tional botanical knowledge, can be extremely detrimental to cultural revitalization and has created a critical need to triage ethnobotanical research efforts. Through triage, available resources, including research assistance, can be assigned to the most pressing community concerns first (Hinton 2001b).Historically, ethnobotanical research agendas have been developed without significant input from indigenous communities. Too often, research questions, methods, analyses, and conclusions are formulated in an academic vacuum, outside the indigenous community, and yield findings that are interesting but not urgently needed. Triaging an indigenous community's ethnobotanical needs requires intimate knowledge of community values, traditions, resources, and long-term goals-knowledge only the community itself holds. We suggest ethnobotanical research agendas be locally determined and guided by indigenous communities themselves. In fact, a number of ethnobotanical revitalization projects have yielded success with this approach including preservation of ethnobotanical language
Community-Led Ethnobotanical Triage: Case study-Myaamia corn traditionsMichael P. Gonella, Daryl W. Baldwin, and Adolph M. Greenberg
Research AbstractRapid loss of indigenous ethnobotanical traditions has created a need to triage research efforts to preserve this traditional knowledge. A triage process, however, is best led by those who understand the cultural context of historical data and are keenly aware of the community's pressing needs-the indigenous community itself. Non-community researchers can be involved by lending research skills and connections towards the community-established research goals. This study described a process by which two non-indigenous community researchers supported an indigenous, Myaamia (Miami) research scholar in triaging Myaamia ethnobotanical research priorities and in conducting a focused study on the highest priority plant according to that community: corn (Zea mays L.). Data gathered regarding Myaamia corn traditions allowed the reconstruction of the traditional corn cultivation cycle. Description of traditional corn processing techniques, recipes, and identifying traditional corn varieties is helping the Myaamia community in their efforts to preserve cultural historical knowledge associated with planting of corn and in so doing revitalize Myaamia language and culture.
This article is a preliminary attempt to address an imperative. We begin with case materials describing past conservation impacts on local peoples and a review of the literature dealing with Man and the Biosphere (MAB) and other conservation programs worldwide. We conclude our discussion with a suggestion that recent developments in ecological anthropology, particularly, the advent of processual models, can provide the basis for an important rapprochement among the imperatives underlying natural resource policies, the rights of local populations to traditional resources, and the potential for continued voluntary cultural diversity. These approaches along with the anthropological outreach to environmentalists, whether in agencies or among traditional resource users, will benefit local peoples, anthropology, and the continued efforts to protect the world biome.
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