Nature and Society Relations Commons^™

What's In A Name? Plant Naming As Cultural Artifact And Story In The Midwestern United States, Sophie Wesseler

Undergraduate Theses

This project sought to collect and contextualize the historical and contemporary names given to plants by inhabitants of the Midwestern United States, understanding plant names as cultural artifacts that can offer insight into the communities in which they were created and evolved. Formatted as a series of entries, this collection gathered these names and contextualized them within other artifacts of cultural significance, such as art or poetry, and alongside historical research on their origins and cultural environments. Examining plant names through the fields of linguistics, semiology, anthropology, cultural studies, taxonomy, and ethnobotany, this work traces the names of various plants …

Citing Seeds, Citing People: Bibliography And Indigenous Memory, Relations, And Living Knowledge-Keepers, Megan Peiser Choctaw Nation Of Oklahoma

Criticism

By turning the page or reading further, you are accepting a responsibility to this story, its storyteller, its ancestors, and its future ancestors. You are accepting a relationship of reciprocity where you treat this knowledge as sacred for how it nourished you, share it only as it has been instructed to share, and to ensure it remains unviolated for future generations.

This story is told by myself, Megan Peiser, Chahta Ohoyo. I share knowledge entrusted to me by Anishinaabe women I call friends and sisters, by seed-keepers of many peoples Indigenous to Turtle Island, and knowledge come to me from …

Reintroducing Hemp (Rongony) In The Material Palette Of Madagascar: A Study On The Potential Of Hemp Clay Components And Its Impact On Social And Ecological Communities., Henintsoa Thierry Andrianambinina

Masters Theses

When mentioning the word hemp, especially in the local language of Madagascar, the literal translation does not set it apart from marijuana, as they are both called “rongony” - creating the stigma around hemp as the negative stereotype of marijuana. However, the material has been used by the ancestors of Madagascar, as well as across cultures, in its fibrous form to produce fabrication like textile goods and packaging. During colonization, the prohibition of hemp intensified, and since then, any activity related to either of these plants is prohibited and will end in severe punitive measures. This thesis explores the strengths …

Bridging Knowledge Systems In The Peruvian Andes: Plurality, Co-Creation, And Transformative Socio-Ecological Solutions To Climate Change, Domenique Ciavattone

Capstone Collection

In the current era of anthropogenic climate change, Quechua farmers in the Peruvian Andes are some of the most impacted by, yet some of the lowest contributors to global warming. Dominant Western systems alone have proven insufficient in tackling the climate crisis, and there have been increasing efforts to elevate and center Indigenous voices and epistemologies when addressing climate change. Researchers and communities are calling for a bridging of knowledge systems, in which Indigenous and Western methods collaborate to co-create innovative solutions to climate challenges. This research sought to explore methods and successes in bridging Indigenous and Western knowledge systems …

Desire And The Work It Does: Alterity And Exogamy In A Kotiria Origin Myth From The Northwest Amazon Of Brazil, Janet M. Chernela

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In terms of the pan-Amazonian social paradigm that transforms affines into kin and assimilates them into the consanguineal unit, Eastern Tukanoans must be regarded as exceptional. This paper explores a foundation myth that allows us to better understand relations of self and Other, incest and exogamy, and violence and amity among the Eastern Tukanoan-speaking Kotiria. The narrative provides a heretofore-absent foundation for Tukanoan affinity, revealing complications and nuance in Kotiria notions of alterity and the generative role of Desire in its transformation. It is a synthesis not from nature, but from poesis; not from trust, but from theft; not from …

Participatory Knowledge Of Motion: Ezhianishinaabebimaadiziyaang Mii Sa Ezhianishinaabeaadisokeyaang. The Way In Which We Live, That Is The Way We Write Stories., Erin E. Huner

