Traditional Ecological Knowledge

and Environmental Futures

Winona LaDuket
Traditional ecological knowledge is the culturally and spiritually
based way in which indigenous peoples relate to their ecosystems. This
knowledge is founded on spiritual-cultural instructions from "time im-
memorial" and on generations of careful observation within an ecosystem
of continuous residence. I believe that this knowledge represents the
clearest empirically based system for resource management and ecosystem
protection in North America, and I will argue that native societies'
knowledge surpasses the scientific and social knowledge of the dominant
society in its ability to provide information and a management style for
environmental planning. Frankly, these native societies have existed as the
only example of sustainable living in North America for more than 300
years.
This essay discusses the foundation of traditional ecological
knowledge and traditional legal systems, the implications of colonialism on
these systems, and the challenges faced by the environmental movement
and native peoples in building a common appreciation for what is common
ground-Anishinabeg Akiing-the people's land.
I had afish net out in a lake and at first I was getting quite a few
fish in it. But there was an otter in the lake and he was eating the fish
in the net. After a while, fish stopped coming into the net. They knew
there was a predatorthere. So similarlygame know about the presence
of huntersas well. The Cree say, "allcreaturesare watching you. They
know everything you are doing. Animals are awareof your activities."
In the past, animals talked to people. In a sense, there is still com-
munication between animals and hunters. You can predict where the
black bear is likely to den. Even though the black bear zigzigs before
retreatinginto his den to hibernate,tries to shake you off his trail,you
can stillpredict where he is likely to go to. When he approacheshis den
entrance,he makes tracks backwards, loses his tracks in the bush, and
makes a long detour before coming into the den. The hunter tries to

f Member of the Mississippi Band Anishinabe and Campaign Director of the White
Earth Land Recovery Program, a reservation-based land and environmental advocacy and
acquisition organization on the White Earth Reservation of Anishinabeg in northern Min-
nesota.
 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

think what the bearis thinking. Their minds touch. The hunter and the
bear have parallelknowledge, and they share that knowledge. So in a
sense they communicate.'
To be secure that one will be able to harvest enough involves more
than skill; it also involves careful observation of the ecosystem and careful
behavior determined by social values and cultural practices.
"Minobimaatisiiwin,"2 or the "good life," is the basic objective of the
Anishinabeg and Cree3 people who have historically, and to this day,
occupied a great portion of the north-central region of the North American
continent. An alternative interpretation of the word is "continuous rebirth."
This is how we traditionally understand the world and how indigenous
societies have come to live within natural law. Two tenets are essential to
this paradigm: cyclical thinking and reciprocal relations and respon-
sibilities to the Earth and creation. Cyclical thinking, common to most
indigenous or land-based cultures and value systems, is an understanding
that the world (time, and all parts of the natural order-including the moon,
the tides, women, lives, seasons, or age) flows in cycles. Within this
understanding is a clear sense of birth and rebirth and a knowledge that
what one does today will affect one in the future, on the return. A second
concept, reciprocal relations, defines responsibilities and ways of relating
between humans and the ecosystem. Simply stated, the resources of the
economic system, whether they be wild rice or deer, are recognized as
animate and, as such, gifts from the Creator. Within that context, one could
not take life without a reciprocal offering, usually tobacco or some other
recognition of the Anishinabeg's reliance on the Creator. There must
always be this reciprocity. Additionally, assumed in the "code of ethics" is
an understanding that "you take only what you need, and you leave the
rest."
Implicit in the concept of Minobimaatisiiwin is a continuous inhabita-
tion of place, an intimate understanding of the relationship between
humans and the ecosystem, and the need to maintain that balance. These
values and basic tenets of culture made it possible for the Cree, Ojibway,
and many other indigenous peoples to maintain economic, political,

1. Fikret Berkes, EnvironmentalPhilosophy of the ChisasibiCree People of James

Bay Brock University, in TRADrrONAL KNOWLEDGE AND RENEWABLE RESOURCE MANAGE-
MENT INNORTHERN REGIONS (Occasional Paper No. 23), at 7, 10 (Milton M.R. Freeman &
Ludwig N. Carbyn, eds. 1988).
2. "Minobimaatisiiwin" can be literally translated as the "good life"-"mino" means
"good" and "bimatissiiwin" mean "life" in the language of the Anishinaabeg people.
3. Anishinabeg, which means "the people," are also called the Ojibway or Chippewa,
and are an Algonkinspeaking people who reside in the Great Lakes region. The Cree or
Eeyou, which can be translated as "the people" in their language, are close relatives of the
Anishinaabeg.
1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 129
Environmental Futures

religious, and other institutions for generations in a manner that would

4
today be characterized as sustainable.

I. A MODEL
By its very nature, "development"--or, concomitantly, an "economic
system" based on these ascribed Indigenous values-must be decentral-
ized, self-reliant, and very closely based on the carrying capacity of that
ecosystem. By example, the nature of northern indigenous economies has
been a diversified mix of hunting, harvesting, and gardening, all utilizing a
balance of human intervention or care, in accordance with these religious
and cultural systems' reliance upon the wealth and generosity of nature.
Because by their very nature indigenous cultures are not in an adversarial
relationship with nature, this reliance is recognized as correct and positive.
A hunter always speaks as if the animals are in control of the hunt.
The success of the hunt depends on the animals:the hunteris successful
if the animal decides to make himself available. The hunters have no
power over the game, animalshave the last say as to whether they will
be caught. 5
The Anishinabeg or Ojibway nation, for example, encompasses
people and land within four Canadian,provinces and five US states. This
nation has a shared common culture, history, governance, language, and
land base--the five indicators, according to international law,6 of the
existence of a nation of people. This nation historically and correctly
functions within a decentralized economic and political system, with much
of the governance left to local bands (like villages or counties) through clan
and extended family systems. The vast natural wealth of this region and the
resource management systems of the Anishinabeg have enabled people to
prosper for many generations. In one study of Anishinabeg harvesting
technologies and systems, a scientist noted:
Economically, these family territories in the Timiskaming band
were regulated in a very wise and interesting manner. The game was
kept account of very closely, proprietors knowing about how abundant
each kind of animal was. Hence they could regulate the killing so as not
to deplete the stock. Beaver was made the object of the most careful
"farming" an account being kept of the numbers of occupants old and
young to each "cabin.... .7

