For the past hundred or more years, anthropologists have documented the ways of cultures around the world (Erickson 1998). Cultural ecological knowledge holds methods for how peoples and ecologies have thrived in balance with each other over many hundreds of years (Salmon 1999; Nabhan 1997). Much of that information has been published in the public domain. Internet technology is now at a level where students can sift through ethnographies in paper form and publish that research in a condensed relational format thereby giving researchers and other interested community members the ability to access and apply this information to their local bioregion. Small databases of this kind can be created in bioregions across the country and then linked as a large on-line reference library that includes, text, audio, video, and pictures. All of the research is referenced to the sources from which it came and includes links for accessing the sources and relevant contacts.
The Ethnoecology Database of the Greater Southwest has been created to aid local people in their efforts to become sustainable. Sustainability is the ability to sustain. Webster (1966) defines sustain as 1) to maintain; keep in existence; keep going; prolong: as the pedal sustains the tones. 2) to keep supplied with necessities; provide for. 3) to support from or as from below; carry the weight or burden of. 4) to strengthen the spirits, courage, etc. of; comfort; buoy up; encourage. 5) to endure; bear up against; withstand. 6) to undergo; experience suffer, as an injury or loss. 7) to uphold or support the validity or justice of. Etc…
The Ethnoecology Database has been designed to work for any bioregion but has been populated with data specific to the Greater Southwest bioregion. A Bioregion is a watershed, neighborhood, or area of like natural phenomena and climate, linked by water, culture, ridges and valleys, or local recognition – “the perceived neighborhood” (Mollison, 1988; 566). For an excellent discussion of bioregionalism and bioregional organization please see: (BM 1988: 510 – 514).
A
bioregion is a geographical area linked by particular plant, animal, soil, and
climatic characteristics and by the human influences that bear on that region
(La Chapelle cited in Salmon, 1999) The Greater Southwest is loosely defined as
the region from Durango, Colorado to Durango, Mexico, extending east into west
Texas and west into Southern California and Baja (Salmon 2001). Upon further
examination of the biota of this bioregion one finds that in actuality the
bioregion extends much further north through northern Utah, eastern Oregon and
Washington (Moore 1989). It has also been noted that this bioregion is
considered the third most diverse bioregion in the world (Brown, Felger and
Dahl, Ramamoorthy et al. cited in Salmon 1999).
Student
researchers who sift through ethnographic resources available at Fort Lewis
College populate the Ethnoecology Database. The research is scrutinized,
condensed and then entered into a Microsoft Access database housed in the Fort
Lewis College, Anthropology department. Ethnography is defined as the
systematic description of a single culture, often through ethnographic
fieldwork (Barfield 1977: 159).
With the admission of photography, film, sound recordings, and other archival media as ethnographic documents, ethnography has annexed another meaning: it has become not only that which describes culture (primarily through language), but that which presents culture (through artifacts, images, music, etc.). (Barfiled 1977: 159).
I
use the term Bioregional ethnographic collectivism to describe the
pooling of ethnographies of several cultures that are related, based on the
bioregion from which they originate. It is a way of organizing and
understanding cultures based on their adaptive strategies to a common bioregion
(the land) from which they generate their material culture. It examines the
common material foundations for cultures and their unique ways of altering the
landscape to fit their specific needs. Bioregional ethnographic collectivism
is the defining unique characteristic of the Ethnoecology Database.
Student research of ethnographies
focuses on ethnoecological data. Ethnoecology is the study of how people
interact with all aspects of the natural environment, including plants and
animals, landforms, forest types and soils, among many other things (Martin
1995).
The
Ethnoecology Database functions as a tool for researchers in an
Urban-Ethnoecological context. Urban/suburban-Ethnoecology is defined as
the study of how people in urban/suburban areas interact with all aspects of
the natural environment. To my knowledge this is a new term, which specifically
focuses on people in urban environments. Originally Dr. Enrique Salmon and
myself coined the term Urban–Ethnobotany during a field trip to Arizona
in the Spring of 2001. While in Tempe, AZ. our class stopped at Gentle
Strength Co-op to purchase food. I struck up a conversation with the woman
who landscaped and took care of the plants around the co-op. She had many
wonderful stories to tell about the plants and shared her knowledge with me
about their traditional and non-traditional uses. From that point forward I
believed there must be an integration of this type of knowledge and it needs a
new classification, hence, urban-ethnobotany. As work on the database
progressed, my understanding of the complex relationships between plants and people
lead me to the realization that everything is connected. To truthfully honor
the full context of the interrelations between plants and people, I had to
honor the relations between people and the entire natural environment. So now I
refer to this as urban-ethnoecology, which should be considered the foundations
of knowledge to be used in urban permaculture contexts. For an excellent
discussion of Urban and suburban permaculture strategies please see:
(Bill Mollison 1991: 106 – 112).
