Aboriginal Hunters as Environmentalists

For the ethnographers of hunting, of Native North America, and the anthropologists of the environment, Paul Nadasdy’s article in the current issue of Ethnohistory (52 (2); Spring 2005) is really worth reading.

Titled “Transcending the Debate Over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism,” Nadasdy hits on a number of points relevant to continuing debates about native people as ‘natural environmentalists’ and emphasizes repeatedly the fact that the label of environmentalist (warranted or not) can be uncomfortable for aboriginal peoples.

Nadasdy writes with reference to his own research with Kluane people in the Yukon Territory. In doing so, he builds ideas surrounding the relationships between animals and people in northern aboriginal communities and considers how those relationships of respect and reciprocity affect views of native people as conservationists or environmentalists. Quoting Nadasdy:

[The practices of Yukon First Nations peoples] … cannot be categorized as environmentalist of conservationist. Nor can they be categorized as nonenvironmentalist. To do either is to impose a whole set of inappropriate cultural assumptions on Yukon First Nation people and their relationship to the land and animals (311).

Nadasday continues with a discussion of why northern native practices and beliefs are spoken about in these terms. Nadasdy notes that native people often engage government bureaucrats with reference to these categories — as conservationists — because it is what is expected. And, he gets into the tricky issue of killing animals like wolves which are otherwise local totems. This raises questions about how people reconcile hunting for monetary return, in activities such as fur trading or big game guiding, with traditional relationships of veneration for and confrontation with food animals.

Share This