List of Participants with Brief Biographies

Eugene Anderson

A professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. Author of Ecologies of the Heart and The Floating World of Castle Peak Bay.

Luis Bourillon

PhD candidate at the School of Renewable Natural Resources, University of Arizona. Currently working on fisheries co-management issues with the Seri Indian community in the Gulf of California, México. Researching among other things the current and potential use of TEK in the management of a crab fishery, and the potential of the exclusive fishing zone granted to this group 25 years ago for co-management arrangements with the federal government.

John Bradley

Twenty years of field work in the south west Gulf of Carpentaria with three main indigenous groups called Marra, Garrwa and Yanyuwa. He is interested in the maritime environment, with a doctoral thesis that looked in detail at TEK surrounding the dugong and marine turtle. His is also interested in the way people negotiate with self, the group and then environment and exploring how what we call TEK is negotiated within any given culture and how it is also embedded within the given culture. Published in the book by Peterson & Rigsby, eds., Customary Marine Tenure in Australia. He is putting together a new undergraduate course next year at the University of Queensland dealing with traditional knowledge.

Patty Brown-Schwalenberg

Executive Director, Chugach Regional Resources Commission. Working on TEK project with Henry Huntington with reference to science and restoration in the Exxon Valdez oil spill area.

Jenny Carter

A PhD student of Professor Nancy Williams, Carter is working collaboratively with Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land (Australia).

Daniel Clément

Adjunct Professor at Laval University in Quebec (Canada) and a private consultant in anthropology. He was Curator of Ethnology, Eastern Subarctic at the Canadian Ethnology Service from 1991 to early 1998. His research focuses on the relation between people and their environment. He has worked mainly with Native People in Canada and Creoles in La Réunion and Guadeloupe. Author of several booksand articles on ethnobotany, ethnozoology, ethnobiology and mythology.

Patricia Cochran

Executive Director, Alaska Native Science Commission (ANSC): a cooperative project of the Alaska Federation of Natives, University of Alaska Anchorage and the National Science Foundation. The ANSC provides a linkage for creating partnerships and communication between science and research and Alaska Native communities. Patricia Cochran is an Inupiat Eskimo born and raised in Nome, Alaska.

She previously served as Administrator of the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies at the University of Alaska Anchorage; Executive Director of the Alaska Community Development Corporation; Local Government Program Director with the University of Alaska Fairbanks; and Director of Employment and Training for the North Pacific Rim Native Corporation.

She currently serves as Chair of the American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian Caucus of the American Public Health Association; Science Advisor to the Arctic Research Commission; Member of the Alaska Global Change Planning Team; Member of the Science Steering Committee for the National Science Foundation, Human Dimension of the Arctic System; NSF Office of Polar Programs Advisory Committee Member; Program Chair for the Indigenous Program of the Tenth International Congress on Circumpolar Health; Treasurer and Governing Council Member of the International Union for Circumpolar Health; Member of the National Native Science Education Advisory Council; Member of the National Research Council Committee on Managing Wolf and Bear Populations in Alaska; board member of the American Society for Circumpolar Health and board member of the Albrecht-Milan Foundation.

Kathy Falk

Second year doctoral student in Environmental Anthropology, University of Washington.

Jamie Goen

Master's candidate University of Washington, School of Marine Affairs. Thesis focuses on local knowledge in aquatic resource management.

Eugene Hunn

Professor of Anthropology, University of Washington since 1972, Director of Latin American Studies at the Jackson School International Studies, and Adjunct Curator at the Burke Museum. Hunn received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. His initial research focused on Mayan folk biological classification and nomenclature (Tzeltal Folk Zoology: The Classification of Discontinuities in Nature). Since 1976 he has researched the ehtnobiology and cultural ecology of Sahaptin-speaking Indians of the Pacific Northwest. His book entitled, Nch'i-Wana "The Big River": Mid-Columbian Indians and Their Land, is an ethnography of the Columbia river Indians. His current research interests are in indigenous resource management and range from Alaska to southern Mexico.

Henry Huntington

Worked extensively with villages in the Alaska and Russia on TEK and beluga whales. Now working on traditional knowledge project with Patty Brown-Schwalenberg in relation to science and restoration in the Exxon Valdez oil spill area. Published a paper on the semi-directive interview in TEK research in the latest issue of Arctic magazine.

RE Johannes

Author of Words of the Lagoon. I am a marine biologist often mistaken by social scientists for one of them (which is OK by me) who has been studying and publishing on the TEK of tropical fishermen, especially in the Pacific Islands, since the l970s. My particular angle is integrating TEK and traditional marine resource management with "scientific" knowledge and management to improve on our (i.e. scientists') truly dismal scorecard here.

