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ANTH 491: Ethnobiology—Traditional Biological Knowledge in Contemporary Global Context (C4/C5) Report a Broken Link

Ethnobiology can be conceived of as the study of the cultural knowledge of living things and the environment. It is an interdisciplinary field, and connections between different forms of knowledge about living things and the environment are examined from a variety of vantage points in a comparative or global context.

Unit 1 Required Reading

The Origin of Nettle Fibre

In Tricksters, Shamans and Heroes: Tsimshian Narratives I, collected by Marius Barbeau and William Beynon, edited by John J. Cove and George F. MacDonald, 84-88. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Mercury Serires Directorate Paper no. 3. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization.
 
Chapter 1, Ethnobiology, Overview of a Growing Field

In Ethnobiology. Edited by E. N. Anderson, D. Pearsall, E. Hunn, and N. Turner © 2011 Wiley-Blackwell. Published 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Chapter 2, History of Ethnobiology

by R.I. Ford pp 1-26 in Ethnobiology. Edited by E.N. Anderson, D. Pearsall, E. Hunn, and N. Turner © 2011 Wiley-Blackwell. Published 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Online Resource
Lessons from the Land. The Idaa Trail. Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Yellowknife NWT.

Unit 2 Required Reading

Common Sense: Its Scope and Limits

Atran, Scott. 1990. In Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Excerpts from Ethnobotany: A Methods Manual

Martin, Gary J. 1995. London: Chapman and Hall.
“General Plant Categories in Thompson and Lillooet, Two Interior Salish Languages of British Columbia,” by Nancy Turner.
Related Reading
Sillitoe, Paul. 2002. Contested knowledge, contingent classification: animals in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. 

American Anthropologist (4): 1162-1171.

Unit 3 Required Reading

 “Ethnobotany: The Study of people-plant relationships” by Justin M. Nolan and Nancy J. Turner.
 “Huastec Noncrop Resource Management: Implications for Prehistoric Rain Forest Management,” by Janis Alcorn.
“Women and the Plant World: An Exploration,” by Patricia Howard. 
"What’s So Special about Indigenous Foods? An Overview of the Nutrient Value and Use of Plant Foods by Indigenous Peoples,” by Harriet V. Kuhnlein and Nancy J. Turner.
“Wet’suwet’en Ethnobotany: Traditional Plant Uses,” by Leslie M. Johnson Gottesfeld.
“The Role of Plant Foods in Traditional Wet'suwet'en Nutrition,” by Leslie M. Johnson Gottesfeld.

Unit 4 Required Reading

“Wet’suwet’en Ethnobotany: Traditional Plant Uses,” by Leslie M. Johnson Gottesfeld.
“Gitksan Traditional Medicine: Herbs and Healing,” by Leslie Main Johnson Gottesfeld and Beverley Anderson.
“Criteria for Selecting Herbal Remedies,” by C. H. Browner. 
Darshan Shankar and B. Majumdar. (1997). “Beyond the Biodiversity Convention: The Challenges Facing the Biocultural Heritage of India’s Medicinal Plants.” pp. 87-99 
 “Plant use by Native Americans,” by Daniel Moerman.
“The Indian Way,” by Luke Chalifoux with Anne Anderson.
“Cures, Medicines and Amulets,” by Frederica DeLaguna. (Pages 654-660.)
Excerpts from Ethnobotany of the Blackfoot Indians, by John Hellson and M. Gadd.
“Echinacea angustifolia, purple coneflower,” by Kelly Kindscher.
Hamilton, A.C. Medicinal plants, conservation and livelihoods.

Biodiversity and Conservation (2004) 13: 1477.
Related Reading
Blaxton, James D. II, Ara Der Marderosian and Ron Gibbs. 2002. Bioactive constitutents of Alaskan devil’s root (Oplopanax horridus, Araliaceae). Economic Botany 56(3): 285–287.

Unit 5 Required Reading

 “Wet'suwet'en Ethnobotany: Traditional Plant Uses,” by Leslie M. Johnson Gottesfeld.
“Plant Materials,” by Nancy J. Turner, John Thomas, Barry F. Carlson, and Robert T. Ogilvie.
“The Use, Construction, and Importance of Canoes among the Maijuna of the Peruvian Amazon.” Michael P. Gilmore, W. Hardy Eshbaugh and Adolph M. Greenberg.

Economic Botany. Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 2002), pp. 10-26.