In the
following paragraphs I will illustrate how the Ethnoecology Database is
being used to store and transfer ethnoecological information to a wide audience
of students, researchers and interested community members. I will also discuss
the implications of using this kind of technology.
The Ethnoecology Database
The Ethnoecology relational database at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado is being used to store and share ethnoecological information and preserve oral history in a recallable format, accessible on the Internet. The primary function of the database is as a research tool for students and community members in the Greater Southwest bioregion. In its current form the database includes the topics of Art, Culture, Common Names, Chemistry, Herbarium, Interviews, Literature, Medicine, Organizations, Contacts, Species, Images, Phenology, Resources, Textiles, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Utility. The database is in both searchable and browse-able formats.
As people moved to the new world they were successful at exporting the native plants and animals from their native regions of Eurasia to the new world, while simultaneously importing the plants and animals from the new world to be held in Museums, Zoos, and Botanical Gardens in the old world (Lum 2002). However, many Europeans failed to adapt and become integrated into the ecology already in place in the Americas. Most people simply ignored the Native peoples’ deep understanding of the inner workings of their ecology and manipulated the land in whatever way they saw fit. In fact, one of the main tactics of conquest was to remove the Native people from their land in order to destroy their way of life, but by doing so, the knowledge of how to properly care for the land (which had been learned and conserved over so many generations) was almost completely lost (Salmon 2001). We see the consequences still today.
If you were to go to the local Durango Farmer’s market this summer, what you would find, predominantly, are European plants. Cultigens of plants that European American’s ancestors utilized in a different bioregion in different times. Yet, while these plants have the ability to adapt somewhat to this new bioregion, their adaptation is predominantly based on excessive water use and much babying on the part of the cultivator. And the ramifications don’t end there. The native pollinators are forced to adapt, as are the predators and the entire web of life (Nabhan 1997). The entire ecology is affected by our actions. The environment is unable to keep up with the pace of change we have been imposing upon it. A backlash is in evitable. If we are to be successful in the future, we will have to learn to better care for our resources than we have so far. We can learn from the indigenous people by adapting strategies similar to the ones in use when we arrived. We can learn how to do this by reading the ethnographies of the cultures that were here before us and by learning from ones who are still utilizing traditional land management practices today. Within these ethnographies are many years of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). There are many years pharmacognostic knowledge beyond what our newly industrialized, technologically advanced, scientifically oriented culture can possibly hope to deliver in a timely manner. In some cases thousands of years of trial and error are encoded in the stories, songs, and utilitarian data written down by anthropologists before these cultures were permanently altered by the changes brought on by the Western world (Salmon 2001).
Internet and computer technology has the ability to allow these ethnographies to be transferred onto a common medium that is relational, and freely accessible. A new teaching and research tool is now possible. The Ethnoecology Database provides relevant media that pertains directly to a bioregion, and can assist people of the present to find out how people of the past utilized the resources of the region for material culture, (so as not to further plunder and exploit it for our own individual selfish purposes) but so that we as a collective of communities can better care for it.
…Successful
pre-industrial cultures maintain a sustainable lifestyle that melds with their
bioregions. This is a result of understanding the limits of exploitation
inherent in their region. The course to dynamic equilibrium with their region
is determined by how they utilize their plants [and animals]… (Salmon 1999).
A database of this kind should be considered a tool for the management of resources via the edification of the Populus. It is a research tool, a reference guide, and a way for students to learn while simultaneously giving to the community. The information pertaining to the bioregion transcends political, state and national boundaries, therefore benefiting all people in the bioregion.
Taking it to the Streets!
