"What can we learn from an engagement between community-based and indigenous enterprise, and commons literatures? That is what we set out to consider in this paper. Commons literature has tended to focus on the administration and use of the commons by individuals and households and less so on collective enterprises that extract, transform and market what they harvest from the commons. In the commons literature it has been cases of community forestry from Mexico which initiated an interest in understanding the linkages between commons and enterprises. In this paper, we consider a well known case in the community forestry and commons literature from Mexico. It provides an interesting case as the indigenous members that hold the rights for the commons are also the members of the enterprise that transforms and markets goods from the commons. We argue that the impetus for such a strategy is one way to confront internal and external pressures on a commons."
Constructing the Commons: Informal Village Management of Common Property in the Western Himalayas of India
(1996) Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
"In natural resources management theory and practice, resources are legally categorized as state (res publica), private (res privada) or common (res communalis) property and open access (res nullis). The lack of a legally defined commons often leads to the assumption that community management of common property resources no longer exists. However, research undertaken in the western Himalayas of India determined that of the ten land use types recognized by villages, and legally defined as state or private, seven had characteristics of common property. Although property rights in law (de jure) precluded community management of natural resources, customary (de facto) property rights were claimed by villages. Legally defined village common property did not clearly exist in the study villages, however, the commons as a cultural construction of social relations which defined the rights, duties, and obligations among villagers in relation to local resources did emerge from the study. Common property, when analyzed as a social institution, allowed people a voice in how local resources were managed and influence in how the social relations of production were structured. Customary resource management provided for local control over the means of production and existed in spite of the legally defined state resource management system."
Environment and Society through the Lens of Resilience: Towards a Human-in-Ecosystem Perspective
(2000) Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
"The study of the commons has provided an interdisciplinary approach for understanding the relationship between humans and the environment. The commons emerges through the interaction of social and ecological processes. As such, the commons acts as an organizing concept through which the interactions between social and ecological processes can be examined within a set of spatial and temporal parameters. The commons approach has differed from other approaches in western theory which have maintained a clear separation between the environment and society. Many of these latter models have provided sophisticated accounts of how the environment and the social articulate and mutually influence each other. However, an emerging body of literature has begun to appear which provides support for the interdisciplinary approach pursued by commons scholars. This body of research emphasizes that systems are often characterized by non-linear processes and multiple equilibria instead of stability, unpredictability, threshold effects and system change. Furthermore, this literature has begun to move toward a human-in-environment instead of a human and environment perspective. These ecological models suggest that more emphasis should be placed upon the relationships and processes at given spatial and temporal scales as well as cross-scale dynamics. "One concept which has proved useful at moving toward a 'dwelling' or human-in-ecosystem perspective has been resilience. This paper extends the work of Holling and Sanderson (1996), Berkes and Folke (1998) and others to explore the contribution of the concept of resilience for understanding environment-society linkages. Resilience has been utilized by commons, and other scholars, to explore the linkages among ecological, social and institutional processes. A focus on ecological and social processes is also being utilized in practical approaches to resource conservation and economic development. Through an examination of four such projects it has been found that common property institutions, at multiple scales, are important for maintaining the linkages between ecological and social processes. Both theoretical developments and practical applications of a human-in-ecosystem perspective have drawn attention to the processes which link environment and society, and how such processes drive beneficial and detrimental change."
Exploring Social Entrepreneurship in San Juan Nuevo, Mexico: The Role of Social Enterprises and Leadership in the Management of Communal Resources
(2008) Orozco-Quintero, Alejandra; Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
"The commons is well represented by cases in which the commons is a source of raw materials harvested by the commoners and than consumed directly or marginal surpluses sold through a commodity chain to buyers, processors and marketers. Such indigenous, or peasant households, it is assumed, are rarely able to undertake the collective action necessary to undertake other functions in the commodity chain of a product. This has firmly framed the commons as an area of administrative interest in how a commons is managed by individuals, households, collectivities and states and how the benefits of such commons are allocated. However can an enterprise also be considered as a commons? "In this paper we consider a case in which both the enterprise that purchases, transforms and sells the products of a commons is owned by the commoners. We argue that the impetus for such a strategy is one way to confront internal and external pressures on a commons. In order to understand this case we found it necessary to utilize literature regarding social and community-based enterprise to understand this form of a commons. Community-based enterprises are a specific form of social entrepreneurship in which a defined community uses the entrepreneurial process and collective action to identify and establish a venture or enterprise, using, whenever possible, available common property resources to generate local social value for the common good. "We present our results in considering the distinctive features of a long standing (28 years), indigenous community-based enterprise, San Juan Nuevo, and its role in commons governance and management. Through an iterative process of reviewing existing literature and empirical fieldwork we develop an analytical framework that considers the internal characteristics as well as the inspiring and enabling factors of community-based enterprises. We use this framework to organize our empirical findings specific to the San Juan community-based forestry enterprise. Much of our findings extend current literature. We add to the literature in identifying the importance of entrepreneurial leadership grounded in collectively held core cultural values and the challenge of succession that faces community-based enterprises in transmitting such values between generations of leaders."
