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greenstormI can hear a colleague on the phone behind me wrapping their head around "how do you manage for something we don't have words for, that you can't put on a map" and trying to integrate that idea with a system that might allow management for it. It's an audible run at decolonization.
I suspect one thing they are missing is the objective of, "leave it intact, and tell the story that goes with it to everyone, so everyone knows the story when they see the feature" with a measureable result of "does everyone who works in the area know the story and think of it". Our western forestry right now is a lot of trying to cram intangibles into specific, measurable, time-and-space-bound objectives (maybe if we have x number of moose, or old trees, the system will do what we want it to do) because if we can't measure what we're doing, how do we know we're doing it? Our minds, thoughts, and feelings are supposed to be divorced from the process, though many of us love the forest very much that's supposed to be objectivity that biases our decisions.
As far as I can tell, indigenous management is often based on relationship, and as with any relationship contact and intimacy are a part of that. It's observant and can correct more quickly and subtly, as well as can accept that sometimes things we plan just are outside of our control.
The project of the last fifteen years and of the next decades is to integrate those somehow. Ideally we take the best of each. I'm very interested to see how it goes. These conversations are happening now and it's changing people, as it should. I'm glad for that.
I suspect one thing they are missing is the objective of, "leave it intact, and tell the story that goes with it to everyone, so everyone knows the story when they see the feature" with a measureable result of "does everyone who works in the area know the story and think of it". Our western forestry right now is a lot of trying to cram intangibles into specific, measurable, time-and-space-bound objectives (maybe if we have x number of moose, or old trees, the system will do what we want it to do) because if we can't measure what we're doing, how do we know we're doing it? Our minds, thoughts, and feelings are supposed to be divorced from the process, though many of us love the forest very much that's supposed to be objectivity that biases our decisions.
As far as I can tell, indigenous management is often based on relationship, and as with any relationship contact and intimacy are a part of that. It's observant and can correct more quickly and subtly, as well as can accept that sometimes things we plan just are outside of our control.
The project of the last fifteen years and of the next decades is to integrate those somehow. Ideally we take the best of each. I'm very interested to see how it goes. These conversations are happening now and it's changing people, as it should. I'm glad for that.