Unit 6 Required Reading

“Vadzaih, Caribou,” by Gwich’in Elders.
“Animal Life,” by Richard Stephen Felger and Mary Beck Moser.
Chapter 1, Interest in Cattle and Chapter 2, Oecology, in The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People, by E. E. Evans-Pritchard.
Excerpts from Culture and Behavior of the Sebei: A Study in Continuity and Adaptation, by Walter Goldschmidt.
Related Reading
Enghoff, Inge Bødker. 2003. Hunting, fishing and animal husbandry at The Farm Beneath the Sand, Western Greenland. Meddelelser om Groenland, Man & Society 28. Copenhagen, Danish Polar Center, Denmark.

Unit 7 Required Reading

“Legend of the Hunter, Kemano and Kitlope B.C.,” a narrative by Chief Ken Hall.
“Strange Feasts,” in Visitors Who Never Left: The Origin of the People of Damelahamid by Kenneth B. Harris and Frances M. P. Robinson.
Excerpts from Wolverine Myths and Visions: Dene Traditions from Northern Alberta,compiled by the Dene Wodih Society.
“The Prince Who Was Taken Away by the Spring Salmon,” by Franz Boas.
“Animal Transformations,” “Introduction, Dreaming All the Bottom of the Water,” “Introduction, The Same Respect You Give Yourself,” “Mortuary Deposition,” and “Animals and Women,” by Robert Brightman.
“Conservation, Territory, and Traditional Beliefs: An Analysis of Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en Subsistence, Northwest British Columbia, Canada,” by Leslie M. Johnson Gottesfeld.
Recommended Reading
Tate, Henry W. 1993. The porcupine hunter. Story of the porcupine hunter. In The Porcupine Hunter and Other Stories the Original Tsimshian Texts of Henry Tate, annotated and transcribed by Ralph Maud, 21. Vancouver: Talonbooks.

In The Porcupine Hunter and Other Stories the Original Tsimshian Texts of Henry Tate, annotated and transcribed by Ralph Maud, 21. Vancouver: Talonbooks.

Unit 8 Required Reading

“`Time to Burn': Traditional Use of Fire to Enhance Resource Production by Aboriginal Peoples in British Columbia,” by Nancy J. Turner.
“Native Californians as Ancient and Contemporary Cultivators,” by Kat Anderson.
“Plant Usage and Management in Southwest Australian Aboriginal Societies,” by Sylvia Hallam.
“Introduction,” by Richard I. Ford.
“Ecological Modification and Adaptation: An Ethnobotanical View of Lua' Swiddens in Northwestern Thailand,” by Peter Kunstadter.
“Tending the Garden, Making the Soil, Northwest Coast Estuarine Gardens as Engineered Environments” by Douglas Deur.
Kennedy, Grant (Producer) and H.T. Lewis (Director). (1978). Fires of Spring. University of Alberta, Motion Pictures. Streaming permission provided by the University of Alberta.

Related Reading
Davidson-Hunt, Iain, and Fikret Berkes. 2003. Learning as you journey: Anishinaabe perception of social-ecological environments and adaptive learning. Conservation Ecology 8(1): pp. 5
Trawick, Paul. 2002. Trickle-down Theory, Andean style. Natural History 111(8): 60–65.
Hamlin, Catherine C. and Jan Salick. 2003. Yanesha agriculture, in the Upper Peruvian Amazon: Persistence and change fifteen years down the  “Road”. Economic Botany 57(2): 163–180.

Unit 9 Required Reading

“Participatory Forest Management in West Bengal, India,” by Samar Singh, Avenah Datta, Anil Bakshi, Arvind Khare, Sushil Saigal, and Navin Kapoor.
“Ecological and socio-economic factors influencing aguaje (Mauritia flexuosa) resource management in two indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon” by Christa M. Horn, Michael P. Gilmore, and Bryan A. Endress.
“Native Land Use and Common Property: Whose Common?” by Carl Hrenchuk.

In the book  "Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Concepts and Cases"  pages 69 to 86
“Whose Knowledge, Whose Genes, Whose Rights?” by Stephen B. Brush.
“Executive Summary. Discussion Paper on Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property: Scoping the Definitions and Issues,” by Project Team.
“Executive Summary. An Economic Strategy to Develop Non-Timber Forest Products and Services in British Columbia,” by Russel M. Wills and Richard G. Lipsey.
Related Reading
Sternberg, Michael K. 2002. The globalization of a ceremonial tree: The case of cacao (Theobroma cacao) among the Mopan Maya. Economic Botany 56(1): 58–65.

Video

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