Eugene S. Hunn - Böcker

The mighty Columbia River cuts a deep gash through the Miocene basalts of the Columbia Plateau, coursing as well through the lives of the Indians who live along its banks. Known to these people as Nch’i-Wana (the Big River), it forms the spine of their land, the core of their habitat.At the turn of the century, the Sahaptin speakers of the mid-Columbia lived in an area between Celilo Falls and Priest Rapids in eastern Oregon and Washington. They were hunters and gatherers who survived by virtue of a detailed, encyclopedic knowledge of their environment. Eugene Hunn’s authoritative study focuses on Sahaptin ethnobiology and the role of the natural environment in the lives and beliefs of their descendants who live on or near the Yakima, Umatilla, and Warm Springs reservations.

As environmental management becomes of increasing concern to both industrial and developing societies, it is instructive to look at the fundamental relationship between man and environment as exemplified by the hunter-gatherer cultures, in which resource management was and is vital to the very existence of human life. The authors of this book look at hunting and gathering societies in Australia and North America, searching for the essential, as distinct from local, manifestations of human-environment relations. They examine the availability of resources in relation to the requirements of stable and expanding human populations, explore the ontological and structural principles of ecological relations in these societies, and describe the rationale of geographic boundaries and control of access to resources within and across boundaries. A number of current theoretical issues are addressed: the use of fire as a tool for environmental management; the ecological consequences of seasonal mobility patterns; the functional basis for differing forms of control over resources; the social organization of production, including the symbolism of the sexual division of labor; the tactical exercise of jural rights in the use of resources; and the ecological consequences of religious beliefs. The book concludes with a summary of the case materials in terms of what they contribute to the understanding of hunting/gathering as an "economic" category and to the conflict over management of natural resources where societies of hunter-gatherers are encapsulated within industrial societies.

As environmental management becomes of increasing concern to both industrial and developing societies, it is instructive to look at the fundamental relationship between man and environment as exemplified by the hunter-gatherer cultures, in which resource management was and is vital to the very existence of human life. The authors of this book look at hunting and gathering societies in Australia and North America, searching for the essential, as distinct from local, manifestations of human-environment relations. They examine the availability of resources in relation to the requirements of stable and expanding human populations, explore the ontological and structural principles of ecological relations in these societies, and describe the rationale of geographic boundaries and control of access to resources within and across boundaries. A number of current theoretical issues are addressed: the use of fire as a tool for environmental management; the ecological consequences of seasonal mobility patterns; the functional basis for differing forms of control over resources; the social organization of production, including the symbolism of the sexual division of labor; the tactical exercise of jural rights in the use of resources; and the ecological consequences of religious beliefs. The book concludes with a summary of the case materials in terms of what they contribute to the understanding of hunting/gathering as an "economic" category and to the conflict over management of natural resources where societies of hunter-gatherers are encapsulated within industrial societies.

A Zapotec Natural History describes the people of a small town in Mexico and their remarkable knowledge of the natural world in which they live. San Juan Gbëë is a Zapotec Indian community located in the state of Oaxaca, a region of surprising biological diversity. Eugene S. Hunn is a well-known anthropologist and ethnobiologist who has spent many years working in San Juan Gbëë, studying its residents and their knowledge of the local environment. Here Hunn writes sensitively and respectfully about the rich understanding of local flora and fauna that village inhabitants have acquired and transmitted over many centuries.

[The editors] have brought together many of the most innovative thinkers and field workers to ponder how local communities make sense of the landscapes in which they live, and upon which they depend. This volume is rich with insights about how cultures perceive the spaces, landforms and habitats which nourish them. Gary Paul Nabhan, PhD., author, Singing the Turtles to Sea and Cultures of Habitat This landmark volume is bound to become a theoretical touchstone and wellspring for assessing the unity and diversity of human conceptualizations of landscape. It deftly combines a rigorous review of cross-cultural theories of landscape perception and classification with richly-detailed ethnographic examples of landscape ethnoecology. Thomas F. Thornton, School of Geography and Environment, University of Oxford This edited collection gives an important and thought provoking overview of recent debates and work united under the rubric of cultural landscape research.The eleven substantive case studies, taken primarily from indigenous societies across North and South America, each provide a strong argument for questioning or better specifying definitions on the meaning of place for various societies...a suggestive collection that I would recommend highly. Anthropos Although anthropologists and cultural geographers have explored "place" in various senses, little cross-cultural examination of "kinds of place," or ecotopes, has been presented from an ethno-ecological perspective. In this volume, indigenous and local understandings of landscape are investigated in order to better understand how human communities relate to their terrestrial and aquatic resources. The contributors go beyond the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) literature and offer valuable insights on ecology and on land and resources management, emphasizing the perception of landscape above the level of species and their folk classification.Focusing on the ways traditional people perceive and manage land and biotic resources within diverse regional and cultural settings, the contributors address theoretical issues and present case studies from North America, Mexico, Amazonia, tropical Asia, Africa and Europe. Leslie Main Johnson is Associate Professor in the Centre for Social Science, Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada. Her publications include Trails of Story, Traveller's Path: Reflections on Ethnoecology and Landscape (Athabasca University Press, 2010), chapters on landscape in Landscape and Language, Benjamins 2011 and Ethnobiology, Wiley 2011," and articles in Human Ecology, Journal of Ethnobiology, Ecology of Food and Nutrition, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, and Botany. Eugene S. Hunn is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle. His books include Tzeltal Folk Zoology: The Classification of Discontinuities in Nature (Academic Press, 1977), Resource Managers: North American and Australian Hunter-Gatherers, co-edited with N. M.Williams (Westview, 1981), Nch'i-Wana, 'The Big River': Mid-Columbia Indians and their Land (University of Washington Press, 1990), and A Zapotec Natural History: Trees, Herbs, and Flowers, Birds, Beasts, and Bugs in the Life of San Juan Gbee (University of Arizona Press, 2008).