4. For discussion, see generally, Colin Scott, Knowledge DiscussionAmong Cree

Hunters: Metaphors and Literal Understanding, LXXV JOURNAL DE SOCIETE
ANTmROPOLOGIC, 1989, at 193, 193-208.
5. Berkes, supra note 1, at 10.
6. Jason W. Clay, What's a Nation?, MOTHER JoNEs, Nov.-Dec. 1990, at 28.
7. Frank G. Speck, The Family Hunting Band as the Basis of Algonkian Social
Organization,17 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, 289, 296 (1915).
 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

The killing of game was regulated by each family .... I

The Anishinabeg employed a resource management system that used
techniques for sustained yield. Such systems show a high degree of unifica-
tion of conception and execution (possible because the "scientist" is the
"resource manager"). There has only been limited imitation of this system
by the scientific community.'

This system has allowed traditional land-based economies to prosper.

Conceptually, the system provides for both domestic production and
production for exchange or export. Hence, whether the resource is wild rice
or white fish, the extended family as a production unit harvests within a
social and resource management code that insures sustained yield. Tradi-
tional management practices have often been dismissed by North
American settlers as useless in the current circumstances of more sig-
nificant populations. However, it is important to note that previous North
American indigenous populations were substantially higher than they are
now. This indicates that these management practices were applied in
greater population densities, an argument which is useful in countering the
perceptions that all Native American practices have occurred with very low
populations. I believe there is a more substantial question meriting discus-
sion: Can North American society craft the social fabric to secure a tradi-
tional management practice, based on consensual understanding and a
collective process?

II. COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT

The governance of this land by traditional ecological knowledge has

been adversely affected by genocide, colonialism, and subsequent cir-
cumstances that need to be considered in the current dialogue on North
American resource management, the role of the environmental movement,
and indigenous peoples. The holocaust of America is unmatched on a
world scale, and its aftermath caused the disruption necessary to unseat
many of our indigenous economic and governmental systems. There can be
no accurate estimate of the number of people killed since the invasion, but
one estimate provides for 112,554,000 indigenous people in the western
hemisphere in 1492 and an estimated 28,554,000 in 1980. Needless to say,
this is a significant depopulation.10 This intentional and unintentional
genocide facilitated a subsequent process of colonialism, which served to

8. See generally, id. at 289-305.

9. Peter J. Usher, PropertyRights: The Basis of Wildlife Management, in NATIONAL
AND REGIONAL INTERESTS IN THE NORTH 389,408-09 (1984).
10. Robert Venables, The Cost of Columbus: Was There a Holocaust?,NORTHEAST
INDIAN Q., Fall 1990, at 29, 30 n.7.
1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 131
Environmental Futures

establish a new set of relations between indigenous nations and colonial or

"settler" nations in the Americas.

Three basic concepts govern relations between colonial "settlers" and

indigenous nations. Colonialism has been extended through a set of "center
periphery relations" in which the center has expanded through: (1) the
cultural practice spreading Christianity and, later, Western science and
other forms of Western thought; (2) the socioeconomic practice of
capitalism; and (3) the military-political practice of colonialism.I
These practices have resulted in the establishment of a set of relations
between indigenous economies and peoples and the North American
colonial economy that are characterized by dependency and underdevelop-
ment. Underdevelopment-or, more accurately, "underdeveloping," be-
cause it is an ongoing practice-is the process by which the economy both
loses wealth and undergoes the structural transformation which accentuates
and institutionalizes this process. 2 This process, underway for at least the
past 200 years, is characterized by the appropriation of land and resources
from indigenous nations for the purpose of "developing" the US and
Canadian economies and, subsequently, the "underdeveloping" of in-
digenous economies. The resulting loss of wealth (closely related to loss of
control over traditional territories) has created a situation in which most
indigenous nations are forced to live in circumstances of material poverty.
It is no coincidence that Native Americans and Native Hawaiians (as well
as First Nations in Canada) are the poorest people both in the United States
and on the continent as a whole. As a consequence, indigenous peoples are
subjected to an array of socioeconomic and health problems that are a
direct consequence of poverty.'3
In this process of colonialism, and later marginalization, indigenous
nations become peripheral to the colonial economy and eventually are
involved in a set of relations characterized by dependency. As Latin
American scholar Theotono Dos Santos notes: "By dependence we mean
a situation in which the economy of certain countries is conditioned by the
development and expansion of another economy to which the former is
subjected.'1 4 These circumstances-and indeed, the forced underdevelop-
ment of sustainable indigenous economic systems for the purpose of

11. John Galtung, Self Reliance: Concepts, Practiceand Rationale, in SELF RELIANCE:
A STATEGY FOR DEVELOPMENT 19, 20 (Johan Galtung et al. eds., Bogle-L'Ouverture
Publications, Ltd. 1980).
12. SAMIR AMIN, UNEQUAL DEVELOPMENT: AN ESSAY ON THE SOCIAL FORMATIONS
OF PERIPHERAL CAPITALISM 201-03 (Brian Pearce, trans., Monthly Review Press 1976).
13. AMERICAN INDIAN POLICY REVIEW COMM., FINAL REPORT SUBMITTED TO CON-
GRESS MAY 17, 1977 (Comm. Print 1977).
14. Theotonio Dos Santos, The Structure of Dependence, in READINGS IN U.S. IM-
PERIALISM 225, 226 n.1 (K.T. Fann & Donald C. Hodges eds., Porter Sargent 1971).
 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

colonial exploitation of land and resources-are an essential backdrop for

any discussion of existing environmental circumstances in the North
American community and of any discussion of sustainable development in
a North American context. Perhaps most alarming is the understanding that
even today this process continues, because a vast portion of the remaining
natural resources on the North American continent are still under native
lands or, as in the case of the disposal of toxic wastes on Indian reserva-
tions, the residual structures of colonialism make native communities focal
points for dumping the excrement of industrial society.