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This is a dissertation based upon the Customary Ways Dataset, which is comprised of 50 interviews given by Elders from Walpole Island First Nation, in 2010. The over-arching, community-designed research question that guided this dissertation was: How do the Elders of Walpole Island describe their relationship to the land? To answer this question, I co-designed a mixed-methods analysis that included traditional methods from the Social Sciences, including Grounded Theory, to establish emergent themes, and some simple statistical analysis using Chi-square and crosstab analysis. I also utilized methods closely related to the Humanities, deploying Story Mapping, Close Reading and a …

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Sheep Replace Pronghorn: An Environmental History Of The Mono Basin, Robert B. Marks

Eastern Sierra History Journal

This article examines the ways in which the hunting-gathering people of the Mono Basin lived before their way of life and environment was overturned by the nineteenth-century arrival of Euro-American settlers with vastly different ways of interacting with the environment. And it tracks some of these alterations by tracking when and how sheep replaced pronghorns.

Visualizing A Post-Apocalypse: Notes On New Ayoreo Cinema, Lucas Bessire, Bernard Belisário

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This essay describes one recent Ayoreo film and its production in order to reflect on the wider significance of lowland South American Indigenous cinema and analyses of it today. Informed by the authors’ roles in the collaborative editing of the film Ujirei, the article details how one Ayoreo filmmaker cinematically visualizes a unique aesthetic response to the aftermath of pandemic upheavals and world-ending violence – a response that pointedly exceeds any prescriptive or structuralist approach to lowland Indigenous cinema. In order to better grasp the subjective, conceptual and political implications of this project, the essay aims to craft an analytic …

Beyond A Mapping Exercise: Inclusion Of Aboriginal Traditional Ecological Knowledge In Parks And Protected Areas Management, David Cook

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This paper examines current approaches for Parks and Protected Areas (PPA) managers in incorporating Aboriginal Traditional and Ecological Knowledge (ATEK) into their management plans. This paper focuses on two case-studies. They are Nahanni National Park and Reserve in the Dehcho region of the Northwest Territories, and the Whitefeather Forest Protected Area in the Pikangikum First Nations Traditional Territory in Ontario. They were chosen because of their unique approaches to include Aboriginal communities in the planning process and their designation as UNESCO World Heritage sites. The broader indigenous involvement policies of both Parks Canada and Ontario Parks are examined using academic …

A Fishy Problem: Effects Of Atlantic Salmon Farming In The Pacific Ocean, Madeleine A. Griffith

Student Theses 2015-Present

In this report, I explore the historical, climatological, economic, and ethical issues created by the contemporary industrial salmon farming practices off Pacific coast of the United States and Canada. Chapter 1 utilizes a variety of sources from Stephen Hume’s A Stain upon the Sea to Miller’s Living in the Environment, to examine the integral part salmon plays in both freshwater and marine ecosystems, the ecosystem services salmon contribute in wild and farmed settings, and the trends in salmon consumption around the world. Chapter 2 examines the historically relevant role salmon held among indigenous societies and how that role has changed …

"La Llorona": Evolución, Ideología Y Uso En El Mundo Hispano, Raquel Sáenz-Llano

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis studies the evolution, ideology and use of the myth of La Llorona through time in the Hispanic World. Considering this myth as one of the most known traditional narratives of the American continent, I begin by providing visual, ethnohistorical and ethnographical insights of weeping in Mesoamerica and South America and the specific mention of a weeping woman in some Spanish chronicles to say how western values were stablished in “the new continent” through this legend. I suggest that during the postcolonialism the legend did not tell anymore about a mother that cries and search a place for their …

Creating An Indigenous Multicultural Faith: The Russian Orthodox Mission In Alaska And The Centrality Of Cosmology, Niklaus Von Houck

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper applies letters, journals, history interviews, government-company contracts, international treaties, theological works, and images to examine the convergence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Alaskan Indigenous shamanism cultures to explicate the harmonizing of an Indigenous multicultural Christian faith in nineteenth-century Russian Alaska. Central to this examination is the evaluation of effects of Orthodox Christian missiology on native Alaskans and the Indigenous religio-cultural response to Russian missionaries. Not merely a historical overview of contact between natives and missionaries in Russian Alaska, this paper harmonizes the commonality of cosmology between native Alaskan shamanism and Orthodox Christianity. It analyzes the impacts of comparatively …

