Are Glaciers ‘Good to Think With’? Recognising Indigenous Environmental Knowledge¹

[1] Levi-Strauss famously argued that some phenomena are ‘good to think with’ because they provide material stimuli for ordering the social and material worlds we inhabit. Here I borrow his phrase to ask whether it might contribute to our analysis of issues raised in this volume.I thank James Leach and Richard Davis and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Abstract

Lively debates in arctic and subarctic communities centre on potential contributions of indigenous knowledge to environmental sciences. Some scientists are now attempting to integrate traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) into existing knowledge frameworks as data. Anthropologists working with oral tradition propose an alternative approach. They reason that greater knowledge value, especially the possibility of surprises, may come from unfamiliar oral accounts that do not seem to fit easily within conventional frameworks. This paper builds on accounts I first heard from senior indigenous women in north-western North America about unorthodox behaviour of glaciers. These glaciers were depicted as sentient, wilful beings that responded directly and sometimes dramatically to human behaviour, often with devastating results. Similar themes are documented in colonial records where such ideas were discounted as ‘superstition’. Oral traditions, though, do not provide straightforward data for contemporary sciences. As practices such as oral storytelling now become recognised as knowledge and translated in new contexts, concepts like indigenous knowledge travel and accumulate meanings. Surging glaciers disrupt conceptual fields. Stories about them may prove good to ‘think with’ as we consider challenges of gathering diverse practices into the ubiquitous but narrowly framed category, knowledge.

Keywords:

• Oral Tradition
• Indigenous Knowledge
• Environmental Change
• TEK
• Yukon Territory

Notes

[1] Levi-Strauss famously argued that some phenomena are ‘good to think with’ because they provide material stimuli for ordering the social and material worlds we inhabit. Here I borrow his phrase to ask whether it might contribute to our analysis of issues raised in this volume.I thank James Leach and Richard Davis and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

[2] Perspectivism, it should be noted, derives from the work of Nietzsche, but Viveiros de Castro investigates and applies this concept in original ways.

[3] Writing in 1998, Viveiros de Castro cites M. Boelscher, R. Brightman, I. Goldman, M. F. Guedon, A. I. Hallowell, R. McDonnell, R. Nelson, B. Saladin d’Anglure, C. Scott, and A. Tanner, all of whom have written write about these themes in arctic and subarctic regions.