1R1. INDIGENOUS NATIONS TODAY

On a worldwide scale, there are more than 5000 nations and just over
170 states. "Nations" are defined under international law as those in
possession of a common language, land base, history, culture and territory,
while "states" are usually recognized and seated at the United Nations.15
North America similarly contains a series of nations, known as "First
Nations" in Canada and, with few exceptions, denigrated in the United
States by the term "tribes." Demographically, indigenous nations represent
the majority population north of the 55th Parallel in Canada (the 50th
Parallel in the eastern provinces) and occupy approximately two-thirds of
the Canadian landmass.
Although the United States has ten times the population it had during
colonial times, Indian people do not represent the majority, except in a few
areas, particularly the "Four Corners" region of the United States (so
named because four states-Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado-
all meet at one point) where Ute, Apache, Navajo, and Pueblo people
reside. However, inside our reservations, which occupy approximately four
percent of our original land base in the United States, Indian people remain
the majority population.
In our territories and our communities a mix of old and new coexist
sometimes in relative harmony and at other times, in a violent disruption of
the traditional way of life. In terms of economic and land tenure systems,
the material basis for relating to the ecosystem, most indigenous com-
munities are a melange of colonial and traditional structures and systems.
Although US or Canadian laws may restrict and allocate resources and land
on reservations (or aboriginal territory), the indigenous practice of
"usufruct rights" is often still maintained and, with it,.traditional economic
and regulatory institutions like the trapline, "rice boss," and family hunting,
grazing (for peoples who have livestock), or harvesting territories.

15. Clay, supra note 6.

1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 133
Environmental Futures

These subsistence lifestyles continue to provide a significant source of

wealth for domestic economies on the reservation, whether for nutritional
consumption or for household use, as in the case of firewood. They also, in
many cases, provide the essential ingredients of foreign exchange; wild
rice, furs, woven rugs, and silverwork. These native economic and land
tenure systems, which are specific to each region, are largely invisible to
US and Canadian government agencies' economic analysts who consis-
tently point to native "unemployment" with no recognition of the tradition-
al economy. The Bureau of Indian Affairs labor statistics are categorized
by sector, as is most employment data available from the U.S. Census
Bureau.
In many northern communities, over half of local food and a sig-
nificant amount of income is garnered from this traditional economic
system. In other cases, for instance on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation
in Montana, over ninety percent of the land is held by Cheyenne and is used
primarily for ranching. Although they do not represent formal "wage
work" in the industrial system, these land-based economies are essential to
native communities. The lack of recognition for indigenous economic
systems, although it has a long history in the North American colonial view
of native peoples, is particularly frustrating in terms of the current debate
over development options.
Resource extraction plans or energy mega projects proposed for in-
digenous lands do not consider the current significance of these economic
systems nor their value for the future, as demonstrating what remains of
sustainable ways of living in North America. A direct consequence is that
environmentally destructive development programs ensue, many times
foreclosing the opportunity to continue the lower-scale, intergenerational
economic practices that had been underway in the native community.

IV. INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

The conflict between two paradigms-industrial thinking and in-
digenous thinking-becomes central to the North American and, indeed to
the worldwide, environmental and economic crisis. As native communities
struggle to survive, issues of sovereignty and control over natural resources
become central to North American resource politics and the challenge for
North Americans of conscience. Consider these facts:
- More than 50 million indigenous peoples inhabit the world's remain-
ing rain forests.

* More than 1 million indigenous people will be relocated to allow for

the development of hydroelectric dam projects in the next decade.
 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

- The United States has detonated all its nuclear weapons in the lands
of indigenous people, more than 600 of those tests within land legally
belonging to the Shoshone nation.

• One-half of all uranium resources within the borders of the United

States lay under native reservations. In 1974,6 Indians produced 100
percent of all federally controlled uranium.'

• One-third of all low-sulfur coal in the western United States is on

Indian 7land, with four of the ten largest coal strip mines in these same
areas.'

- Over 40 billion board feet of timber stands on Indian reservations-

trees now coveted by US timber interests.18

- Fifteen of the eighteen recipients of phase one nuclear waste research

grants, so-called Monitored Retrievable Nuclear Storage sites, are
Indian communities.

- The largest hydroelectric project on the continent, the James Bay

Project, is on Cree and Inuit lands in northern Canada. 19
For many indigenous peoples, the reality is as sociologist Ivan Illich has

suggested: development practices are in fact a war on subsistence.

