Doctoral Dissertation Research: "The sea is our garden": Inupiaq subsistence, indigenous knowledge, and the 'politics of nature' in the context of Arctic offshore development

博士论文研究：“海洋是我们的花园”：因纽特人的生存、土著知识以及北极近海开发背景下的“自然政治”

• 批准号: 1303991
• 负责人: Hilda Kurtz
• 金额: $ 4.02万
• 依托单位: University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-15 至 2014-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1303991&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; sea; our

Recent trends suggest that a new era of industrialization is dawning in the Alaskan Arctic. These processes will likely require the Iñupiat of the North Slope to increasingly balance their concerns for their traditional practices and subsistence lifestyles against both the promises as well as the challenges of economic growth and development. Yet the decision-making structures surrounding projects like the Arctic offshore drilling program are now largely dominated by the western values and perspectives held by outside authorities and business interests. This research will explore how the Indigenous Knowledge (IK) of the Iñupiat can and should be used to ensure that regional management outcomes are culturally sensitive to the realities of Alaskan Native existence today.Contemporary Native scholars insist that the IK of any tribal peoples cannot be correctly understood without an equal willingness by westerners to explore the unique worldviews and lifeways that inform Native knowledge systems. Geographic interest in the notion of nature as a social construct also suggests that culturally constituted notions of nature may provide the necessary interpretative framework that allows for a much more comprehensive understanding of indigenous knowledge. The theoretical impetus for these efforts is found in the environmental justice concept of cultural misrecognition, which proposes that a refusal to explore the complexities of indigenous knowledge systems is a profound act of dismissal that often perpetuates a cycle of social and environmental inequity. This research will use a variety of qualitative research methods to investigate how coastal Iñupiat communities in the Alaskan Arctic think about and relate to nature, in order to better understand how these views have shaped their traditional knowledge and beliefs. This research also seeks to identify what aspects of their worldviews and IK that Iñupiat community members themselves consider to be important for non-Natives to know about and understand. In addition, this project engages with the subsistence concerns and IK of the Iñupiat within the context of the complex political, economic, and cultural issues that many Native communities throughout Alaska now face. The findings of this research will ideally inform the debate currently shaping the trajectory of development in the Arctic by highlighting both the practical challenges as well as the epistemic promise that an exploration of Native understandings of nature offers to contemporary resource management practices. This research further examines how such knowledge held by the Iñupiat could greatly enhance the offshore drilling decision-making process, which is at present driven mainly by technological considerations. The ultimate goal is to establish a template for development in the Far North that can promote both regional economic growth as well as the subsistence lifestyles of Alaskan Natives. In this way, it may become possible to manage a changing Arctic in a socially equitable and environmentally just manner.

最近的趋势表明，在阿拉斯加北极地区，工业化的新时代正在来临。这些进程可能需要北坡Iñupiat居民日益平衡他们对传统习俗和自给生活方式的关切与经济增长和发展的承诺和挑战之间的关系。然而，围绕北极海上钻探计划等项目的决策结构，现在在很大程度上被西方的价值观和观点所主导，这些价值观和观点是由外部当局和商业利益所持有的。本研究将探讨如何使用Iñupiat的土著知识（IK），以确保区域管理成果在文化上对今天阿拉斯加土著生存的现实敏感。当代土著学者坚持认为，如果西方人不愿意探索土著知识体系中独特的世界观和生活方式，就无法正确理解任何部落民族的IK。地理对自然概念作为一种社会结构的兴趣也表明，文化构成的自然概念可能提供必要的解释框架，使人们能够更全面地理解土著知识。这些努力的理论动力来自文化误认的环境正义概念，该概念提出，拒绝探索土著知识系统的复杂性是一种深刻的无视行为，往往会使社会和环境不平等的循环永久化。本研究将使用各种定性研究方法来调查阿拉斯加北极沿海Iñupiat社区如何思考和与自然相关，以便更好地了解这些观点如何塑造他们的传统知识和信仰。这项研究还试图确定他们的世界观和IK的哪些方面Iñupiat社区成员自己认为是非本地人了解和理解的重要方面。此外，该项目在阿拉斯加许多土著社区现在面临的复杂政治、经济和文化问题的背景下，涉及到Iñupiat的生存问题和IK。这项研究的发现将通过强调实际挑战以及探索土著对自然的理解为当代资源管理实践提供的认识论承诺，为目前塑造北极发展轨迹的辩论提供理想的信息。这项研究进一步探讨了Iñupiat掌握的这些知识如何极大地提高海上钻井决策过程，目前主要是由技术考虑驱动的。最终目标是建立一个在远北地区发展的模板，既能促进区域经济增长，又能促进阿拉斯加土著人的生存生活方式。这样，就有可能以社会公平和环境公正的方式管理不断变化的北极。