Project
Details:
Background:
The Ktunaxa Ethnobotany
Project began in earnest in the winter of 1997 upon receiving a
grant from Forest Renewal BC by the Ktunaxa Independent School Society;
this grant covered operations for much of the first year. The Project
has since moved under the umbrella of the Ktunaxa Kinbasket Treaty
Council, this move has allowed greater funding stability and the
opportunity to be part of a dynamic team.
As previously
mentioned, there is a great urgency for oral history research in
the Ktunaxa Nation. Today’s generation of Elders is rapidly passing
on and taking vast amounts of the cultural knowledge with them.
For the large part the younger generations never acquired
the traditional ecological and cultural knowledge for a variety
of reasons, most notably due to the impacts of the Reserve System
and St. Eugene’s Mission Residential School. The information collected
by the project staff is now being brought back to the community
through a variety of means, both oral and written.
During the early/mid
seventies ethnobotanist Nancy Turner worked briefly with the Ktunaxa
while researching her food plants book. She worked with Larry Morgan
and Jeff Hart, together they produced an unpublished ethnobotanical
manuscript of Ktunaxa plant uses. After this work in the seventies
there was no major research on ethnobotany until this project started.
The Ktunaxa Ethnobotany
Project is different from past projects in that only the ethnobotanist
is non-Ktunaxa and the research is conducted entirely in the community
as opposed to in a university in a distant place.
Although there are some challenges to conducting research
within the community there are also many advantages, most notably
there is a feeling that the research is owned by the community as
opposed to a university.
This project is also evolving more to the side of
"applied ethnobotany" in comparison to traditional research
- based ethnobotany. For
example, the staff are now involved in environmental assessment
work, looking into economic opportunities as well as in the protection
of traditional plant harvesting areas.