V. MANITOBA HYDRO: AWAR ON SUBSISTENCE

Hydroelectric dams in the north illustrate the battle between the
indigenous and industrial the world. The James Bay dams of northern
Quebec continue to be a front line environmental struggle, as the pending
destruction of the "Amazon of the North" rallies environmentalists and
Crees in an ongoing battle with Quebec Hydro.20 For the past five years,
American environmentalists have joined with Cree to stop American ex-
port contracts (New York Power Authority, Commonwealth Edison, etc.)
and build a coalition which successfully stopped at least one contract. This
case is far from isolated; there are dams in Canada west of Quebec that are
equally devastating. In the early 1970s, a series of seven dams was built on
the Nelson and Churchill River systems. The dams spin out 2,600

16. Winona LaDuke, Native America: The Economics of Radioactive Colonialism,

REVIEw OF RADIcAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, Fall 1983, at 9, 10.
17. Id.
18. Interview with Marshall Cutsforth, Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Trust
Responsibility (August 10, 1993).
19. See Boyce Richardson, STRANGERS DEvouR THE LAND (1976).
20. Richardson, supra note 18.
1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 135
Environmental Futures

megawatts of power. In total, another eleven generating stations are

proposed, to spin out an additional 6,000 megawatts.21
The Churchill and Nelson River systems drain one of the largest
watersheds in North America. They extend from the Rockies in the west to
the Mississippi and Lake Superior drainage basin in the south. These rivers
ultimately flow into Hudson Bay, the larger bay into which James Bay
drains.
One control dam at Missi Falls on the Churchill River illustrates the
project's intent. The dam cut the flow from an average of 1,050 cubic
meters per second to an average of 150 meters per second and turned all the
water back into South Indian Lake. 2
The Manitoba Hydor dams' location, in the midst of permafrost,
causes additional problems. Dr. Robert Newbury of the Freshwater In-
stitute notes: "What made the venture most critical ... was that it was the
first large river diversion and take impoundment in widespread permafrost.
When the project was planned, the implications of that were suspected but
unproven. 23 The development has inadvertently been an ecological experi-
ment. Because the temperature of the water always exceeds the tempera-
ture of the soil, the water causes a constant "melting away" of the shoreline.
The annual rate of "shoreline retreat," as it is aptly called, is currently 130
to 140 feet per year. According to the Winnipeg-based Freshwater In-
stitute, it may be 80 years or more before shoreline retreat subsides.Y This
silting-which is another term for shoreline retreat-chokes the reservoirs,
causes widespread mercury contamination and the destruction of wildlife.
There is a story told by northern moose hunters about of two hunters
on South Indian Lake. They scan the shore for a moose. After much
searching, they finally happen upon one. It was a moose, alright, but
2
sinking up to its neck in silt.
It is such ecosystem devastation that caused more than ninety-eight
percent of the waterfowl to disappear from the South Indian Lake region in
northern Manitoba, according to the Freshwater Institute. Humans have
been affected, too. Health surveys demonstrate that one out of every six

21. Larry Krotz, Dammed and Diverted,CANDtAN GEOGRAPHIC, Feb/Mar. 1991, at 36,
38.
22. Id. at 39.
23. Id. at 41.
24. Id.
25. Information derived from conversation between Alan Ross of Norway House and
Randy Kapashesit of Moose Factory, Ontario.
 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

people on the Nelson River suffer from mercury contamination. 6 The dams
have also created widespread economic and social disruption.
Two decades ago, seventy-five percent of the food came from the
land, as did the majority of local income. Today, that is impossible. Very
little comes from the land, and people are forced to buy food at the store,
often at prices ten times that in the south.
At the Cree village of Moose Lake, for instance, two-thirds of their
land base was flooded and 634 people were moved into a housing project.
Jim Tobacco, Moose Lake Band, said 90 percent of the adults were
estimated to have substance abuse problems after the flooding. "There is a
very hostile attitude in the community," he laments. "Our young people are
always beating each other up. My people don't know who the hell they are.
They live month to month on welfare. Our way of life and resources have
been destroyed. We were promised benefits from the Hydro Project.
Today, we are poor and Manitoba Hydro is rich."
Elsewhere, suicide epidemics plague flooded communities. "There's
just a feeling they're being exploited, they're being used," said Alan Ross,
Chief of Norway House, another flooded community. His small village had
fifteen suicide attempts a month during the 1980s.27 At Cross Lake, twenty
suicides occurred during an eight-month period-ten times the provincial
average. 8
Manitoba government officials are quick to point to the recent "com-
pensation package" worth tens of millions of dollars to these northern
villages. But in the face of a near doubling of hydroelectric capacity in the
north-from seven dams to eleven, increasing the rate of devastation to the
ecosystem and the community-many natives have come to wonder if
there is any "just compensation" for the destruction of their way of life.
Manitoba Hydro's impact on northern Cree and Ojibway com-
munities is indicative of the devastation being wrought in Indian Country
by development projects. This example also illustrates the complexity of
indigenous environmental issues in the larger context of a North American
environmental movement and the depth of the problems we collectively
face in our strategies. Specifically, I have found four consistent facts. First,
Cree and Ojibway economic, cultural, and ecological knowledge and sys-
tems are largely dismissed as inevitably outdated and lacking in value in

26. Krotz, supra note 21, at 42.

27. GEOFFRY YORK, THE DISPOSSESSED: LIFE AND DEATH IN NATIVE CANADA 96-97
(1989).
28. Id. at 96.
1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 137
Environmental Futures

comparison to the "greater good" associated with hydroelectric dams. The

lack of valuation of traditional economies augments the underrepresenta-
tion of native ways of life in cost/benefit equations. Second, the inevitable
cultural and social devestation wrought by such projects is soft-peddled by
government and, often, by environmentalists, who have become accus-
tomed to viewing "the Natives as steeped with social and health problems
and subsequently have become numb to concern." Third, the Manitoba
Hydro dams, like the Hydro Quebec dams, are a result of shortsighted
development programs (based on continued increases in electrical con-
sumption) and an often compromising environmental movement that trades
nuclear power plants in for hydroelectric dams. Finally, the single largest
contract for Manitoba Hydro dams is with the United States (Northern
States Power), illustrating US environmentalists' ability to subscribe to an
"out of sight/out of mind" allowance that creates "sacrifice areas" in
communities like Moose Lake and in ecosystems like James and Hudson
Bay.

VI. STRATEGIC ERRORS IN THE

ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT
The mainstream environmental movement, one that journalist Mark
Dowie suggests is "courting irrelevantism," has historically played into the
colonial mind-set by denying the existence of indigenous ecological
knowledge (except perchance quoting a few words of Chief Seattle) and
the significance of this knowledge in sustainable thinking.

