6 research outputs found
Cooperative Cross-Cultural Instruction: The Value of Multi-cultural Collaboration in the Coteaching of Topics of Worldview, Knowledge Traditions, and Epistemologies
For four years (2011, 2013, 2014, 2015) two faculty members of the University of Alaska
Fairbanks’ Center for Cross-cultural Studies have collaborated to co-teach a course entitled
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (CCS 612). This course examines the acquisition and
utilization of knowledge associated with the long-term habitation of particular ecological
systems and the adaptations that arise from the accumulation of such knowledge. Intimate
knowledge of place—culturally, spiritually, nutritionally, and economically for viability—is
traditional ecological knowledge, and this perspective is combined with the needs of an
Indigenous research method to better understand and more effectively explore the proper role of
traditional knowledge in academic, cross-cultural research. This presentation and paper explores
the strategies tested and lessons learned from teaching students from a wide variety of academic
and cultural backgrounds including the social and life sciences, and the humanities, and from
Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural origins. The instructors, too—and most importantly for
this endeavor—come from an Indigenous (John) and non-Indigenous (Koskey) background, and
though hailing from very different cultures and upbringings work collaboratively and with
genuine mutual respect to enable an understanding of variations of traditions of knowledge and
their application to academic research
Protecting the Right to Exist as a People: Intellectual Property as a Means to Protect Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Culture
The dominant Western culture has created a legal system premised upon an individualistic
and commercial foundation for intellectual property rights (IPR). This system necessarily
excludes the protection of traditional knowledge and other components of Indigenous
cultures, as well as concepts of communal responsibility for the keeping and transfer of
such ideas and knowledge. These concepts are foundational to Indigenous knowledge
systems in Alaska, as well as throughout the world. Today, a focus on this issue is critical to
the preservation of indigenous cultures and their ways of knowing. We examine where
national and international intellectual property rights systems are in addressing
Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights (Indigenous CIPR). We also examine
opportunities for expansion of such rights in Alaska and around the world.Ye
Cultural activity and market enterprise: a circumpolar comparison of reindeer herding communities at the end of the 20th century
Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2003Reindeer herding throughout the circumpolar North is in decline. Investigating this decline, this dissertation takes a comparative approach with a focus on four case studies: the Chukchi of Chukotskii Peninsula, the Iñupiat of the Seward Peninsula, the Saami of the Kola Peninsula, and the Saami of Finnmark. Because various rates and types of decline are occurring in these different cases, a comparative method leads to a systematic analysis of how patterns develop in the practice of contemporary reindeer herding, both locally and globally. Comparing and contrasting the trajectories of declines in reindeer herding identifies and explains the dimensions of specific local-global processes, and situates them in wider contexts. These dimensions include economic incompatibilities, ecological stresses, and power inequities. By focusing on changes in reindeer herding over the last decade, this study reveals the effects of the incorporation of reindeer herding into the global economy, which is heavily dependent on existing infrastructure. This study also demonstrates the social position of reindeer herders and the cultural meaning of reindeer herding to the herders themselves. The willingness of regional and national governments to subsidize herding, and to ensure its survival through consistent access to pastures, is critically important to the success of reindeer herding as a productive agricultural enterprise. Furthermore, changing ecological factors potentially threaten reindeer herding as a subsistence activity. The consequences of decline, then, are explained through the identification of decline-inducing factors, such as ecological change, political vagaries, and the inappropriateness of reindeer herding as a capital-based enterprise under existing conditions of market and transportation infrastructural development
Through their eyes: a community history of Eagle, Circle, and Central
Includes bibliographical references and index.Shared traditions: the people, the land, the river -- A story of Eagle, Alaska -- A story of Circle, Alaska -- A story of Central, Alaska -- New traditions: subsistence, commerce, and shared history