Narrative landscape: how aboriginal stories unlock the past of our environment
The Blackfoot tribe historically lived on the plains of northwestern North America, and their territory ranges from the North Saskatchewan River to the Yellowstone River.Majestic mountain peaks, vast valleys, turbulent rivers-the feature of this landscape is the core of the rich oral history of Blackfoot, which contains hundreds of Living story Passed on from generation to generation. Although these stories contain a wealth of knowledge about the land, long-standing differences between Western scientific standards and indigenous traditions have isolated these stories from the academic world. However, a new study linking glaciology studies in the Rocky Mountains to the creation stories of the Blackfoot tribe shows that indigenous traditions can greatly enrich our understanding of ancient North American landscapes.
Blackfoot Reserve, located in northwestern Montana.
source: Creative Commons
Like many other indigenous people, the Blackfoot tribe has an oral tradition that has been passed down for centuries.In the center of it is Create a story, It focuses on the creator old man, or Napi.Anthropologists explore these creation stories Maria Neves Zedno, Evelyn Pickering, with Francois Lanoe Researchers at the University of Arizona have discovered that our current scientific understanding of the history of the Rocky Mountain glaciers is strikingly similar to the settlements in North America during the last glacier period, when most of the earth was still covered by ice. Faced with the uncertainty of anthropology and geology, Native American creative stories, such as the Blackfoot Napi story, can provide narrative evidence of immigration and shed light on certain details of people’s journey into North America.
Analysis of the composition of fossils and land shows that at the end of the last ice age, a group of people were able to pass Bering Land Bridge, Because water is trapped in a glacier, a piece of land that appears when the sea level drops.They are the immediate ancestors of the present Native American and East Asian population, Indicating that the story told today may contain evidence of these first migrations.
One such story tells the tribe’s journey through the icy vast land. Under Napi’s leadership, a little boy saw a horn sticking out of the ice. When his mother tried to cut a corner from the ice for him, the ice split in half, dividing people into two halves. Only half of the tribes were able to move on and reach the land where they came to settle. This story seems to refer to a piece of land similar to an ice-free corridor, Hypothetical migration route This is determined by analyzing and dating bison fossils in the area. This story not only gives us insight into a possible migration path, but also allows us to imagine this migration from a human perspective, reminding us of the challenges that early people may face when entering the New World.
Other stories Tribes from all over North America have similar connections with our understanding of the Pleistocene. Several stories from the Alikara Nation in North Dakota depict vast bodies of water, corresponding to preglacial lakes formed by the retreat of the ice sheet about 15,000 years ago, while some Pawnee stories describe several glacial lakes in western Montana Floods that may occur during the formation period.
The connection between indigenous knowledge-stories, traditions, rituals-and Western science is a useful link for understanding the distant past, as illustrated by the relationship between Blackfoot’s creation story and Pleistocene palaeoclimatology research. But finding similarities, let alone confirming them, can be challenging. As Zedeño, Pickering, and Lanoë pointed out, indigenous knowledge has been considered ineffective for centuries, viewed as superstition, and suppressed by Western colonists trying to eliminate indigenous communities. In addition, efforts to bring indigenous knowledge into scientific practice often deprive stories of the respect that stories demand within indigenous communities. A story told by a respected elder who has devoted his life to carrying the narrative identity of the community is not just a story that Western audiences might think, but a story that carries history, body rituals, names, and language.
This method of storytelling is not always in line with the scientific method of seeking to analyze and isolate information; on the contrary, it is a comprehensive wealth of information drawn from information that has coexisted with the tribal landscape for many years. Western data collection keeps this knowledge static, contradicting the basic quality of life of storytelling. In an interview with GlacierHub, Columbia University History Professor Rhiannon Stephens said, “Researching oral tradition means not making everything fit. Even if you don’t get every detail from the oral tradition, it’s great.”
Powwow on Blackfeet Reservation.
Source: Rick and Susie Graetz/ University of Montana
In order to fully understand indigenous knowledge and integrate it with Western science, Western researchers must rethink the way they work with Native American communities. In recent years, some indigenous scholars have advocated the validity of indigenous knowledge in science. Robin Wall Kimmel, A registered member of the citizen Potawatomi State, combined two shots related to botany research in her well-known work. Weaving sweet grass, Advocating that Western scholars conduct environmental research as a whole and use indigenous knowledge to provide information for their practice. Lele bear, An outstanding Blackfoot researcher, in 2015 speech exist Banff Arts and Creativity Center.
Although both parties are working hard to cooperate, there are still many problems surrounding the best practice of combining indigenous knowledge with scientific research. What should be the time limit for this kind of research? Can long-term changes in the landscape really be observed from the perspective of human lifespan?Finding a direct connection between indigenous stories and geological history requires bridging huge cultural and language differences, and Western scientists are also looking for similarities between their own practices and indigenous storytelling practices Often fail to meet the requirements and produce misplaced or incorrect meanings.
In an interview with GlacierHub, Kristin Ruppel, Professor of Native American Studies at Montana State University, explained how comparisons between Western research practices such as peer review (an essential part of the academic process) and storytelling perpetuate misunderstandings of indigenous traditions . “This is an organic matter. You have elders and young people looking for corrections, speaking languages, and telling stories.” Continue, Ruppel points out, “Peer review makes it trivial-these may be similar to each other to make non-natives A certain understanding that these are not just folk tales… [they] It is a deeper matter that will have an impact on the individuals and communities involved. ”
Comparing these stories with the peer review process deprived the tradition of storytelling of its meaning in indigenous communities and reinforces the tradition that has existed in indigenous-Western relations for centuries: simplifying indigenous practices to Western vocabulary and making mistakes Trying to transform it into an unfamiliar framework.
Despite the challenges posed by collaborative investigations of Native American oral traditions and scientific data, efforts continue to develop practices that unify these different knowledge systems. Many researchers have proposed a holistic comparison between the story and the archaeological findings, outlining the similarities between certain repeated images and the early North American topography. However, if the flawed collaborative methods are not addressed, it may result in a huge loss of knowledge.Indigenous languages are in Extreme risk of extinction; With the disappearance of these languages, the stories they carry also disappear, which means that the development of collaborative best practices is in a dangerous race against time.
Julie Cruikshank, professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia, who has led extensive research collaborations with indigenous people in the Yukon, told GlacierHub, “The main thing I learned from my work is that scientists and social scientists working in indigenous communities really need to integrate indigenous colleagues Think of it as a colleague, not an’informant’.” It may take years to reimagine the process of working with indigenous communities, but there is great potential for supplementing the power of science with oral tradition.
The memory in the story can provide a history of movement for the path of the river and remind us of all the details that the landscape can hold. Combining stories with research data makes our views of the world’s past come alive on a more humane level, revealing to us portraits of the land that we may never imagine.