There are numerous examples of the alleged superior knowledge of

(usually) urban-based environmentalists over the knowledge of ecosystems
inherited by indigenous peoples. Just a few:
- On a reservation in northern Minnesota, White Earth, The Nature
Conservancy purchased approximately 400 acres of land (to preserve
"indigenous prairie") from a private, nonabsentee landholder and
turned it over to the state.

- A pending lawsuit in New Mexico state court, Ray Graham III v. Sierra
Club Foundation, is based on Graham's donation of $100,000 to the
Sierra Club Foundation to purchase land in northern New Mexico for a
Chicano community sheep ranching project. (Land-based Chicanos
subscribe to similar value systems as indigenous people and a share
good portion of common bloodlines.) The Sierra Club Foundation is
alleged to have purchased other properties instead.29

29. Interview with Mark Dowie, Editor-at-Large of InterNation.

 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

* As a result of successful organizing work by Greenpeace and animal

rights groups, the European Economic Community (EEC) placed a ban
on the sale of white coat seal pup pelts. In 1983 the market for pelts of
mature seals collapsed as well. In eighteen of twenty Inuit communities
in the Northwest Territories, the annual revenue from 30
the sale of
sealskin pelts dropped by approximately sixty percent.

- The community of Broughton Island saw its collective income drop

from a total of $92,099 in 1981-1982 to $13,504 in 1983-1984. The
Inuit of Pangnirtung on Baffin Island made only $42,146 in 1983-1984
in comparison with the $200,714 they had made two years earlier. The
income for Resolute, in the High Arctic, fell from $54,841 to $2,383
during the same period. Since the EEC ban there has been a significant
increase in social problems in the communities, which until that time
had been largely self-sufficient.3 When asked by a Canadian govern-
ment committee to report on the impact of the loss of the market for
sealskins in Inuit communities, Ms. Rhoda Inusuk, president of the Inuit
Tapirisat of Canada replied:

"One of the disastersthat has happenedas a result is that of

youth suicide. We have a very high rate of suicide. The loss is due to
the animal rights group.... We have the youth problems, drug and
alcohol abuse, violence. There is very little employment and when
you are hit with something like that, you are bound to see these
problems come up as result of that."

- The Great Whale proposed site of the James Bay II Dam is another
excellent example: "What are we conserving the belugafor?" a Great
Whale hunter wonders, noting the community imposed
32
limit often, "So
that the power project can kill them all later?"
Although these instances are not the whole story of the environmental
movement in Indian Country, they represent problems that reoccur consis-
tently because, I believe, underlying racism exists in the basically white-
dominated environmental organizations. This "environmental racism" in
the environmental movement is also indicated by the inability of
mainstream organizations to recognize, for instance, the relationship be-
tween ecologically destructive development projects (or culturally altering
environmental initiatives, like the seal campaign) and cultural and physical
devastation and genocide, such as is seen in the Inuit and Cree examples.
These so-called "social justice issues" must be recognized as a part of an
environmental agenda-for if there is no one left who understands how to
care for an ecosystem in a sustainable, practiced manner, it will not be
cared for.

30. Winona LaDuke, Briefing Paper for the Greenpeace USA Board of Directors on
Sovereignty and Native People.
31. Id.
32. Id.
1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 139
Environmental Futures

Finally, the culturally limited worldview of many urban environmen-

talists serves to drive a wedge between native and settler. So long as the
issue of consumption is not addressed, someone's land and lives will be
traded for someone else's cappuccino machine. Therefore, arguments
made by individuals who support Hydro Quebec's James Bays dams as an
alternative to nuclear power means that my children are not to have land or
a cultural inheritance so that their grandchildren may retain a level of
consumption they feel they deserve.3
The challenge that I believe faces the North American environmental
movement is to form a meaningful partnership with indigenous com-
munities and peoples. Only then can we address the common issues of
environmental degradation and the clear need for a new operating
paradigm from which to build a natural resources management system or,
more appropriately, a way of managing our relations with the land.

VII. NATIVE SUSTAINABIL1TY INTO THE

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Native people are on the front lines of resistance to many ecologically
devastating projects. Whether it is the Cree of James Bay, the Havasupai of
the Grand Canyon opposing uranium mining, the Columbia River fishing
peoples opposing nuclear contamination at Hanford, the Point Hope In-
upiat trying to force the federal government to clean up a nuclear testing
site on the North Slope, or the Anishinabeg of northern Wisconsin trying to
stop a copper strip mine, we continue vigilant struggles for land, culture,
and future generations.
Native peoples are also engaged in proactive struggles to regain
control over ecosystems and ways of living. The following are examples of
the adaptability of indigenous thinking to community development
projects.
A. Zuni
For the past 1,500 years, the Zuni people have farmed in an area that
they currently occupy--the Zuni Reservation in central New Mexico. They
are famous for their skill and knowledge of farming under difficult condi-
tions. Floodwater irrigation of folk crop varieties in this dry area has been
the core of their farming.

