Living a Long Way from Home: Communicating Land-related Knowledge in Dispersed Indigenous Communities, an Alternative Approach

Abstract

Many indigenous communities are at a crossroads as regards lived experience of traditional livelihoods and members with intimate knowledge of their traditional landscapes. Using case studies from two indigenous communities, this article explores the application of both GIS tools and other geographic multimedia in community-based research projects that document landscape-related knowledge. The study involves a First Nation community in British Columbia, Canada and a Sámi community in Finnmark County, Norway. We discuss how land-use traditions and related knowledge constitute a peoples' identity and explore digital means of transferring this knowledge to support the ongoing transfer of indigenous knowledge between geographically dispersed community members, as well as future generations.

Key Words:

• Geography
• Archaeology
• Land-use knowledge
• Indigenous
• First Nation
• Sámi
• Participatory GIS
• British Colombia
• Finnmark

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the local partners in the Tlowitsis First Nation, Ken Smith at the Tlowitsis treaty office and members of the Deanodat/Vestertana village and reindeer District 13-Lágesduottar who shared their knowledge with us during several visits. The article was written with support of the Norwegian Research Council, the Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage Research and the Tlowitsis Treaty Office. Thanks to Bjørnar Olsen and Marianne Skandfer at the department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Tromsø, Steinar Pedersen at the Sámi University College and Inga Fløysand at the Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage Research for helpful comments on the article.

Notes

¹ PGIS has been described as a process leading to the “democratization of GIS” (Dunn, 2007: 616–617). Its application is context- and issue-driven and not led by a fascination with the technology. PGIS as a movement has developed a set of ethics and effective methodologies (Corbett et al., 2006).

² For further reading about PGIS methodology, see: Brody (1982), Barron (2002), Chapin et al. (2005), Corbett & Keller (2005), Fox et al. (2005), Rambaldi et al. (2005), Candler et al. (2006), Dunn (2007) and Tobias (2009).

³ For further reading about projects that have been carried out, see: Ginsburg et al. (2002), Robiglio et al. (2003), Tripathi & Bhattarya (2004), Aporto (2005), Chapin et al. (2005), Corbett & Keller (2006), Srinivasan (2006), Crawhall (2007).

⁴ Several of the coastal Sámi families in Vestertana have close kinship ties to the reindeer-herding families, and share a common history, identity and knowledge. People born into the reindeer-herding economy often settled along the coast and adapted to the coastal Sámi livelihood.

⁵ Solli (2011: 47–49) presents an additional reason for an increased diaspora in the future, namely climate change resulting in “waves of migrations”. She calls attention to peoples' need for an “original core identity” and she further notes: “In some form or other we must keep in contact with the lost worlds of countless homelands and cultures” (Solli, 2011: 48). Through a participatory approach and the use of digital media, elements of people's “core identity” can be made accessible and thus facilitate a continuation of the “contact with lost homelands”.