The Significance of Context in Community-Based Research: Understanding Discussions about Wildfire in Huslia, Alaska

Abstract

Community workshops are widely used tools for collaborative research on social-ecological resilience in indigenous communities. Although results have been reported in many publications, few have reflected explicitly on the workshop itself, and specifically on understanding what is said during a workshop. Drawing on experience from workshops held in Huslia, Alaska in 2004 on wildfire and climate change, we discuss the importance of considering cultural, political, and epistemological context when analyzing statements made by indigenous people in community workshops. We provide examples of statements whose meaning and intent were, and may remain, unclear, with descriptions of our attempts to understand what was being said by placing the statements in a variety of contexts. We conclude that, although workshops can be an efficient means of exchanging information, researchers should strive for multiple channels of communication and should be cautious in their interpretations of what is said.

Policy strategies to address sustainability of Alaskan boreal forests in response to a directionally changing climate

“…Thin ice reduces the safety of travel over ice . Warming also reduces access because the more extensive fires destroy trapping cabins and topple trees, making overland travel more hazardous and difficult (35). Cues that were traditionally used to predict weather and assess the safety of travel over ice are now less predictive, eroding cultural ties to the land (36).…”

“…Their observations provided some of the first and most extensive evidence for widespread warming effects on supporting services (e.g., altered hydrology and abundances of key indicators of ecosystem functioning) and provisioning services (subsistence resources) in interior Alaska (30,40). These groups initiated interactions with the scientific community to become more informed about potential causes of these patterns (35). Having made similar observations (40), indigenous peoples from across the circumpolar north have joined forces in the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, and as members of the Arctic Council (an international body that represents governments and indigenous peoples of all arctic nations) to raise international awareness of the cultural consequences of anthropogenic contributions to global warming, thus forming new coalitions that function at the social-state and international levels, i.e., the same scale as the anthropogenic contributions to the problem (41).…”

Sámi reindeer governance in Norway as competing knowledge systems: a participatory study

“…Sámi reindeer herders, as do many other indigenous peoples, have a broader understanding of the relationship between humans and nature than do Western scientists (Huntington et al 2006, Berkes 2008, Díaz et al 2015. While both national and international conventions (e.g., the Norwegian Nature Diversity Act and the Convention on Biological Diversity) recognize the role of traditional knowledge in achieving biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, there is a tendency among scientists and resource managers to assume that indigenous knowledge systems can be fully translated and integrated into the Western science knowledge system (Nadasdy 1999, Mistry andBerardi 2016).…”

“…He also states that traditional knowledge should rather be understood as "one aspect of broader cultural processes that are embedded in complex networks of social relations, values, and practices which give them meaning" (Nadasdy 1999:5). Also, Huntington et al (2006) emphasize the importance of listening to and understanding traditional knowledge statements "within a larger political, spiritual, and epistemological context. "…”

Law for Country: the Structure of Warlpiri Ecological Knowledge and Its Application to Natural Resource Management and Ecosystem Stewardship

“…Warlpiri people would find an accumulation of information in relation to each ngurra-kurlu element only partially relevant because it would not practically engage with the social institutions or the political contexts through which they negotiate, teach, learn, modify, and practice their environmental knowledge. Hence, following authors such as Bradley et al (2006) and Huntington et al (2006), we consider that it is important to resist the common tendency to transform ecological knowledge into something abstract and objective rather than something that is lived day to day.…”