Emily Jones

First year doctoral student in Environmental Anthropology, University of Washington.

Jim Jones

Master's candidate in Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, working with Nancy Turner. He is very interested in the whole idea of "Native stewardship", its practices and how it fits into contemporary resource management issues. He is working on a project to find out as much as possible about the way in which First Nations husbanded marine resource in times before European intervention. The focus is on stewardship of salmon and salmon streams by the Heiltsuk of Bella Bella, British Columbia. The Heiltsuk are very much involved as supporters and collaborative researchers in the project. In addition, he is bringing in the contemporary aspect of First Nations wisdom and knowledge as well as that of long term, resident, non-Native people who also depend on natural resources for their living.

Sue Johnston

First year doctoral student in Environmental Anthropology, University of Washington.

Robin Kimmerer

Professor at Syracuse University, State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry and Director of the Cranberry Lake Biological Station. PhD, University of Wisconsin, 1983. Member of the Potawatomi tribe. Interests include botany, conservation biology, bryophyte ecology, disturbance ecology, restoration of culturally significant plants to Native American communities, and environmental partnerships with Native American communities. Publications include a chapter in Winds of Change titled, "Intellectual diversity - bringing the Native perspective into natural resources education."

Dan McDonald

Professor of First Nations Studies at Malaspina University-College First Nations' Arts Program, British Columbia.

Dorothea Melcher

Professor of Economic History of the Universidad de Los Andes. She has special interest in social and environmental issues and since 1995 has been working with an indigenous village in the Venezuelan Amazon State (Orinoco) on cultural, social and environmental concerns. She lives in the Andean Mountains near Merida. She also speaks Spanish and German.

Ilarion Merculieff

Aleutian from the Pribilof Islands, Alaska. Active advocate for native communities in the Bering Sea.

Kathy Miller

Master's candidate at Alaska Pacific University, working with Ilarion Merculieff on Traditional Knowledge and Wisdom issues.

Ray Pierotti

Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas. Tribe: Comanche. BA: Univ. California, Santa Cruz, PhD Dalhousie. Has published over 50 scientific papers, including two articles on this topic in Winds of Change (Summer and Fall 1997). Has been funded by US Fish and Wildlife, Forest Service, NSF. Named Tribal College/University Mentor of the year by SACNAS. He is developing a program on TEK in collaboration with colleagues at Haskell Indian Nations University.

Darrell Posey

Previously an ethnobiologist with the Museum Paraense Emilio Goeldi in Brazil and a fellow with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at theZoologische Staatssammlung in Munich, Posey currently works for the Programme for Traditional Resource Rights, The Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics, and Society, Mansfield College, University of Oxford, UK.

Bruce Rigsby

Professor of Anthropology at the University of Queensland, Australia and head of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. In addition to an extensive list of publications, Rigsby is co-editor with Peterson of the book, Customary Marine Tenure in Australia. Some of his current projects include Umpila – Lamalama Native Title Sea Claim Research and Kalpowar Native Title Claim Research, a Gitksan Dictionary Project, and a Kuku Thaypan Grammar and Dictionary.

Victor Toledo

Professor at the Instituto de Ecologia, Universitad Autonoma de Mexico (Center of Ecology, National Autonomous University of Mexico). Editor of the journal Etnoecológica.

Nancy Turner

Professor at the School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, Canada. Extensive publications including Thompson Ethnobotany: Knowledge and Usage of Plants by the Thompson Indians of British Columbia (Turner et al.), Burning mountain sides for better crops: Aboriginal landscape burning in British Columbia, and Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples.

Alan White

Professor, University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources. He is currently the Deputy Chief of Party for the USAID supported Coastal Resource Management Project based in Cebu Philippines and working in various field sites in the southern Philippines. Alan returned to the Philippines in 1996 after 4 years in Sri Lanka working for the University of Rhode Island to manage a coastal management project. Since 1978, Alan has spent most of his time working in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries on coastal management policy and planning projects. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Hawaii in 1984 in affiliation with the East West Center Program on Environment. His undergraduate studies in engineering and economics was at UC Berkeley.

Nancy Williams

A Reader in Anthropology at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her main research interests are in law, politics, land tenure, and resource management in small-scale societies. Since 1969, she has worked with Aboriginal people in several communities in the Northern part of Australia. Her work has included applied research related to social impact assessment. Her publications include Resource Managers: North American and Australian Hunter-Gatherers (which she and E. Hunn edited), The Yolngu and Their Land: A System of Land Tenure and the Fight for its Recognition, Two Laws: Managing Disputes in a Contemporary Aboriginal Community, the co-edited Land of Promises, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Wisdom for Sustainable Development (co-edited with G. Baines).