Huna Tlingit Gull Egg Harvests in Glacier Bay National Park

Abstract

There is a vigorous debate in academic and management circles with regard to the question of whether indigenous peoples characteristically "conserve" their local natural resources (Smith and Wishnie, 2000; Hunn et al., 2003). Behind this question lurks another, "Who is indigenous?" Proponents of indigenous conservation argue that indigenous communities are more deeply attached to their homelands than are other "stake holders" in the locality, such as recent settlers and their descendants, and transient resource users such as international timber harvest companies, commercial and sport fishermen, hunters, or tourists. The indigenous conservation argument asserts that roots in the local landscape many generations deep are likely to motivate a strong interest in maintaining existing landscapes and patterns of habitat diversity supportive of indigenous ways of life, particularly the subsistence practices that largely define such lifeways. In addition, it is argued that multigenerational attachments to place make possible the development of time-tested knowledge and understanding of plants and animals, water and soil, and the interconnections among these natural elements and the human societies that depend on them for livelihood and that such knowledge and understanding is prerequisite to careful management of local resources for longterm sustainability.