From Innovation to Codification: Conversations with Iskatewizaagegan Elders Regarding Creativity, Memory and Plants in Anishinaabe Society
(2004) Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
"Ethnoecologists have provided extensive documentation of the knowledge held by many indigenous communities regarding places and the relationships among the beings of a place. Ethnobotanists have undertaken a similar task in locating plants within social, cultural and ecological systems. However, this work has often characterized indigenous people as holders of knowledge sets in imminent danger of being eroded through the forces of modernization and globalization. Theoretical models, rooted in complexity theory, have begun to influence ethnoecological and ethnobotanical understandings of the dynamics of knowledge systems. These models are exploring the institutions and processes of socialecological networks that allow for innovation while conserving the linkages between the past and the future. "This paper is based upon ethnobotanical and ethnoecological research undertaken with Anishinaabe people of Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation located in northwestern Ontario, Canada. The purpose of this paper is to develop some working terminology and a conceptual model to explore the dynamics and resilience of social-ecological systems. One of the missing pieces in the resilience literature is the inclusion of individuals into the process of adaptive learning. The adaptive learning model proposed in this paper links the individual process of creativity to the social processes by which new information can become encoded within the institutions and collective information of a knowledge system. My goal for this conceptual model is to provide a way to think about the dynamics of contemporary indigenous systems of resource management in a manner that allows for innovation and self- determination. This is necessary to free our minds from the shackles of the conservative models proposed by many conservation groups which attempt to freeze indigenous people and lands in an idealized form. The model explored in this paper is intended to allow for the individual creativity to from the basis of adaptive learning while respecting the memories of a society."
Indigenous Knowledge and Values in Planning for Sustainable Forestry: Pikangikum First Nation and the Whitefeather Forest Initiative
(2008) O'Flaherty, R. Michael; Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.; Manseau, Micheline
"Although still posing challenges, science-based knowledge (including interdisciplinary work) is leading current forest-management planning. How then can indigenous communities mobilize their own knowledge to support their desire to develop new ways of managing the forest? In northern Ontario, the provincial government has developed a cross-scale planning approach that allocates certain responsibilities to First Nations in order to support their vision and knowledge, yet at the same time addresses provincial planning goals. "Within this context, research on woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus) was conducted in collaboration with Pikangikum First Nation to support their participation in forest-management planning. The outcomes of this research are used as a focal point for discussing some of the stressors that influence cross-scale planning for forestry in northern Ontario. The paper concludes that resolving cultural differences in a forest management planning context is not entirely necessary to move forward with collaborative planning for the conservation of woodland caribou habitat."
Innovating through Commons Use: Community-based Enterprises
(2010) Berkes, Fikret; Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
"Community-based enterprises are of interest to commons researchers because they offer a means to study how local institutions respond to opportunities, develop networks, new skills and knowledge, and evolve. Nevertheless, the relationship between commons and community-based enterprises has received little attention, with a few exceptions. Therefore, we decided to organize a conference session and explore this relationship in more detail. We invited a diverse array of scholars and practitioners active with indigenous enterprises, community development, community forestry, ecotourism and conservation-development projects. This Special Issue includes peer-reviewed and edited versions of seven of the papers (plus two additional invited papers) presented at the two panels on 'Innovating through commons use: community based enterprises', at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons in Cheltenham, England."
Learning as You Journey: Anishinaabe Perception of Social-Ecological Environments and Adaptive Learning
(2003) Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.; Berkes, Fikret
"This paper explores the linkages between social-ecological resilience and adaptive learning. We refer to adaptive learning as a method to capture the two-way relationship between people and their social-ecological environment. In this paper, we focus on traditional ecological knowledge. Research was undertaken with the Anishinaabe people of Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation, in northwestern Ontario, Canada. The research was carried out over two field seasons, with verification workshops following each field season. The methodology was based on site visits and transects determined by the elders as appropriate to answer a specific question, find specific plants, or locate plant communities. During site visits and transect walks, research themes such as plant nomenclature, plant use, habitat descriptions, biogeophysical landscape vocabulary, and place names were discussed. Working with elders allowed us to record a rich set of vocabulary to describe the spatial characteristics of the biogeophysical landscape. However, elders also directed our attention to places they knew through personal experiences and journeys and remembered from stories and collective history. We documented elders perceptions of the temporal dynamics of the landscape through discussion of disturbance events and cycles. Again, elders drew our attention to the ways in which time was marked by cultural references to seasons and moons. The social memory of landscape dynamics was documented as a combination of biogeophysical structures and processes, along with the stories by which Iskatewizaagegan people wrote their histories upon the land. Adaptive learning for social-ecological resilience, as suggested by this research, requires maintaining the web of relationships of people and places. Such relationships allow social memory to frame creativity, while allowing knowledge to evolve in the face of change. Social memory does not actually evolve directly out of ecosystem dynamics. Rather, social memory both frames creativity within, and emerges from, a dynamic social-ecological environment."
