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

最近的趋势表明，一个新的工业化时代正在阿拉斯加北极地区出现。这些进程可能要求北坡的伊努皮亚特人越来越多地在其对传统习俗和生计生活方式的关切与经济增长和发展的希望和挑战之间取得平衡。然而，围绕北极海上钻井计划等项目的决策结构现在主要由外部当局和商业利益所持有的西方价值观和观点所主导。这项研究将探讨如何土著知识（IK）的伊努皮亚特可以和应该被用来确保区域管理成果是文化敏感的现实阿拉斯加土著生存today.Contemporary Native scholars坚持认为，任何部落民族的IK不能被正确理解没有一个平等的意愿，西方人探索独特的世界观和生活方式，告知土著知识体系。对自然概念作为一种社会建构的地理兴趣也表明，文化上形成的自然概念可以提供必要的解释框架，使人们能够更全面地了解土著知识。这些努力的理论动力来自文化误解的环境正义概念，该概念提出，拒绝探索土著知识体系的复杂性是一种深刻的漠视行为，往往会使社会和环境不平等的循环永久化。这项研究将使用各种定性研究方法，调查阿拉斯加北极地区沿海的伊努皮亚特社区如何看待自然和与自然的关系，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重要的非本地人知道和理解。此外，该项目在阿拉斯加各地许多原住民社区现在面临的复杂政治，经济和文化问题的背景下，关注Iñupiat的生存问题和IK。这项研究的结果将理想地为目前正在塑造北极发展轨迹的辩论提供信息，突出了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承诺。这项研究进一步探讨了Iñupiat所掌握的这些知识如何能够大大加强目前主要由技术因素驱动的海上钻井决策过程。最终目标是为远北地区的发展建立一个模板，既能促进地区经济增长，也能改善阿拉斯加原住民的生存生活方式。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。

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.