33. Information derived from the 1992 New England Environmental Conference, Tufts
University Filene Center, March 19-21, 1992.
 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

During the past several generations, however, there has been a reduc-
tion both in farming and in area farmed from 1,012,000 acres in the
mid-1800s to about 1,000 acres today. However, there is now renewed
interest and commitment by the Zuni people in agriculture. The Zuni
Sustainable Agriculture Project is their response, which they place in the
34
context of the crisis of American "modem" industrial agriculture.
The Zuni note, with some remorse, that in the United States, salt
buildup is lowering yields on some thirty percent of irrigated land, and
about twenty percent of irrigated land is watered by pumping out
groundwater at a rate exceeding its replacement. About seven tons of US
cropland topsoil per acre are being lost to wind and water erosion, and
approximately 500,000 tons of 600 different types of pesticides are applied
annually in the United States. The cumulative impact of this type of
agriculture is-from the Zuni, and other indigenous people's, viewpoint-
unsustainable."
The intent of the Zuni project is to restore community participation in
and control over food production and agriculture through a diversified
program of education, research/data collection and analysis, as well as
actual farming and technical assistance. The projects are integrated. One
example is peach tree orchard restoration and revitalization, which is based
36
on a Zuni system called dabathishna,or "field rooting".
Another aspect of the Zuni project is the managing of rainfall runoff
into the fields. This project is called kwa'k'yadi deyatchinanne, often
translated as "dry farming" in English. At Zuni, however, this English term
is misleading. In fact, farmers really do irrigate these fields, but usually
with rainfall runoff from surrounding areas or by capturing water from
arroyos.
The project is part of the International Union for Conservation of
Nature, which recently held an international meeting at Zuni.
B. Anishinabeg Resource Management Initiatives
In the Great Lakes region, a number of Anishinabeg communities
have undertaken restorative programs for traditional ecological knowledge
and the recovery of control over land on which people live.

34. David Cleveland and Daniela Soleri, The Zuni SustainableAgriculture Project,
ZUNI FARMING FOR TODAY & TOMORROW (Occasional Newletter), Spring 1993, at 1.
35. Zuni Sustainable Agriculture Project and the Nutria Irrigation Unit, The Nutria
Project,ZuNI FARMING FOR TODAY & TOMORROW (Occasional Newletter), Spring 1993, at
1,4.
36. Daniela Soleri with Lygatie Laate, Peach Tree Careand Propogation:Building
on TraditionalKnowledge, ZUNI FARMING FOR TODAY & TOMORROW (Occasional Newlet-
ter), Summer 1993, at 1, 2.
1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 141
Environmental Futures

On the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, the White

Earth Land Recovery Project seeks to recover control over more than
one-third of all reservation lands in the next two decades. At least that much
is held by government agencies, including 21,000 acres designated as a
National Wildlife Refuge, which the people seek to have returned. The
White Earth people will seek to restore traditional resource management
schemes to those parcels they recover.
To the south of White Earth, the Mille Lacs Band of Anishinabeg is
litigating against the State of Minnesota, seeking to secure harvesting
access to lands within the 1847 treaty boundary that were unceded by the
band. These traditional people have been restricted to only 4,000 acres of
land, of which only 1,500 are secure for harvesting. The remainder is
greatly diminished in wealth by environmental degradation and the
encroachment of non-Indian settlers and tourist industries.
The Mille Lacs Commissioner of Natural Resources, Don Wedll,
documented the subsistence requirements for the band members' future to
establish the amount of territory required by band members to ensure their
sustenance. This approach underscores their political strategy, which, in
turn, is based on cultural values and long-term self-sufficiency brought
about by careful stewardship.
The economic revenue from natural resources is based on the ability to
harvest surplus resources for sale or trade. The using of Natural Resour-
ces for economic gains will be secondary to the gathering for feed or
herbs. Through [sic] traditionally the Chippewa from Mille Lacs
[Anishinabeg] have traded and sold harvestable natural resource[s],
Mille Lacs Reservation will insure [sic] the protection of species to any
economic gain from our natural resources. The economic gains will be
limited to a moderate harvesting and managed so as to insure [sic] the
rights of all Band members to harvest and gather food and/or herbs. The
economic benefits from natural resources harvesting will be limited to
family units and not individual members. It will also be limited to an
income guideline.37
In northern Wisconsin, similar approaches to securing adequate food,
clothing, shelter, and sustenance are forwarded by Anishinabeg bands
within the 1847 treaty area. For example, a comanagement plan drafted by
native activists Walt Bresette (Anishinaabe) and James Yellowbank (Win-
nebago) speaks to proposals for indigenous values and the common sense
of rural communities trying to survive.
Similarly, the Wabigon Lake Wild Rice Management Program has
been advanced by the Anishinabeg of southern Ontario. While Canadian

37. See Don Wedll, Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians: Basic Existence Require-
ments for Harvesting of NaturalResources, TRIBAL DOCUMENT (1986).
 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

government legislation has demarked wild rice harvesting zones in the area
according to resource management districts, the Wabigon Lake people
have noted that their traditional territory extends into two districts and that
the Canadian government management proposals are not based on tradi-
tional resource management practices of the Anishinabeg. The Wabigon
Lake Anishinabeg have responded with their own demarcation and regula-
tion program, including provisions for traditional (canoe) harvesting fol-
lowed by mechanical (airboat) harvesting. Their organically certified wild
rice (by the Organic Crop Improvement Association) is marketed interna-
tionally, returning substantial revenues to their community and illustrating
the potential of using traditional economies and value systems as the
foundation for community control of economy and destiny. They have also
developed Wabuskang Wildfruits, which hopes to continue marketing
10,000 jars of organically certified blueberry spread annually. 8
Other examples in the region abound, but perhaps none is so striking
as the Menominee Forest Enterprises in northern Wisconsin. This reserva-
tion contains the most age and species diversified stands in the region and
retains the same amount of timber today as a century ago, all due to
indigenous forestry management practices paired with careful harvesting
techniques. The Menominee forest is the only "green cross certified" forest
in North America.
These examples illustrate the application of traditional ecological
knowledge within the cultural areas of those peoples from whom the
knowledge originates. Sustainable practice with continuous harvest is criti-
cal for the environmental movement to recognize; it is a practice in which
humans are a part of the land and of ecosystems. Equally important is
applying this knowledge within the cultural fabric of cohesive societies-
something that North Americans (including environmentalists) have yet to
attain-and linking sustainable practice and governance over territory.
There will not be the former without the latter. Native peoples must be
accorded the proprietary interest in those lands that sustain their com-
munities; that is the only way that sustainability will be insured. However,
this point remains a divisive one in terms of the North American environ-
mental movement.

