Reading Response Assignment 10/13: Choose one of the following passages and read it carefully. Cut and paste the passage into the text box along with citation of the article.
What are two or three points that stand out to you?
Include a couple phrases that caught your attention.
How did you respond to the paragraph from both intellectual and emotional points of view?
- It’s fine for your reading response to be in the form of lists or bullet points and a sentence or two of explanation or you may weave everything together into a paragraph.
- FIVE PASSAGES FROM: The Importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) When Examining Climate Change (Links to an external site.) ” by SAMANTHA CHISHOLM HATFIELD
- Start of Chisolm’s TEK/western science journey
“It all started with a simple conversation over lunch. The fuse had been lit, the spark began, and the first step had occurred in my journey, unbeknownst to me at the time. Later that day, I realized, for the first time in my life, I had experiences that were unique. And, I realized I held knowledge. Knowledge that was different from others; knowledge that went beyond the scientific or academic type, and that ran richer, deeper, more extensive. Sitting over sandwiches, sitting with culture, sitting with knowledge.”
Disregard of Native knowledge by state agency
“I was initially in shock, because I’d grown up continuously learning information outside of academic schooling confines. I’d never realized how much vital information I had amassed, much of it while simply playing, until it came flying back upon reflection. It reached its peak that day when I returned home to have dinner with my Mom and Dad. I listened as Dad discussed the way Native members of a committee were being brushed off by a state agency as they sat in a meeting that they’d been specifically invited to as tribal hunters and gatherers. The tribal members shared TEK about why the deer in the Western Oregon region were losing hair. Years prior to western scientific information finding an exotic lice species responsible for what is now termed Hair Loss Syndrome (Links to an external site.)
, Native tribal members identified the very patterns that had been noted and passed them along through a combination of TEK and TK data. My father, along with other Elders, detailed how the warming trends had allowed a surge of “bugs” to “chew” on the deer, and the massive amount of hair loss that they were all witnessing. They’d outlined the areas in Western Oregon that had been the worst hit, held knowledge collaborations with other hunters and gatherers, and shared ongoing discussions about tribal lands and the other species that were being impacted, directly and indirectly. I sat listening, as I had done so many times before, but literally stopped eating; I suddenly realized I’d reached an awareness level I’d not been at before. There, with those two seemingly innocuous conversations, it began. My journey as a scientist, but more importantly as an educator and facilitator regarding TEK and TK.”Discounting of TEK in traditional western scientific paradigms
“Traditional Ecological Knowledge is often discounted as “irrelevant” in ideologies which are based in traditional western scientific paradigms. Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte expertly articulates how western scientific assumptions discount TEK (Links to an external site.). Colonist thought processes are still prevalent, as evidenced in science curricula. Very little Indigenous information is available for students, at any level, and the lack of TEK and biases are then carried into professional realms. Working to shift this paradigm can be difficult, and daunting. As described in Paul Nadasdy’s book Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon (Links to an external site.), when Indigenous people are invited to conferences and workshop, they are expected to utilize the vocabulary and manner of western science. The invitations come with expectations of addressing one issue at a time. Each issue, or resource, is expected to be divorced from all others, which makes accuracy for TEK experts extremely difficult. TEK is holistic and the expertise regarding the ecosystem addressed, relies on interdependence behaviors of multiple species and is uniquely separate from other, even nearby, ecosystems. TEK observations, sustainability practices, and active participation in TEK resource use and management rely on information databases that can extend back hundreds of years. These long held foundations have often been exclusionary, and TEK still remains the “underdog”, if you will, in western scientific contexts.”
What TEK adds to western scientific knowledge of climate change
“Many scholars are, and have been, examining climate change issues from a very pragmatic and logical regimented approach that is rooted in western scientific dogmas. Everything from temperatures to land base changes, agricultural crops impacted to increased diseases that are being altered from climate change events. This logic and pragmatism provides much needed information, but difficulties arise when data is deficient in areas of human interaction with the environment, and impacts to human cultural issues. Models that are run for specific tasks cannot offer nor evaluate qualitative measures of human interaction issues such as cultural impact adaptations, traditional food set shifting, or phenology sequencing in relation to traditional cultural activities. Multiple data sets and models are run daily on issues at hand happening worldwide, lacking the insight that TEK can offer. TEK adds a holistic approach to climate change that no other data set can provide. Through the depth, breadth, and length of documented TEK and TK, there is a wealth of information that models and western science cannot reach though western science approaches alone. Human interaction and observation of the environment has been commonly relied upon for multiple generations. This type of interaction is noted in petroglyphs, and in communities FEK, FK, and LEK provide a much shorter timeframe and often a more limited dataset than Indigenous TEK, however. There is a realm of information offered that is complementary, or even new in some instances, when TEK is applied and adjusted to examine environmental events that are occurring. Dovetailing TEK and western scientific methodology can provide datasets that address climate change Impacts in an effective holistic manner, and more comprehensively illustrate human interfacing systems.”
What TEK adds to western scientific knowledge of climate change
“Much like analyzing tree rings for fire, disease, and flood events, TEK can offer a broader view of ecological and scientific topics researched and examined that are localized in nature, but broad in perspective. Trends that have been documented through generations are more likely to offer detailed long-term data patterns, provide tools for a better analysis, and add more comprehensive insight than stand-alone western scientific methodologies. Items such as basket materials, regalia changes and fluctuations (due to materials being impacted by events such as floods, fires, or other catastrophic impacts can cause alterations and fluctuation patterns to traditional regalia and use), or even cooking and eating utensils can provide data that can be added into assessing climate change researched topics such as weather fluctuations, tree material adaptations, foods and crop impacts, any issue relating to environmental composition and the human interaction with environmental resources. Even songs or stories that were once assumed to be merely entertainment can prove to be valuable tools in the quest to understand our changing environment and climate change events.”
you can choose one passage from this 5 passages
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