Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Ancient pathways, ancestral knowledge: ethnobotany and ecological wisdom of Indigenous peoples of northwestern North America
ISBN: 9780773543805
Platform/Publisher: ACLS / McGill-Queen''s University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Ten pages at a time; Download: Ten pages at a time
Subjects: Native Peoples of the Americas;

In this colossal work, Turner, a professor of enthnoecology at the University of Victoria, combines ethnobotany, comparative linguistics, and anthropology. She has spanned disciplines and geography to create a compelling account of the interchange not only of different indigenous groups in their horticultural practices, but also in their linguistic and belief structures to reveal the complexities of these societies in their ecological relations. The first of two volumes establishes the evolving ecological contexts, from the Pleistocene to the present. It identifies staples, principal cultivars, and the development of technologies responsible for their husbandry and use with fascinating examples such as the disciplined cultivation of tidal marsh and estuary flats and the important archaeological find of an ancient wapato potato garden. These considerations are framed by an analysis of linguistic considerations that are testament to shared experiences, economic relations and the transmission of learning. This last theme is picked up and intensified in Volume 2, in which belief systems, cultural narratives, and worldviews are considered in relation to ecologically lived-experience as having the power of continued relevance to inform contemporary attitudes and sensibilities. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.