38. See Winona LaDuke, Wabuskang Women's Marketing Collective, INDIGENOUS

WOMAN, Vol. 1, No. 3, at 48.
1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 143
Environmental Futures

VIII. COMMON GROUND/COMMON ADVERSARIES AND

COMMON SOLUTIONS
A more effective goalfor all of us is to get seriousabout becoming
"native to our place." As a culture, we still operate more in the
conquering spirit of Columbus and Coronado, than in that of the
Natives we conquered To be native to this place would not mean the
end of science or the end or management of our landscape....

Embrace the arrangements that have shaken down in the long

39 that human
evolutionaryprocess andtry to mimic them... ever mindful
cleverness must remain subordinateto nature'swisdom.
Wes Jackson, Salina, Kansas

It is time that indigenous peoples' knowledge, experience, ways of

living, and struggles to survive are taken seriously by the environmental
movement.
Environmentalists who seek principally to defend ecosystems from
devastation by hydro dams, clear-cutting, development, or mining have
much to gain from an alliance with native people. We have common
adversaries, whether they be corporations or governments. For instance,
the WISE USE Movement includes organizations like Protect American
Rights and Resources (PARR), Equal Rights for Everyone (ERRA),
SPAWN, and other groups whose central purpose is to strip native peoples
of their rights to govern lands and to secure culture, language, and
40
religion.
Knowing your allies is critically important, as is sharing the power to
determine larger political agendas. It is possible that we may have common
solutions. An interesting discussion is now underway over the central lands
of North America, which illustrates the tensions between indigenous
peoples and North Americans or environmentalists.
In the center of the United States, stretching across the Great Plains,
is a vast expanse of reservation land-approximately 50 million acres of
the most significant native landholdings in the United States. That same
region contains a much larger area of indigenous lands-lands reserved
under treaties like the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty with the Lakota nation and
the 1853 Ruby Valley Treaty with the Western Shoshone nation. These
treaty lands are, in effect, illegally occupied by the United States. These

39. Wes Jackson, Listen to the Land, THE AMICUs J., Spring 1993, at 32, 33-34.
40. See Rudolph Ryser,Anti IndianMovement on the TribalFrontier,Center for World
Indigenous Studies (Occasional Paper No. 16), June 1992, at 3, 3-5.
 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

lands are the subject of discussion in two separate agendas. The Great
PlainsInitiative discusses water allocations in that overdrawn region and
the Buffalo Commons discusses the future of land tenure within the region.
In the case of the Great Plains Initiative (a process underway largely
between state and federal governments and environmental groups), native
people have rarely been at the table. Proposals for water allocations in the
region have yet to address the 50 million acres of reservation lands that
have not been allowed "a drink." Instead, these communities have been left
"high and dry" by decades of ill-conceived water diversion projects (in-
cluding Oahe, Garrison, Kerr, and Lake Powell). Native peoples retain
legal rights to water their lands and need to be included in the dialogue,
something that should be demanded by the environmental movement if it
is interested in preserving sustainable cultures. The Mini-Sosi Alliance, for
instance, a coalition of Northern Plains indigenous governments created to
discuss water issues, is demanding this recognition.
Frank and Debra Popper of Rutgers University put forward the Buf-
falo Commons initiative in the early 1980s, offering other possibilities. The
Poppers undertook a comprehensive study of economics and land-use
patterns in the region. They discovered that 110 counties-a quarter of all
counties in the western portions of the states of North and South Dakota,
Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, as well as eastern Montana,
Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico--had been on shaky financial
ground since, essentially, the moment they were expropriated from in-
digenous peoples. (These counties and those who inhabit them, are also,
not surprisingly, engaged in an agriculture policy that, in many cases, is
ecologically unsound and which, for instance, results in the seven tons of
topsoil loss annually per acre, a rate that is occurring in most of this region.)
This region of approximately 140,000 square miles of prairie is in-
habited by approximately 400,000 Euro-Americans in financially stricken
counties that attempt to support school districts, road maintenance, fire
departments, and social services in the face of dropping populations and
subsequent decreases in revenues. The local governments have not been
successful in financing all these programs, and most counties are nearly
bankrupt. These counties are frequently located not only near Indian reser-
vations but also adjoining a great deal of western federal lands.
The Poppers proposed an interesting idea, which indigenous scholar
Ward Churchill takes a step further. The Poppers suggest that the govern-
ment should cut its proverbial losses and buy out the individual landhold-
ings. The final result, in the Poppers' proposal, would be a commonly held
land-the "Buffalo Commons," on which ecological restoration should
occur.
1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 145
Environmental Futures

Churchill proposes that ecological and cultural restoration should

occur, largely by expanding this area to the Indian reservations, the national
forests and parklands, and the now-redundant military reservations like the
Ellsworth Air Force Base and other similar areas under the Strategic Air
Command. These lands are within the unceded territory of the Lakota,
Pawnee, Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, Crow, Shoshone, Assiniboine,
Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Such a proposal would cause relatively little
dislocation of non-Indians (thousands annually drain out of these counties
in any case) and would provide a fertile area for the recovery of indigenous
4
species and peoples. 1
The Indigenous Commons region and areas like the Northern Rockies
Ecosystem (occupied by peoples such as the Blackfeet, Salish, Kootenal,
and Nez Perce), the Nunavat (the newly created Inuit territory in what was
formerly the Northwest Territories-an area the size of the Indian subcon-
tinent), James and Hudson Bay, and regions like Anishinabeg Akiing,
represent the beginnings of a political decolonization-the dismantling of
settler-imposed political and economic institutions-of the continent. Such
regions also represent the beginning of a new paradigm or, perhaps, a
recovered indigenous paradigm, which has immense value in the context of
the North American environmental movement.

