From Innovation to Codification: Conversations with Iskatewizaagegan Elders Regarding Creativity, Memory and Plants in Anishinaabe Society

Abstract

"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."