Political Anthropology of TEK in the Canadian Subarctic

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Date

1998

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Abstract

"The present paper shall focus upon the political role which Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) has begun to play in recent disputes over land use between Aboriginal peoples and development planners. Focusing largely, though not exclusively, upon the Cree of the James Bay drainage area, its central theme shall be to describe and compare the worldviews, and the patterns of adaptation with which they are consistent of First Nations in the Canadian subarctic, and of public and private development planners. This comparison is meant to help us better understand recent debates within Canadian society at large over the role of TEK in development planning and environmental impact assessment, a discussion of which will provide the main theme in what follows. The paper will be divided into four sections. The first shall begin by defining TEK, and provide a brief discussion of the increasingly political role it has begun to play in the political relationships between First Nations and other levels of government. This shall be followed by a second section which briefly outlines traditional Cree land tenure and resource management practices in the James Bay area, and a discussion of the debate mentioned above, concerning the nature of Aboriginal management practices. The third section shall then discuss a recent debate over the role of TEK in environmental impact assessment ...:. Finally, I shall conclude with some observations on where each of the two positions might be expected to lead us, by highlighting their political and economic implications, and the approaches to the management of the commons which they suggest."

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IASC, common pool resources, indigenous knowledge, Cree (North American people), indigenous institutions, traditional resource management

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