Urban sprawl is a dangerous and popular trend that is continuing. Entire ecosystems, the homes of many life forms, are regularly and thoughtlessly destroyed because people either don’t care or simply don’t see any other way. But what we don’t realize is that when we destroy those ecosystems we do it to the detriment of our health on an individual, local and global scale. Everything is connected. We are all truly one! Take for example the urban lawn. The American lawn consumes more resources in the form of water, nutrients, pesticides, and herbicides than any other agricultural industry in the world. (Mollison 1991) We could transform our lawns into gardens for food and medicine, create habitat for wildlife, as well as filtration systems and remediation centers, all by transforming the good green lawn into an edible landscape using native useful plants! Please see: (Mollison, 1988 : 434-435; 1991 : 111-112) for an excellent discussion on how the good green lawn originated in Europe when the common folk tried to emulate wealthy landowners whose land was kept well manicured by their animals.
Landscaping with native plants has come about in recent years due to water constraints. Life goes where the water flows. If we utilized our lawns for food and medicine we would consume 20% less resources (or more) by simply not having to transport them (Mollison 1991). All major cities in the Southwest could potentially produce all their food supplies within a 30-mile radius (Nabhan, 2001). Maybe these ideas aren’t for everyone, but the Voluntary Simplicity movement is gaining membership every day (Voluntary 2002). Information presented in the Ethnoecology Database could be used by ordinary folks willing to go to local schools or libraries to log on and find out about their local plants and wildlife and how these can be cared for and utilized to serve their needs.
One of the new challenges of the 21st century is to bring the rural biomes to the urban areas; a reintegration of the people with the land. Urban-ethnoecologists would help facilitate this reintegration by learning how people think about and perceive their urban environment and develop strategies for incorporating rural ecological knowledge into the densely populated urban social structures.
The Vision!
Where did the funding come from to pay the anthropologists who did and currently do research and then publish ethnographies? Who benefits from the work anthropologists do? While many private universities are funded through private trusts and tuition, public universities are still funded largely by public taxes and student fees. Technically that means the information generated by researchers at such universities is privy to the public domain unless expressly forbidden by the culture being studied. In other words we the people have a right to access the information. While the information is accessible via libraries, it is divided up into volumes of books, few of which are written in a complementary, relational fashion. The books are made from paper and ink, which is limited in its capacity to withstand very much handling before disintegrating, and only one person can access a given book at a given time. By switching to electronic media, namely a relational database, the information can be accessed by several users at any given moment, repeatedly without wear and tear, in a relational, hypertextual format, from anywhere within the bioregion (or the planet for that matter). Additionally, once compiled in this manner, the information can be appended at any time with out having to reprint books, and many new forms of media such as sound, video and pictures can augment the text.
What I personally would like to see is the educational centers of the world begin to directly benefit the communities within which they are situated. Institutions are not factories dedicated to the lords of industry, functioning primarily to churn out new fodder for the industrial complex. Nor are they islands in the sea of community. Rather, they are in place to benefit local communities as centers of education and information dissemination. At least in my ideal world that’s what they should be! In the case of Fort Lewis College, what I have noticed in my three years here is competition against, rather than cooperation within the different departments. We have so many amazing resources at our disposal. Great teachers who willingly give up better paying jobs at universities in more populated areas, and technical equipment normally only relegated to top notch large universities such as the NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) machine in the chemistry department. Imagine if the primary focus of Fort Lewis was to turn away from industry and competition and turn toward community and cooperation. What I’m getting at is, the different departments on campus could unite by getting students involved in multidisciplinary collaborative projects that would benefit the community, the students, and finally the school. One example would be for the Chemistry, Biology, Anthropology, Sociology, and Business departments to come together on a, medicinal plants of La Plata county preservation project. The Biology and Anthropology departments could work together to identify those plants in the area that are traditionally used for food or medicine. The Chemistry and Biology departments could use its excellent bioassay equipment to elucidate the constituents and the most simple, safe and effective methods for utilizing the plants that anyone could use in their kitchen, as well as how to cultivate and/or sustainably manage the regional populations and asses possible impacts on other members of the biota. The Anthropology, Sociology, and Business departments could then derive ways to educate the public, set up community gardens, and derive strategies for defraying the financial costs. The entire project could be published in the database and/or a web site similar to the one I have constructed. In this way, Fort Lewis would be directly befitting not only the human communities in La Plata County, but also the non-human members, thereby facilitating a healthier ecology. Fort Lewis students would also benefit by learning through working on a multidisciplinary project that is real world in its application and positively impacts the greater community. The college would be acting to collect, scrutinize, and ultimately, disseminate accurate information to the community.