Representing Wilderness In The Shaping Of America's National Parks: Aesthetics, Boundaries, And Cultures In The Works Of James Fenimore Cooper, John Muir, And Their Artistic Contemporaries, Alana Jajko

Master’s Theses

This project studies the works of James Fenimore Cooper, John Muir, and their artistic contemporaries in relation to the shaping of America’s national parks and what it means for the parks and their attending wilderness to be symbolic of the nation. It seeks to reveal the national parks as artistic representations of a constructed wilderness, while also emphasizing the physical experience of the natural world as a means of supplementing our subjective views. Through the lenses of aesthetics, boundaries, and cultures, I narrow my study to focus on three distinct perspectives by which we can understand the national parks and …

From The Tundra To The Trenches By Eddy Weetaltuk, Vivian M. Hansen

The Goose

Review of Eddy Weetaltuk's From the Tundra to the Trenches.

Infinite Citizen Of The Shaking Tent By Liz Howard, David Carruthers

The Goose

Review of Liz Howard's Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent.

Drowning In Rising Seas: Navigating Multiple Knowledge Systems And Responding To Climate Change In The Maldives, Rachel Hannah Spiegel

Pitzer Senior Theses

The threat of global climate change increasingly influences the actions of human society. As world leaders have negotiated adaptation strategies over the past couple of decades, a certain discourse has emerged that privileges Western conceptions of environmental degradation. I argue that this framing of climate change inhibits the successful implementation of adaptation strategies. This thesis focuses on a case study of the Maldives, an island nation deemed one of the most vulnerable locations to the impacts of rising sea levels. I apply a postcolonial theoretical framework to examine how differing knowledge systems can both complement and contradict one another. By …

Different Names For Bullying, Marco Poggio

Capstones

“There's all different forms of bullying,” says Steven Gray, a Lakota rancher and former law enforcement officer living in South Dakota. In this look into Gray’s life, we learn about two instances of bullying: the psychological and physical harassment that pushed his son, Tanner Thomas Gray, to commit suicide at age 12; And the controversial construction of an oil pipeline in an ancient tribal land that belongs to the Lakota people by rights of a treaty signed in 1851, which Gray sees as an institutional abuse infringing on the sovereignty of his people. Gray is involved in the movement that …

Beyond The Edge Of The Planted Field: Exploring Community-Based Environmental Education, And Invisible Losses In Settler And Indigenous Cultural Contexts, Samantha Da Rosa Holmes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Walpole Island Land Trust and the Sydenham Field Naturalists came together for a focus group at the Walpole Island Heritage Centre and spoke of the relevance environmental education plays in the awareness of a shared history between communities from separate cultural contexts. From the focus group this research is able to contextualize the conversation between a non-Indigenous and an Indigenous community-based environmental organization, and their focus on the relationship between people, place, and history. The context of the conversation being the colonial legacies of land use management and educational practices and how these institutions prolong the effect of invisible …

Tangled Roots, Bittersweet Exposure, Chase Clow

The Goose

Accompanied by tree portraits, this personal narrative reflects upon the intersecting histories between the indigenous peoples of Marin County (north of San Francisco, CA) and the author, who is Euro-American, while contemplating the changing relationship to their shared woodland, the effects of colonization, and possibilities for healing.

Of Wolves, Hunters, And Words: A Comparative Study Of Cultural Discourses In The Western Great Lakes Region, Tovar Cerulli

Doctoral Dissertations

This study is a description, interpretation, and comparison of talk about wolves. The study is based on diverse data—including in-depth interviews, instances of public talk, government documents, and letters to the editor—gathered over three years. An overarching research question guides the study: How do hunting communities create and use discourses concerning wolves? The study is situated within the ethnography of communication and, more specifically, the framework of cultural discourse analysis. The study employs cultural discourse analysis methods and concepts to describe and develop interpretations of how participants render wolves symbolically meaningful, and of beliefs and values underpinning such meanings. One …

Me Artsy Compiled And Edited By Drew Hayden Taylor, Nathalie N. Hager 2159876

The Goose

Review of Me Artsy compiled and edited by Drew Hayden Taylor.

