Book contents
- Natural Science and Indigenous Knowledge
- Natural Science and Indigenous Knowledge
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 What Do Indigenous People Have to Tell Us about the Cultural Landscapes They Have Created?
- 2 Reintegrating Cultural and Natural Landscapes
- 3 “My Uncle Was Resting His Country”: Dene Kinship and Insights into the More Distant Past
- 4 Native American Science in a Living Universe: A Paiute Perspective
- 5 “To Get More Harvest”
- 6 Hunting and Trapping in the Americas: The Assessment and Projection of Harvest on Wildlife Populations
- 7 On Fire and Water: The Intersection of Wetlands and Burning Strategies in Managing the Anthropogenic Plant Communities of Yosemite National Park
- 8 Indigenous Knowledge and the Kindergarten to Twelfth-Grade Science Classroom
- Index
- References
4 - Native American Science in a Living Universe: A Paiute Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2024
Book contents
- Natural Science and Indigenous Knowledge
- Natural Science and Indigenous Knowledge
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 What Do Indigenous People Have to Tell Us about the Cultural Landscapes They Have Created?
- 2 Reintegrating Cultural and Natural Landscapes
- 3 “My Uncle Was Resting His Country”: Dene Kinship and Insights into the More Distant Past
- 4 Native American Science in a Living Universe: A Paiute Perspective
- 5 “To Get More Harvest”
- 6 Hunting and Trapping in the Americas: The Assessment and Projection of Harvest on Wildlife Populations
- 7 On Fire and Water: The Intersection of Wetlands and Burning Strategies in Managing the Anthropogenic Plant Communities of Yosemite National Park
- 8 Indigenous Knowledge and the Kindergarten to Twelfth-Grade Science Classroom
- Index
- References
Summary
Native Americans study their environment for many reasons but importantly because it is alive and speaking with them. A living university is where they have always lived so there has never been a time when they were not seeking information from the environment, testing their interpretations of what they observe, and formulating conservation behaviors that positively reflect what they and their environment want from each other. Whether this process is termed Native science or culturally sensitive natural interactions, it is a pattern that is typical of the Native American people who have participated in more than 136 ethnographic studies conducted by the authors. Paiute science is illustrated using ethnographic findings from forty-four field studies and the lived experiences of one of the authors.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Natural Science and Indigenous KnowledgeThe Americas Experience, pp. 107 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
References
Albert, S. and Trimble, T. (2000). Beavers are partners in riparian restoration on the Zuni Indian Reservation. Ecological Restoration, 18(2), 87–92.Google Scholar
American Indian Writers Subgroup (1996). American Indian Assessments: Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations in the State of Nevada, Appendix G. Las Vegas, NV: US Department of Energy Nevada Operations Office.Google Scholar
Anderson, K. and Lake, F. (2016). Beauty, bounty, and biodiversity: the story of California Indians’ relationship with edible native geophytes. Fremontia, 44(3), 44–51.Google Scholar
Barker, J. (1997). Review: Red Earth, White Lies. Studies in American Indian Literatures, 9(2), 84–7.Google Scholar
Behler, J. L. and King, F. W. (1979). National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Bennett, J. W. (1969). Northern Plainsmen: Adaptive Strategy and Agrarian Life. Arlington Heights, IL: AHM Publishing Corporation.Google Scholar
Berkes, F. and Turner, N. (2006). Knowledge, learning and the evolution of conservation practice for social-ecological system resilience. Human Ecology, 34(4), 479–94.Google Scholar
Chandler, S. (1990). Limited excavations at Bighorn Sheep Ruin (42SA1563) Canyonlands National Park, Utah. Utah Archaeology, 3(1), 85–104.Google Scholar
Connell, J. (1978). Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. Science, 199(4335), 1302–10.Google Scholar
Crowley, K. and Link, M. (1989). The Sky Islands of Southeast Arizona. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press.Google Scholar
Davidson-Hunt, I. J. (2006). Adaptive learning networks: developing resource management knowledge through social learning forums. Human Ecology, 34(4), 593–614.Google Scholar
Deloria, Jr., V. (1995). Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Deloria, Jr., V. (1998) Intellectual self-determination and sovereignty: looking at the windmills in our minds. Wicazo Sa, 13(4), 25–31Google Scholar
Deloria, Jr., V. and Stoffle, R. (1998). Native American Sacred Sites and the Department of Defense. Washington, DC: United States Department of Defense.Google Scholar
