Catharine McClellan (1921- )

... Catharine McClellan's position in North American anthropology is important, but equally important is her recognition in the Yukon. For her academic work she has received distinction; in the Yukon, she has become part of the folklore. Not infrequently, anthropologist refer to informants" as "my people" and speak of "trips to the field". A generation of Yukon Indians ranging from elderly people to adults who were toddlers when she first arrived refer to Catharine McClellan as "our Kitty" and see her primary residence as the Yukon with periodic "field trips" back to her university. They welcome her visits as those of a returning family member and regret her departures as temporary absences. Catharine McClellan is currently writing a book on Yukon Native History for the Council for Yukon Indians. She plans to write up more of her accumulated years of field research and to spend time, as she has for almost four decades, visiting her friends in the Yukon

Glaciers and Climate Change: Perspectives from Oral Tradition

In northwestern North America, glaciers figure prominently in both indigenous oral traditions and narratives of geophysical sciences. These perspectives intersect in discussions about global warming, predicted to be extreme at Arctic and Subarctic latitudes and an area of concern for both local people and scientists. Indigenous people in northwestern North America have experienced climate variability associated with the latter phases of the Little Ice Age (approximately 1550-1850). This paper draws on oral traditions passed down from that period, some recorded between 1900 and the early 1950s in coastal Alaska Tlingit communities and others recorded more recently with elders from Yukon First Nations. The narratives concern human travel to the Gulf of Alaska foreshore at the end of the Little Ice Age from the Copper River, from the Alaska panhandle, and from the upper Alsek-Tatshenshini drainage, as well as observations about glacier advances, retreats, and surges. The paper addresses two large policy debates. One concerns the incorporation of local knowledge into scientific research. The second addresses the way in which oral tradition contributes another variety of historical understanding in areas of the world where written documents are relatively recent. Academic debates, whether in science or in history, too often evaluate local expertise as data or evidence, rather than as knowledge or theory that might contribute different perspectives to academic questions.Dans le nord-ouest de l'Amérique du Nord, les glaciers occupent une place prépondérante aussi bien dans les traditions orales autochtones que dans les comptes-rendus des sciences géophysiques. Ces perspectives se recoupent dans les discussions concernant le réchauffement de la planète, que l'on prévoit extrême aux latitudes arctiques et subarctiques et qui préoccupe à la fois les habitants de la région et les scientifiques. Les peuples autochtones du nord-ouest de l'Amérique du Nord ont connu la variabilité du climat associée aux dernières phases du petit âge glaciaire (de 1550 à 1850 environ). Cet article fait appel aux traditions orales transmises depuis cette période, certaines consignées entre 1900 et le début des années 50 dans les communautés tlingit de la région côtière de l'Alaska, et d'autres consignées plus récemment auprès d'aînés des Premières nations du Yukon. Les récits parlent d'hommes qui, à la fin du petit âge glaciaire, se rendaient jusqu'à l'estran du golfe d'Alaska depuis la rivière Copper, l'Enclave de l'Alaska et le bassin supérieur Tatshenshini-Alsek, ainsi que d'observations d'avancées et de retraits des glaciers et de crues glaciaires. L'article se penche sur deux grands débats d'orientation. L'un concerne l'intégration du savoir local dans la recherche scientifique. L'autre traite de la façon dont la tradition orale apporte une autre sorte de compréhension historique dans des régions du monde où les documents écrits sont relativement récents. Les débats académiques, qu'ils relèvent du domaine de la science ou de l'histoire, évaluent trop souvent l'expertise locale comme une donnée ou une preuve, plutôt que comme un savoir ou une théorie capable d'apporter des perspectives différentes aux questions académiques. changement environnemental, comptes-rendus d’exploration, golfe d’Alaska, petit âge glaciaire, tradition orale, etudes des sciences, savoir traditionnel, Yuko

Examining Mobile Technology in Higher Education: Handheld Devices In and Out of the Classroom

This study followed an innovative introduction of mobile technology (i.e., BlackBerry® devices) to a graduate level business program and documented students’ use of the technology from the time students received the devices to the end of their first term of study. Students found the BlackBerry® device easy to use, and were optimistic regarding its potential role as an instructional tool. Students were self-directed in their use of the devices and found ways to use them within and outside of their classroom even when specific uses were not provided by instructors. Students used their devices most frequently for communication purposes outside the classroom through applications such as BlackBerry Messenger. Overall, although supporting a modest positive view toward this initial introduction to mobile technology as a learning tool, classroom instructional use was more limited than student-directed use in and outside the classroom. A comprehensive examination of the instructional pedagogy that best supports the potential of mobile technology as a self-directed learning tool is necessary to address the limitations seen in this implementation

Examining Mobile Technology in Higher Education: Handheld Devices In and Out of the Classroom

This study followed an innovative introduction of mobile technology (i.e., BlackBerry® devices) to a graduate level business program and documented students’ use of the technology from the time students received the devices to the end of their first term of study. Students found the BlackBerry® device easy to use, and were optimistic regarding its potential role as an instructional tool. Students were self-directed in their use of the devices and found ways to use them within and outside of their classroom even when specific uses were not provided by instructors. Students used their devices most frequently for communication purposes outside the classroom through applications such as BlackBerry Messenger. Overall, although supporting a modest positive view toward this initial introduction to mobile technology as a learning tool, classroom instructional use was more limited than student-directed use in and outside the classroom. A comprehensive examination of the instructional pedagogy that best supports the potential of mobile technology as a self-directed learning tool is necessary to address the limitations seen in this implementation

