Anthony Pitcher

This project aims to reconstruct past ecosystems. Rebuilding functioning and diverse systems, a concept deeply embedded in the culture of many Aboriginal peoples but virtually absent from contemporary resource management, will be proposed as a viable, valuable goal. The project methods will be devised in an interdisciplinary collaboration of Aboriginal people with natural and social scientists, and will seek ways that traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) can, through the cultural shadow cast by past abundances, construct, tune and validate models of natural systems. The project will find ways of combining qualitative and quantitative knowledge using a new class of ecosystem models that are simple, robust and credible.

Together, the models and traditional First Nations knowledge will be harnessed to describe the state of past natural systems in British Columbia. All partners may then learn together how they may be rebuilt and what their present economic value or rebuilt systems might be. This work has not been attempted before. The difficulties are not underestimated: establishing a productive dialogue among natural scientists, social scientists and Aboriginal people will not be easy given different tradition, cultures and research styles. The direct involvement of Aboriginal people, meeting with the facilitation of UBC's First Nations House of Learning (FNHL), aims to overcome mutual suspicion resulting from past disregard of science to TEK, and hence to facilitate a beneficial exchange.

The project is coordinated by the Fisheries Centre, a new interdisciplinary unit at UBC with mandate to focus work on fisheries resources, in partnership with the FNHL. If successful, the fresh goals for resource management that will emerge from this project will be designed to encourage consultation and consent. They should therefore reduce conflict. Moreover, they will improve the power of resource management immeasurable. The project should enhance and consolidate UBC's position in studies that directly involve Aboriginal people, in interdisciplinary studies and in natural living resource management.