Deur, D., Dick, A., Recalma-Clutesi, K., and Turner, N. (2015). Kwakwaka’wakw B clam gardens: motive and agency in traditional Northwest Coast mariculture. Human Ecology, 43(2), 201–12.Google Scholar
Duke, D., Wohlgemuth, E., Adams, K., et al. (2021). Earliest evidence for human use of tobacco in the Pleistocene Americas. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(2), 183–92.Google Scholar
Dwyer, P. (1985). Review of “Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People” by Roy A. Rappaport, 1984. Oceania: a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Native Peoples of Australia, New Guinea, and the Islands of the Pacific, 56, 151–4.Google Scholar
Gamillo, E. (2021). Humans’ earliest evidence of tobacco use uncovered in Utah: the charred seeds suggest that people used tobacco over 12,000 years ago – much earlier than previously thought. Smithsonian Magazine, October 12. www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-earliest-evidence-of-tobacco-use-uncovered-in-utah-180978850/.Google Scholar
Grayson, D. (1993). Desert’s Past: A Natural Prehistory of the Great Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Groark, K. (1996). Ritual and therapeutic use of “hallucinogenic” harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex) in Native South-Central California. Journal of Ethnobiology, 16(1), 1–30.Google Scholar
Groesbeck, A., Rowell, K., Lepofsky, D., and Salomon, A. (2014). Ancient clam gardens increased shellfish production: adaptive strategies from the past can inform food security today. PLOS One, 9(3), e91235.Google Scholar
Halmo, D., Stoffle, R., and Evans, M. (1993). Paitu Nanasuagaindu Pahonupi (Three Sacred Valleys): cultural significance of Gosiute, Paiute, and Ute plants. Human Organization, 52(2), 142–50.Google Scholar
Hao, S. (2013). Engineers of the San Pedro River. 50 Earth Justice Blog, June 21. https://earthjustice.org/users/shirley-hao.Google Scholar
Hardin, G. (1968). Tragedy of the Commons: the population problem has no technical solution; it required a fundamental extension in morality. Science, 162(3859), 1243–8.Google Scholar
Hernandez-Avila, I. and Varese, S. (1999). Indigenous intellectual sovereignties: a hemispheric convocation. Wicazo Sa Review, 14(2), 77–91.Google Scholar
Hockett, B. (2010). Nutritional ecology of Late Pleistocene to Middle Holocene subsistence in the Great Basin. In Graf, K. and Schmitt, D., eds., Paleoindian or Paleoarchaic?: Great Basin Human Ecology at the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, pp. 204–30.Google Scholar
Jackley, J., Gardner, L., Djunaedi, A. F., and Salomon, A. K. (2016). Ancient clam gardens, traditional management portfolios, and the resilience of coupled human-ocean systems. Ecology and Society, 21(4), 20.Google Scholar
Lansing, S. (1991). Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, H. (1989). Ecological and technological knowledge of fire: Aborigines versus park rangers in Northern Australia. American Anthropologist, 91(4), 940–60.Google Scholar
Lewis, H. and Ferguson, T. (1999). Yards, corridors, and mosaics: how to burn a boreal forest. In Boyd, R., ed., Indians, Fire, and the Land in the Pacific Northwest. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, pp. 164–84.Google Scholar
Lin, F., Graham, L., Campbell, R., and Davies, P. (2007). Structural modeling of snow flea antifreeze protein. Biophysical Journal, 92(5), 1717–23.Google Scholar
Lindsay, I. and Loosle, B. (2006). The Johnson Rockshelter (Site 42UN2580): an analysis of material remains and cultural contexts of a Fremont storage site. Utah Archaeology, 19(1), 1–20.Google Scholar
Maenhout, J. (2013). Beaver ecology in Bridger Creek, a tributary to the John Day River. MSc Thesis, Oregon State University.Google Scholar
Matthews, M.H. (1988). Macrobotanical remains and worked vegetal artifacts from bighorn sheep ruin/42Sa1563. In Chandler, S. M., ed., Archaeological synthesis of the Bighorn Sheep Ruin/42Sa1563, Needles District, Canyonlands National Park, Southeastern Utah, Technical Report 51. Denver, CO: National Park Service, Rocky Mountain Regional Office, pp. A-1–A-74.Google Scholar
McCay, B. and Acheson, J. (1987). The Question of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Resources. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Miller, A. M. and Davidson-Hunt, I. (2010). Fire, agency and scale in the creation of aboriginal cultural landscapes. Human Ecology, 38(3), 401–14.Google Scholar
Mohawk, J. (1996). Review of “Red Earth, White Lies.” American Anthropologist, 98(3), 650–1.Google Scholar
Nabhan, G. (1997). Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story. Washington, DC: Counterpoint.Google Scholar
Nabhan, G. (2018). Mesquite: An Arboreal Love Affair. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.Google Scholar
Nabhan, G., Dobyns, H., Hevly, R., and Euler, R. (1981). Devil’s claw domestication: evidence from southwestern Indian fields. Journal of Ethnobiology, 1(1), 135–64.Google Scholar