Indigenous Poetics In Canada Edited By Neal Mcleod, Kelly Shepherd

The Goose

Review of Neal McLeod's Indigenous Poetics in Canada.

May You Walk In Beauty: The Decline Of Navajo Land And Culture, Jocelyn Catterson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The Navajo homeland, Dinetah, is bordered by four mountains that are sacred to the Navajo people: two in Colorado, one in New Mexico, and one in Arizona. Historically, Navajo medicine men have traveled to these mountains to renew prayers and collect medicinal herbs. Today, the mountains, which exist outside of the reservation boundaries, are used for resource extraction and various recreational pursuits. While many Navajo are fighting for the protection of these sacred lands and their traditional culture, others are disinterested. Traditional practices and beliefs are slowly disappearing within the Navajo Nation. The land-use issues associated with these sacred mountains …

Three Poems From "The Elder Project," Vernon School District 22, Brian Antoine, Yetko Brooke Bearshirt-Robins, John (Wilke) Louis, Lindsy Oppenheimer, Vicky Raphael, Lenaya Sampson

The Goose

Poetry by Vernon School District secondary students and their elders, in collaboration with The Elder Project organized by Wendy Morton and Sandra Lynxleg.

Wild Life, Jordan Abel

The Goose

Poetry by Jordan Abel. This poem is composed from 91 public domain Western novels that are freely available on Project Gutenberg. In total, the source text is over 10,000 pages long and is authored by 20 different writers. When all of the novels were searched simultaneously, there were 41 instances of the phrase "wild life." The resulting poem provides a contextual space where the language of a single word or phrase can be read.

X: Poems & Anti-Poems By Shane Rhodes, Tom Miller

The Goose

A review of Shane Rhodes' X: Poems & Anti-Poems. This review focuses on the link between language and landscape, and considers the ways in which that link, reflected in Rhodes' work, comments upon the use of language as an oppressive tool in the treatment of Native Americans and Canadians.

The Environmental And Cultural Effects On The Conquest Of Mexico, Tristan Siegel

Senior Projects Spring 2012

In this work I examine the environment and cultural attitudes of Mesoamericans, specifically the Mexica (Atzec), and how these factors played a role in the Conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortes. I begin by examining Mesoamerican agriculture, lithic technology, and metallurgy. I conclude by examining how these factors played out in the Conquest.

Review Of Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes At Waconda Lake, Kansas. By Donald J. Blakeslee., Lauren W. Ritterbush

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

In Holy Ground, Healing Water readers are treated to a historical journey through the changing cultural landscapes of the Waconda Lake area, northcentral Kansas. This region provides the setting for discussion of unique and representative Native American and EuroAmerican cultural developments in the Great Plains. Don Blakeslee, anthropologist with Wichita State University, briefly reviews roughly 13,000 years ofNative traditions, based on archaeological investigations in the region, then discusses the Pawnee Trail, early European and Euro-American expeditions, complex Native-Native and Native-Euro-American interactions during the 19th century, sacred and secular perceptions and uses of Waconda Spring, and Lincoln Park, a local example …

Historia Indigena E Do Indigenismo No Alto Rio Negro, Robin M. Wright

Robin M Wright

Capítulo 1: A Escravidão Indígena no Noroeste Amazônico. Capítulo 2: Histórias de Guerras e Alianças Capítulo 3: Kamiko, Profeta Baniwa, e o Canto da Cruz Capítulo 4: “Uma Conspiração contra os Civilizados”. Profetas no Uaupés e Xié Capítulo 5: Uétsu – Profeta de Pariká e Caapi Capítulo 6: O Tempo de Sophie: História e Cosmologia da Conversão Baniwa Capítulo 7: Novas Guerras: Os Baniwa, a Mineração, e o Projeto Calha Norte Capítulo 8: Fontes para a História do Alto Rio Negro Epílogo - 2003