"Still water, who knows you?" : counter-mapping traditional knowledge and ancestral values with Nak'azdli Whut'en ...

• Main Author: Taggart, Jonathan
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2021
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0401895; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0401895

Many nations globally are seeking reconciliation with Indigenous peoples who continue to suffer at the hands of colonialism and resource extraction. In Canada, development proponents must engage with First Nations in impact assessment processes, seemingly foregrounding Indigenous values in environmental decision making. Consultation entails traditional use and occupancy (TUO) studies: mapped inventories of subsistence activities and traditional ecological knowledge. However, First Nation communities express dissatisfaction with the way their worlds are represented in assessments: for example, criticizing TUO maps for overlooking the deeper significance of harvesting activities in favour of ‘thin’ descriptions of Indigenous interests in the land. This dissertation asks, how does such consultation capture Indigenous interests, values, and world views, and how might it do so more effectively? I draw on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with Nak’azdli Whut’en, a First Nation community in British Columbia, to ...