Negotiating the Commons: Land Use, Property Rights and Pastoralists of the Western Indian Himalayas
(1995) Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
"This practicum presents the results of ten weeks of fieldwork in the Kulu Valley of the State of Himachal Pradesh, India, undertaken during the summer of 1994, as part of the team project on 'Sustainable Development of Mountain Environments in India and Canada'. The general purpose of this research is to document the ability of a local collective (village) to influence the management of a Kulu Valley commons within the framework of state law. The specific objectives are to: identify the property rights regimes; identify the users of specific common property resources, describe the collective management of the grazing commons; identify interactions among collectives and between collectives and the state; and, derive recommendations for sustainable resource management."
Passing on Ojibway Lifeways in a Contemporary Environment
(1998) Chapeskie, Andrew; Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.; Fobister, Roger
"The language, knowledge and culture of the Grassy Narrows people has emerged out of an intimate link between the people and their land-based way of life. This way of life has been continually redefined and renewed over the course of historical memory for the Grassy Narrows people. However, a major cultural shift for Grassy Narrows people within the past couple of generations has been their move towards a much more settled way of life on their reserve. This has resulted from a complex process of government policy and personal choice. "This situation has reached a critical point as the majority of todays children and youth at Grassy Narrows are not retaining the language, ancestral knowledge or culture of their people. This brings us back to our opening point. Linking common-property traditions and native language education in a formal school setting may seem a large leap but it is a necessary leap. Without the language, cultureand knowledge of a land-based way of life, opportunities to pursue that way of life will be greatly diminished. Valuable knowledge may be lost. Retention of the Ojibway language, and retention of the Ojibway knowledge, to the degree that this is possible in a school setting, stands to provide a greater range of options for the future from which Grassy Narrows people can choose. Future generations of Grassy Narrows people will have a broader range of tools, created as a results of their having been taught in school the knowledge that was given by their Elders living today, to pursue an autonomous way of life within a contemporary context."
The Protection of Forest Biodiversity can Conflict with Food Access for Indigenous People
(2016) Sylvester, Olivia; Segura, Alí García; Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
"International protected area (PA) management policies recognise the importance of respecting Indigenous rights. However, little research has been conducted to evaluate how these policies are being enforced. We evaluated whether Indigenous rights to access traditional food were being respected in La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Costa Rica. By examining land management documents, we found that PA regulations have the potential to restrict traditional food access because these regulations ban shifting agriculture and heavily restrict hunting; these regulations do not address the harvest of edible plants. By working with Bribri people, we found multiple negative impacts that PAs had on: health, nutrition, passing on cultural teachings to youth, quality of life, cultural identity, social cohesion and bonding, as well as on the land and non-human beings. We propose three steps to better support food access in PAs in Costa Rica and elsewhere. First, a right to food framework should inform PA management regarding traditional food harvesting. Second, people require opportunities to define what harvesting activities are traditional and sustainable and these activities should be respected in PA management. Third, harvesting regulations need to be clearly communicated by land managers to resource users so people have the necessary information to exercise their rights to access food."
The State, the Village and the Commoner: Interactions in the Management of a Western Himalayan Commons
(1995) Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
"This report presents the results often weeks of field work in the Kulu Valley of the State of Himachal Pradesh, India, undertaken during the summer of 1994. It contributes to the on-going debate within natural resources management over the ability of local collectives, villages or user-groups, to manage common property resources. It demonstrates that in spite of property regimes established in Law, which limits the ability of users to manage common property, local collectives have continued to negotiate access and influence management of resources important for customary subsistence strategies. "The research findings included the identification of ten land use types known to local villagers, seven of which could be identified as having elements of common property. Property rights which did not exist in Law (de jure) were claimed by the villagers and existed in custom (de facto). These findings established that the commons in the study area were complicated, due to the interplay between dejure and de facto property rights, and confounded a simple application of common property theory to resource management analysis. It was also found that a village institution, the mimbers, still existed, alongside with the Mahila Mandal and Village Panchayat, and performed a number of duties such as dispute settlement between villagers and between villages regarding resource use. "The common property of the study area included a substantial portion of grazing land. This land was used by animals, and was part of the transhumance system of sheep, goat and water buffalo herding. The grazing system provided a case study of how agriculturists interacted with village pastoralists and water buffalo herders over the use and management of the pastoral commons. It was found that a system of common property management was embedded within seasonal migration cycles and grazing management decisions based on local knowledge. However, the number of village pastoralists was found to be decreasing as the social relations between agriculturists and pastoralists changed in response to an emerging orchard economy, privatization and/or closing of grazing grounds, and pressure from regulations regarding forestry."