Nickens, P. (1981). Pueblo III Communities in Transition: Environment and Adaptation in Johnson Canyon. Boulder, CO: Colorado Archaeological Society and University of Colorado.Google Scholar
Pierson, L. (1980). A Cultural Resource Summary of the East Central Portion of Moab District. Cultural Resource Series, No. 10. Moab, UT: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management.Google Scholar
Pimm, S. (1991). The Balance of Nature?: Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pretty, J., Adams, B., Berkes, F., et al. (2009). The intersections of biological diversity and cultural diversity: towards integration. Conservation & Society, 7(2), 100–12.Google Scholar
Rappaport, R. A. (1968). Pigs for The Ancestors: Ritual Ecology of a New Guinea People. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Rappaport, R. A. (1984). Pigs for The Ancestors: Ritual Ecology of a New Guinea People, 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Rhode, D. and Louderback, L. (2010). Dietary plant use in the Bonneville Basin during the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene transition. In Graf, K. and Schmitt, D., eds., Paleoindian or Paleoarchaic?: Great Basin Human Ecology at the Pleistocene Holocene Transition. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, pp. 231–50.Google Scholar
Rowe, T., Stafford, T., Fisher, D., et al. (2022). Human occupation of the North American Colorado Plateau ~37,000 years ago. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 10, 903795. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2022.903795.Google Scholar
Sauer, C. (1925). The Morphology of Landscape. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sauer, C. (1956). The agency of man on the earth. In Thomas, W. L., Jr., ed., Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schrader, W. E. (2004). Traditional cataract treatment and the healers perspective: dialogue with western science and technology in Nigeria, West Africa. Annals of African Medicine, 3(3), 153–8.Google Scholar
Schroedl, A. and Coulam, N. (1994). Cowboy Cave revisited. Utah Archaeology, 7(1), 1–34.Google Scholar
Shipek, F. (1991). Delfina Cuero, Her Autobiography and Account of her Last Years and Her Ethnobotanic Contributions. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press.Google Scholar
Sofaer, A. (1982). Lunar markings on Fajada Butte. In Aveni, A., ed., Archaeoastronomy in the New World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 169–81.Google Scholar
Sofaer, A. (2021). Solstice project papers. https://solsticeproject.org/solstice-project-papers/.Google Scholar
Sofaer, A. and Sinclair, R. M. (1982). Astronomical Marking Sites on Fajada Butte. Chaco Canyon Center, National Park Service, New Mexico.Google Scholar
Sofaer, A., Zinser, V., and Sinclair, R. M. (1979). A unique solar marking construct. Science, 206(4416), 283–91.Google Scholar
Stewart, O. C., 1942. Culture Element Distributions: XVIII: Ute-Southern Paiute. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, O., Lewis, H., and Anderson, M. K. (2009). Forgotten Fires: Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R. W. and Arnold, R. (2003). Confronting the angry rock: American Indians’ situated risks from radioactivity. Ethnos, 68(2), 230–48.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R., Arnold, R., and Bulletts, A. (2016). Talking with nature: Southern Paiute epistemology and the double hermeneutic with a living planet. In Tully, G. and Ridges, M., ed., Collaborative Heritage Management. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, pp. 75–99.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R., Chmara-Huff, F., Van Vlack, K., and Toupal, R. (2004). Puha Flows from It: The Cultural Landscape Study of the Spring Mountains. Prepared for the United States Forest Service Humboldt Toiyabe National Forest Spring Mountains National Recreation Area. Tucson, AZ: Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R. W. and Evans, M. J. (1976). Resource competition and population change: a Kaibab Paiute ethnohistorical case. Ethnohistory, 23(2), 173–97.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R., Evans, M., Nieves Zedeño, M., Stoffle, B., and Kesel, C. (1994). American Indians and Fajada Butte Ethnographic Overview and Assessment for Fajada Butte and Traditional (Ethnobotanical) Use Study for Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico. Prepared for the National Park Service. Tucson, AZ: Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R., Halmo, D., and Evans, M. (1999). Puchuxwavaat Uapi (to know about plants): traditional knowledge and the cultural significance of Southern Paiute plants. Human Organization, 58(4), 416–29.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R. , Halmo, D., Evans, M., and Olmsted, J. (1990). Calculating the cultural significance of American Indian plants: Paiute and Shoshone ethnobotany at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. American Anthropologist, 92(2), 416–32.