IX. THE NEW PARADIGM: STRUCTURAL CHANGE

Long-term solutions are implicitly necessary to sustain the land and
resolve the arguments about the land. Cultural diversity is as critical as
biological diversity and must be manifested in our methods of relating to
the land. Resource and so-called "common property" management policies
can neither be conceived nor implemented without reference to the system
of property rights, which is, in turn, determined by the fundamental politi-
cal arrangement of any society. Resource management systems that exist in
North American law today rely on a system of property rights that emulate
the social values of Euro-American society and have no reference to
indigenous values and property rights. As a result, I argue that these
systems have no relation to this land.
Property rights, in traditional native society, can be said to rest with
the group, the collective. Each band or co-residential group traditionally
has maintained the rights to use territory by virtue of occupancy. The
connection between the land and the group lies in the ceremony, spiritual

41. WARD CHURCHILL, STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND: INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE TO

GENOCIDE, ECOCIDE AND EXPROPRIATION IN CONTEMPORARY NORTH AMERICA 421-433
(1993).
 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

instruction, naming, travel knowledge, and intergenerational residence.

Traditionally, usufruct rights are allocated to the whole, usually based on
extended family/clan allocations, and the property right remains with the
collective. To the extent that indigenous peoples have articulated their
relationship to the land, they see themselves as belonging to it rather than
it to them. Anishinabeg Akiing and Dineh Bii Kaya, both signifying "the
people's land," articulate the same principle value or set of values.
Those values deserve a place at the environmental table and in its
dialogue. In the consistent dismissal of both native values and property
rights in a North American political context, even in the context of the
"left" and the environmental movement, there remains a subliminal fear of
the indigenous-a residue of colonialism and the colonial mind.
"Management" is a prerogative that flows from the system of property
every system of resource management is based on certain assumptions,
frequently unstated, that social organization, political authority and proper-
ty rights, all of which are closely interrelated. As no two societies or
cultures are identical in these respects, there can be no such thing as a
scientifically or technically neutral management regime that is equally
applicable and acceptable to both. Consequently, where two social systems
share an interest in the same resource, there must be some accomodation in
the sphere of property, as in the system of management, unless one is to be
completely obliterated by the other.42
We have inherited a dominant system of property and natural resource
management that flows from the European industrial mind. Common
property, or the perception of common property, governs a substantial
portion of land within the United States. The federal government is, after
all, the single largest landholder. "Common property" is therefore "state
property." This is not a result, however, as many legal scholars will argue,
of a legal process, for within each of a series of bounded territories, there is
an organized society that has the effective right and ability to use and to
manage fish and wildlife while those resources are available. Fish and
wildlife are, in effect, communal property. They became state property
through various forms of expropriation in the transfer of title that took
place across North America, with or without the compliance or agreement
of native peoples, and often against their will. Our prevailing conception of
common property as state property was imposed not on a lawless, free-for-
all situation in which no one owned or had responsibility for anything, but
rather on a functions system or communal property that is, in fact managed
43
by the occupying group.

42. See Usher, supra note 9.

43. Id.
1994] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and 147
Environmental Futures

It is the legacy of colonialism that native peoples' access to resources

is seen by many as a social policy issue rather than a fundamental property
right issue; this situation continues to be replicated by the North American
environmental movement. The environmental movement, therefore, ex-
ceeds the charge of contributing to environmental racism and is charged
more appropriately with environmental colonialism.
The work underway in communities like Zuni, White Earth, and
Menominee is clear evidence of our continuing ability to apply our intellec-
tual and scientific traditions to our ecosystems and harvesting areas. The
broader proposals, such as the Indigenous Buffalo Commons and com-
anagement discussed here and elsewhere, are a challenge to the North
American environmental movement.
It is now time for North Americans to work on decolonization. This
process must be undertaken with tangible support for indigenous struggles
to protect land, territories, and ecosystems. Organizations such as Green-
peace have adopted a policy to recognize indigenous peoples' rights to
self-determination and sovereignty and to include that policy in the cam-
paigning framework, whether by supporting native campaigns, by hiring
native people, or simply by working cooperatively with native com-
munities on common ground issues. Other alliances, like Sierra Club's and
National Resources Defense Council's opposition of James Bay
hydroelectric, also show evidence of past cooperation and the promise of
more. Proposals like the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act,
which have included native people in their formulation, are of extreme
political significance, particularly because those are native lands, sacred
areas, and awessiag (animals) that environmentalists are discussing. We
need to encourage the practice of cooperation, and never relinquish the goal
of changing the paradigm.
Decolonization also means support for turning back military, political,
economic, cultural, and religious imperialism in North America as a way
of securing traditional ways of living on the land and the cultural
framework on which they lie. Whether decolonization efforts take place
through support of native free exercise of religion legislation or native
language restoration, the broader context has imminent value in the
specifics of living within the ecosystems.
Finally, we need to focus on enhancing, recovering, and strengthening
our traditional ecological knowledge. This needs to occur at the local level
of communities, bands, and families as well at the larger level of in-
digenous nations. In addition, native organizations-such as the Council of
Energy Resource Tribes, American Indian Science and Engineering
Society, Native American Rights Fund, Indian Law Resource Center,
148 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y [Vol. 5:127

National Congress of American Indians, Native American Fish and

Wildlife Association, and others-should look toward support and training
within our own paradigm as opposed to the European industrial worldview.
We have much to offer.
Throughout the world, examples abound of traditional knowledge and
indigenous law as the foundation for sound policy-in the rain forest, in the
South Pacific, and in the Arctic. A new model-an autocthonous one,
springingfrom this land-needs to emerge, and I, for one, hope that this
movement embraces the challenge with principles and courage. We can
only do better by combining these traditions in Anishinabeg Akiing, the
peoples' land.
+(,121/,1(
Citation: 5 Colo. J. Int'l Envtl. L. & Pol'y 127 1994

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