Border Insecurity: Reading Transnational Environments in Jim Lynch’s Border Songs

This article applies an eco-critical approach to contemporary American fiction about the Canada-US border, examining Jim Lynch’s portrayal of the British Columbia-Washington borderlands in his 2009 novel Border Songs. It argues that studying transnational environmental actors in border texts—in this case, marijuana, human migrants, and migratory birds—helps illuminate the contingency of political boundaries, problems of scale, and discourses of risk and security in cross-border regions after 9/11. Further, it suggests that widening the analysis of trans-border activity to include environmental phenomena productively troubles concepts of nature and regional belonging in an era of climate change and economic globalization. Cet article propose une lecture écocritique de la fiction étatsunienne contemporaine portant sur la frontière entre le Canada et les États-Unis, en étudiant le portrait donné par Jim Lynch de la région frontalière entre la Colombie-Britannique et Washington dans son roman Border Songs, paru en 2009. L’article soutient que l’étude, dans les textes sur la frontière, des acteurs environnementaux transnationaux – dans ce cas-ci, la marijuana, les migrants humains et les oiseaux migratoires – jette un jour nouveau sur la contingence des limites territoriales politiques, des problèmes d’échelle et des discours sur le risque et la sécurité des régions transfrontalières après les évènements du 11 septembre 2001. Il suggère également qu’en élargissant l’analyse de l’activité transfrontalière pour y inclure les phénomènes environnementaux, on brouille de façon productive les concepts de nature et d’appartenance régionale d’une époque marquée par les changements climatiques et la mondialisation de l’économie

Oral Traditions and Written Accounts: An Incident from the Klondike Gold Rush

Dans le nord du Canada, il est fréquent d’entendre différentes versions de certains événements historiques, l’une écrite, l’autre encore vivante dans la mémoire des aînés autochtones. Nous comparerons ici des récits d’un incident particulier qui eut lieu entre autochtones et nouveaux venus pendant la ruée vers l’or au Klondike. Nous ne mettrons pas l’accent sur la « véracité » ou la « valeur de vérité » des récits mais plutôt sur les problèmes d’ordre méthodologique qu’entraîne le recours à plusieurs sources ; nous étudierons en outre les genres de narrations qui façonnent le récit écrit et oral.In northern Canada it is frequently possible to hear contrasting accounts of specific historical events, one imprinted in written records, another living in the memories of Native elders. This paper compares accounts of a specific incident of conflict between Natives and newcomers that occurred during the Klondike gold rush. Instead of focusing on the “veracity” or “truth value” of the accounts, it focuses on the methodological problems of using different kinds of sources, looking specifically at the narrative genres shaping both written and oral accounts

Life lived like a story : cultural constructions of life history by Tagish and Tutchone women

This thesis is based on collaborative research conducted over ten years with three elders of Athapaskan/Tlingit ancestry, in the southern Yukon Territory, Canada Mrs. Angela Sidney, Mrs. Kitty Smith and Mrs. Annie Ned are also authors of this document because their oral accounts of their lives are central to the discussion. One volume examines issues of method and ethnographic writing involved in such research and analyses the accounts provided by these women; a second volume presents their accounts, in their own words, in three appendices. The thesis advanced here is that life history offers two distinct contributions to anthropology. As a method, it provides a model based on collaboration between participants rather than research 'by' an anthropologist 'on' the community. As ethnography, it shows how individuals may use the traditional dimension of culture as a resource to talk about their lives, and explores the extent to which it is possible f or anthropologists to write ethnography grounded in the perceptions and experiences of people whose lives they describe. Narrators provide complex explanations for their experiences and decisions in metaphoric language, raising questions about whether anthropological categories like 'individual', 'society' and 'culture' are uniquely bounded units. The analysis focusses on how these women attach central importance to traditional stories (particularly those with female protagonists), to named landscape features, to accounts of travel, and to inclusion of incidents from the lives of others in their narrated 'life histories'. Procedures associated with both life history analysis and the analysis of oral tradition are used to consider the dynamics of narration. Particular attention is paid to how these women use oral tradition both to talk about the past and to continue to teach younger people appropriate behavior in the present. The persistence of oral tradition as a system of communication and information in the north when so much else has changed suggests that expressive forms like story telling contribute to strategies for adapting to social, economic and cultural change.Arts, Faculty ofAnthropology, Department ofGraduat

Capítulo 13. Glaciares que se derriten e historias emergentes en las montañas San Elías

Andre Beteille (1998) nos recuerda que los conceptos viajan con un equipaje que puede ganar un inesperado peso ideológico. Él pone en la mira el uso casual de “indígena”, una idea con significados históricos superpuestos que se acumularon inicialmente durante el expansivo colonialismo europeo y que, en tiempos más recientes, proliferaron en los discursos poscolonia-les. Indígena es un concepto que ahora es acogido en todo el mundo, sugiere Beteille, el mismo que es aplicado de manera indiscri..