One of the stories I was pursuing in 2013-2014 that I hope I get a chance to track down someday is the use of traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK, to combat damages wrought by climate change
For example, around here Kumeyaay and Diegueño peoples perfected ways of surface water maintenance in the very dry climates of inland southern California. These were assumed to be natural by Spanish colonizers
viejasbandofkumeyaay.org/viejas-communi…
anth.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.l…
The "wild" and "untouched" American landscapes were, as it turns out, more often than not part of an intricate & interlinked & very sophisticated method of land management, but it benefited those reappropriating land from indigenous peoples to erase them
unu.edu/publications/a…
But I only know a very small amount about this and hope to research it further, there are others who are far more qualified than I to discuss these very issues and what has transpired since then
bitchmedia.org/article/15-ind…
Oh, here's a story that I've always found to be a good example of why listening to the past to inform the future is important. In 1964, a devastating earthquake rocked the state and caused dozens of deaths & huge physical changes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Alas…
Among other damages caused by the Good Friday quake was the total destruction of the one-time boom town of Portage, in Alaska's Mat-Su Valley not too far outside Anchorage. You can still go out there and see the leftovers of the abandoned town. It's eerie. alaska.org/detail/portage…
An entire Anchorage neighborhood slid into the water. It is now a beautiful but also eerie park, called, appropriately enough, Earthquake Park. alaska.org/photos/gallery…
The original Dena'ina name for this region is Nen Ghiłgedi (no. 7 on this map.) It translates to "rotten land," or to put it more baldly, "don't build here, you idiots!" When I asked some Dené friends about it they shrugged and said listening is important.
denaina.anchoragemuseum.org/multimedia/den…
It's fascinating and timely and I look forward to exploring this project more in the future. Our accepted interpretation of today's reality is built on a lot of other realities, and we should listen to them.
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