Biocultural diversity and indigenous ways of knowing: human ecology in the Arctic (original) (raw)
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The New Arctic, 2015
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The intimate knowledge that Inuit possess about the environment has figured prominently in North American Arctic research since at least the mid-1960s, when adherents of Julian Steward's adaptationist perspective essentially displaced the acculturation paradigm that until then had dominated Inuit studies. While Nelson's Hunters of the Northern Ice is the prototype of integrating traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) into the cultural analysis of Inuit, virtually all ecologically framed research on Inuit adaptation since has drawn extensively on TEK, if only as one of several information sources. Recently, however, Inuit and agencies and individuals concerned with the conduct of research in the North have expressed concern about the appropriation of this culturally specific knowledge. In the contemporary research environment of Nunavut, TEK is now a political (as well as scientific and cultural) concern. More specifically, I conclude that 1) TEK is not qualitatively different from other scientific data sets; therefore, its analysis and interpretation must be subject to the same "rules" that apply to other forms of information; 2) TEK, because it is frequently contextualized in individuals, demands closer ethical treatment than it has previously been accorded; and 3) the protection of TEK from "abuse" by scientists through intellectual property rights initiatives is problematic and unlikely to serve the long-term interests of either Inuit or researchers.
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In 1997 the National Science Foundation Arctic System Science (ARCSS) program launched the Human Dimensions of the Arctic System (HARC) initiative. Its goal is to “understand the dynamics of linkages between human populations and the biological and physical environment of the Arctic, at scales ranging from local to global.” Since its inception in 1989, ARCSS had focused on the physical and biological aspects of the Arctic system. The HARC initiative was intended to help expand the scope of ARCSS to include more work on the place of humans within that system. Taken together, HARC projects offer the most direct link between ARCSS research and society, providing relevant information on topics of importance to Arctic communities and the world at large. HARC developed through projects proposed in response to the new initiative and through the incorporation of existing projects that had a clear focus on human dimensions. These projects had in common the involvement of several disciplines,...