5 research outputs found
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An environmental history of Euphoria Ridge, Oregon : a case study for ethnobotany in traditional resource management
This dissertation looks at one landscape component of the Coquille Indian Tribe's ancestral lands in order to understand the place meaning created and assigned to Euphoria Ridge, Oregon. I focus on three cultural overlays across time that together with the unique biophysical components, generate an importance for the locale to the Coquille Indian Tribe. While it is useful to record the story of the Coquille Indians and their land in its own right, their ancestral land also provides the focus for my basic premise that environmental histories viewed at the landscape level, can offer an understanding of "the way people live on this Earth, experience the places they inhabit, and confer meaning to these experiences" (Clavel 2001: 130). I suggest that the connectedness between the Coquille Indians and Euphoria Ridge is a specific example of countless iterations of culture-environment interactions that have transformed natural landforms, creating unique place-meaning. A clear theme emerged that the Coquille hold a very high and dear value to the connection that their local environment gives them to their ancestors and that their environmental values and actions stem from their moral obligation not to protect the environment, but to protect that ancestral connection. Euphoria Ridge holds a unique place-meaning for them as an area where their ancestors once traveled and where they can travel to become connected to their ancestral traditions.
Using the theoretical framework of Memmott and Long (2002), I offer a depiction of the transformation through 1) the alteration of the environment's physical characteristics, 2) the enactment of special behaviors and emotions to a particular environment, and 3) the group knowledge of past events, legends, or memories. In this way I show the dynamic construction of the Euphoria Ridge landscape as both a specific locale and as a cultural product. Landscape studies that include complementary methodologies from across the sciences can offer a framework to perceive the great breadth and interdependency among the web of people's interactions that bond them with their environment and offer a means to reach an appropriate understanding for viable land use management and ecosystem preservation
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Bi-Directional Learning: Identifying Contaminants on the Yurok Indian Reservation.
The Yurok Tribe partnered with the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Superfund Research Program to identify and address contaminants in the Klamath watershed that may be impairing human and ecosystem health. We draw on a community-based participatory research approach that begins with community concerns, includes shared duties across the research process, and collaborative interpretation of results. A primary challenge facing University and Tribal researchers on this project is the complexity of the relationship(s) between the identity and concentrations of contaminants and the diversity of illnesses plaguing community members. The framework of bi-directional learning includes Yurok-led river sampling, Yurok traditional ecological knowledge, University lab analysis, and collaborative interpretation of results. Yurok staff and community members share their unique exposure pathways, their knowledge of the landscape, their past scientific studies, and the history of landscape management, and University researchers use both specific and broad scope chemical screening techniques to attempt to identify contaminants and their sources. Both university and tribal knowledge are crucial to understanding the relationship between human and environmental health. This paper examines University and Tribal researchers' shared learning, progress, and challenges at the end of the second year of a five-year Superfund Research Program (SRP) grant to identify and remediate toxins in the lower Klamath River watershed. Our water quality research is framed within a larger question of how to best build university-Tribal collaboration to address contamination and associated human health impacts
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An Enthnobotanical Analysis of Basketry
The focus of my thesis is ethnobotany which seeks to examine
botanical resources and their context within particular cultures. My ethnographic
research identifies and interprets the cultural processes woven into Oregon's
coastal basketry through spirituality, environmental habitats, and utilized plant
species. This is augmented with botanical research addressing the question of
whether the basketry materials utilized by the diverse population of Pacific
Northwest Tribes, can be identified to species through microscopic analysis.
Comparative epidermal and cuticle techniques are tested for diagnostic
potential in a pilot test of 19 species sampled from existing populations on
Oregon's coast, from Tillamook Bay in the north to the Coquille River in the
south.
It builds on and seeks to integrate the knowledge of which native plant
species have been historically utilized as fiber materials for baskets, mats,
cordage and other woven articles by various Oregon and Northern California
bands and tribes that are currently represented by the Coquille Indian Tribe,
the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde, and the Confederated Tribes of
Siletz.
My research consists of three phases; 1) historic and ethnographic
research, 2) standard taxonomic identification of targeted wetland species
through collection of living plants, and 3) a comparative study of the cuticular
surface of plants using scanning electron microscopy. My results confirm that
epidermal and cuticular characteristics are diagnostic; however, the range of
variability in the surface wax is extreme in the 19 selected wetland plants and
can often be an impediment to the analysis of underlying characteristics.
Furthermore, my results have a limited scope for the identification of basketry
materials.
The comparative process appears to be valuable in excluding known
and identified botanical materials, but not in specifying which species is
represented due to the range of possible and unknown species. With more
comprehensive libraries of analyzed species, the gap between the eliminated
species and the identified ones would narrow. Therefore, the identification of
basketry materials to species is possible using the processes considered in
this test pilot study but the number of analyzed species would need to be
greatly expanded
Bi-Directional Learning: Identifying Contaminants on the Yurok Indian Reservation
The Yurok Tribe partnered with the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Superfund Research Program to identify and address contaminants in the Klamath watershed that may be impairing human and ecosystem health. We draw on a community-based participatory research approach that begins with community concerns, includes shared duties across the research process, and collaborative interpretation of results. A primary challenge facing University and Tribal researchers on this project is the complexity of the relationship(s) between the identity and concentrations of contaminants and the diversity of illnesses plaguing community members. The framework of bi-directional learning includes Yurok-led river sampling, Yurok traditional ecological knowledge, University lab analysis, and collaborative interpretation of results. Yurok staff and community members share their unique exposure pathways, their knowledge of the landscape, their past scientific studies, and the history of landscape management, and University researchers use both specific and broad scope chemical screening techniques to attempt to identify contaminants and their sources. Both university and tribal knowledge are crucial to understanding the relationship between human and environmental health. This paper examines University and Tribal researchers’ shared learning, progress, and challenges at the end of the second year of a five-year Superfund Research Program (SRP) grant to identify and remediate toxins in the lower Klamath River watershed. Our water quality research is framed within a larger question of how to best build university–Tribal collaboration to address contamination and associated human health impacts
Recommended from our members
Bi-Directional Learning: Identifying Contaminants on the Yurok Indian Reservation.
The Yurok Tribe partnered with the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Superfund Research Program to identify and address contaminants in the Klamath watershed that may be impairing human and ecosystem health. We draw on a community-based participatory research approach that begins with community concerns, includes shared duties across the research process, and collaborative interpretation of results. A primary challenge facing University and Tribal researchers on this project is the complexity of the relationship(s) between the identity and concentrations of contaminants and the diversity of illnesses plaguing community members. The framework of bi-directional learning includes Yurok-led river sampling, Yurok traditional ecological knowledge, University lab analysis, and collaborative interpretation of results. Yurok staff and community members share their unique exposure pathways, their knowledge of the landscape, their past scientific studies, and the history of landscape management, and University researchers use both specific and broad scope chemical screening techniques to attempt to identify contaminants and their sources. Both university and tribal knowledge are crucial to understanding the relationship between human and environmental health. This paper examines University and Tribal researchers' shared learning, progress, and challenges at the end of the second year of a five-year Superfund Research Program (SRP) grant to identify and remediate toxins in the lower Klamath River watershed. Our water quality research is framed within a larger question of how to best build university-Tribal collaboration to address contamination and associated human health impacts