Traditional Wisdom: Protecting Relationships with Wilderness as a Cultural Landscape

Wilderness protected areas : management guidelines for IUCN category 1b protected areas

“…This is also demonstrated through the way that most Indigenous cultures understand the world and build knowledge and wisdom. Indigenous science is assembled and deployed subjectively, compared to the objective nature of contemporary scientific and management inquiry (Berkes, 2012;Watson, et al, 2011). Subjective knowledge derives from and drives towards holistic understanding, whereas objective knowledge is reductionist, tending to narrow information to the smallest parts in order to understand (Berkes, 2012).…”

Sustainable Development and Equity

“…The relevance of values to SD and, particularly, to ecologically conscious (consumer) behaviour, is related to the nature of environmental issues as 'social dilemmas', where short-term narrow individual interests conflict with the longer term social interest (Pepper et al, 2009). Researchers have highlighted the role of non-selfish values that promote the welfare of others (including nature), noting that some but not all indigenous societies are known to focus on 'collective' as opposed to 'individual' interests and values, which often result in positive resource conservation strategies and wellbeing (Gadgil et al, 1993;Sobrevila, 2008;Watson et al, 2011). However, it is well known that a range of factors also mediate the impact of values on behaviour so that the link from values to ecologically conscious behaviour is often loose (Pepper et al, 2009).…”

Indigenous Principles of Wild Harvest and Management: An Ojibway Community as a Case Study

“…The trend to date has largely been the domination of Western Science over Indigenous knowledge systems (in the sense described by Pentland 1995); circumstances in which Indigenous knowledge holders might be requested to provide information to scientists/managers who would evaluate it for reliability and utility before deciding whether to incorporate in a science-based management program (McGregor 2004; Clark and Slocombe 2009; Lyver et al 2009). Some scholars have suggested that conflict caused by this kind of cultural domination could be reduced if governments and Indigenous communities re-initiated their discussions with an examination of similarities and differences in principles regarding ‘conservation’ and ‘natural resource management’ (Ratner and Holen 2007; Ebbin 2011; Watson et al 2011). In this way, the communities could develop a structured and respectful dialogue about wild harvest management in the spirit of reconciliation and productive collaboration.…”

“…Although the practice of ‘defining principles for resource management’ is not something that Indigenous societies typically engage in, there have been many attempts to survey and understand Indigenous values and social norms in this regard (Ratner and Holen 2007; Turner and Berkes 2006; Watson et al 2011). For example, Alcorn (1993) offered a general treatise on the relationship between Indigenous worldviews and the Western idea of ‘conservation.’ Berkes et al (1998) explored fundamental properties of ecosystem-like concepts in Indigenous cultures.…”