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R. W., Jake, M. C., Bunte, P., and Evans, M. J. (1982). Southern Paiute peoples’ SIA responses to energy proposals. In Geisler, C. C., Usner, D., Green, R., and West, P., eds., Indian SIA: The Social Impact Assessment of Rapid Resource Development on Native Peoples. Ann Arbor, MI: School of Natural Resources, University of Michigan, p. 107.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R. W., Jones, K. L., and Dobyns, H. F. (1995). Direct European immigrant transmission of Old-World pathogens to Numic Indians during the nineteenth century. American Indian Quarterly, 19(2), 181–203.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R., Naranjo, A., Sittler, C., and Slivk, K. (2018). Grandfather tree: Ute horror at the killing of a heritage tree. International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 13, 36–49.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R., Pickering, E., Sittler, C., et al. (2017). [CANY] Ethnographic Overview and Assessment for Canyonlands National Park. Tucson, AZ: School of Anthropology, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R., Sittler, C., Albertie, M., et al. (2019). Ethnographic Overview and Assessment for Hovenweep National Monument. Tucson, AZ: School of Anthropology, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R., Sittler, C., Van Vlack, K., Pickering, E., and Lim, H. (2020). Living Universe or GeoFacts: stone arches in Utah National Parks – epistemological divides in heritage environmental communication. International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 15, 16–27.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R., Toupal, R., Van Vlack, K., et al. (2009). Native American Ethnographic Study of Tonto National Monument. Prepared for National Park Service. Tucson, AZ: Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Stoffle, R. W., Toupal, R., and Zedeño, N. (2003). Landscape, nature, and culture: a diachronic model of human–nature adaptations. In Selin, H. and Kalland, A., eds., Nature Across Cultures. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 97–114.Google Scholar
Talbot, R. K. and Wilde, J. D. (1989). Giving form to the formative: shifting settlement patterns in the eastern Great Basin and northern Colorado Plateau. Utah Archaeology, 2(1), 3–18.Google Scholar
Thomas, W. L. (1956). Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Toupal, R. (2001). Landscape perceptions and natural resources management: finding the “social” in the “sciences.” PhD Dissertation, School of Renewable Natural Resources, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Treat, J. (1997). Review: Red Earth, White Lies. Nova Religion: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 1(1), 163–5.Google Scholar
Turner, N. J. (2003). The ethnobotany of edible seaweed (Porphyra abbottae Krishnamurthy and related species; Rohdophyta: Bangiales) and its use by First Nations on the Pacific Coast of Canada. Canadian Journal of Botany, 81(4), 283–93.Google Scholar
Turner, N. J. (2016). We give them seaweed: social economic exchange and resilience in the Northwestern North America. Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge, 15(1), 5–15.Google Scholar
Turner, N. J. and Berkes, F. (2006). Coming to understanding developing conservation through incremental learning. Human Ecology, 34(4), 495–513.Google Scholar
Turner, N. J., Ignace, M. B., and Ignace, R. (2000). Traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom of Aboriginal Peoples in British Columbia. Ecological Applications 10(5), 1275–87.Google Scholar
Turner, N. J., Lepofsky, D., and Deur, D. (2013). Plant management systems of British Columbia’s First Peoples. The British Columbian Quarterly, 179, 107–33.Google Scholar
Van Vlack, K. (2007). Traditional ecological knowledge and resilience of the Southern Paiute High Chief System. MA Thesis, Department of American Indian Studies, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Vayda, A., Walters, B., and Setyawati, I. (2004). Doing and knowing questions about studies of local knowledge. In Bicker, A., Sillitoe, P., and Pottier, J., eds., Investigating Local Knowledge: New Directions, New Approaches. London: Ashgate Publishing.Google Scholar
Williams, D. B. (2013). A Naturalist’s Guide to Canyon Country, 2nd ed. Guilford, CT: Falcon Guides.Google Scholar
Winter, J. C. and Hogan, P. F. (1986). Plant husbandry in the Great Basin and adjacent northern Colorado Plateau. In Condie, C. J. and Fowler, D. D., eds., Anthropology of the Desert West: Essays in honor of Jesse D. Jennings. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, pp. 117–44.Google Scholar
Yoder, D. T. (2005). Fremont storage and mobility: changing forms through time. MA Thesis, Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University.Google Scholar