Potential Problems and Ethical
Concerns
More Americans now own computers yet certain groups are still far less likely to have computers or online access. Lack of such access affects the ability of students to learn valuable technology skills, and benefit from online connections to important health and civic information. A follow-up study, released by President Clinton in July 1999, documents that a "digital divide" continues to grow (Falling Through the Net II 2002). Before leaving office, President Clinton helped to fund a project that would bring one million new computers to rural and low-income areas throughout the U.S. (Executive Summary 2002).
I was recently in the Northwest visiting friends at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. I spoke with several people who had just returned from a field trip to the southern extent of the Sonora and Sierra Tarahumara. They informed me that the region was badly in need of an updated field guide. They cited Al Gentry’s work and one other mainstream publication (Peterson’s Field Guide) as the only tools at their disposal for learning the flora and fauna (David Griffin personal communication 2002). They were all visibly frustrated with their experience. They informed me that “everyone” including Mestizos and Indians alike have access to and spend a lot of time on Internet Café and online chat forums. It has become the form of communication due to the costs of long distance communication and equipment. In this case it seems that an online database such as the Ethnoecology Database would be a useful tool to students, visitors, and community members alike.
Something to
consider is what impact will the transfer of information via computer media
have on other cultures? Many cultures still cling to their oral history
traditions. They have protocols in place for how, what and when information is
transferred between individuals of their culture (Salmon 2001). This should be
taken into consideration. However, television has long since made its way into
the hands of cultures across the globe. Internet Technology (IT) differs from
TV in as much as TV is a one-way street, while IT is a two-way street giving
the user the ability to both receive and transmit information. This, I believe,
empowers the user because s/he can now take control of the media. As the
example above has shown, IT has already been well received in places like
Mexico, amongst peoples of diverse cultures and walks of life. IT may in fact
be a leveling factor in the great disparage between rich and poor, allowing
access to relevant and accurate information to anyone regardless of what
financial or social strata they belong to.
Rural Alaskans have begun to share their oral history via the WWW. In her research paper “Internet Access to Oral Recordings: Finding the Issues,” Karen Brewster researched how sharing oral history recordings on the web was being handled by other sites and what concerns, if any, the rural Alaskan natives had about sharing their oral history via that medium. The project seems to be a success and her consultants are happy. For a summary PowerPoint presentation please see: http://anthro.fortlewis.edu/ethnobotany/special_events/IPR_NET.ppt
To see Karen’s online report, please go to: http://www.uaf.edu/library/collections/apr/internet.oralhist/index.html#overview
This represents at least one example of how some Native Americans feel about having their cultural knowledge shared via the Internet.
Conclusion
It is my belief that if this database is populated with accurate information and actively promoted throughout the community it will be a source of empowerment for people. The information on how people can feed, clothe, shelter, and medicate themselves with resources found in their local environment can help people to be self sufficient in their efforts to acquire their basic material needs. We must all participate in using and caring for our natural resources or we will surely loose them. Learning to acquire as much of our material culture from local resources helps benefit the entire planet. Why would we harvest medicinal plants in Durango, to sell them to a company in California, so they can process them, bottle them, and them ship them back to us? This kind of resource distribution is expensive in terms of the fossil fuels used for transportation, the water, and labor. Instead, if we were to adapt, even a little bit, to our local resources we could dramatically increase our efficiency and generate less waste! Furthermore, the other species that we share this planet with desperately need us to adopt these measures if they are to survive. As Gary J. Martin put it:
Any impression that these ethnobiological inventories are old-fashioned will be quickly dispelled by listening to local people and researchers who tell of the urgency of recording ecological knowledge and collecting biological organisms before they disappear forever (Martin 1995: 18).
Marshall McLuhan (1962) says that print technology revolutionizes the way human beings think and societies organize themselves and create the “global village.” “The media is the message, change the media and you change the message”. Or in other words, whoever controls the media controls the people (McLuhan in Leary 1994: 36 - 48). Literacy creates changes in social structures (Jack Goody in Barfield 1997) Ultimately an online database like this one will only be as useful as the information is accurate and abundant.
One thing that capitalism and wage labor has done is to alienate people by separating the artist from the craft and the people from their land. When this occurs people are no longer in control and become ahistorical and easily manipulated to someone else’s ends (Lum, 2002). The tactic, for such a long time, has been to separate people from the land and this needs to be healed. By giving people access to information pertaining to their bioregion they will have the tools to begin to reformulate a relationship with the land on which they are absolutely dependent for life.
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