Listening for Different Stories: Indigenous Knowledge and its Transformations - Julie Cruikshank

A presentation at FACTS, FICTIONS, and the POLITICS OF TRUTH. Parkland Institute 2013 Conference. http://parklandinstitute.ca/ http://parklandinstitute.ca/fallconf2... LISTENING FOR DIFFERENT STORIES: INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS. Sun, November 23, 2013 | 9:00 am, CCIS, room 1-430 The terms 'indigenous' and 'traditional' knowledge came into widespread use in northern Canada during the early 1990s and are now broadly integrated into arctic and subarctic research. Concepts, however, travel and accumulate meanings. These particular ones now extend internationally and continue to undergo transformations with real consequences for people whose ideas are under discussion. Julie Cruikshank's education in local knowledge began in the 1970s when she lived in the Yukon Territory and worked closely with senior First Nation women eager to document knowledge they felt should be passed on to descendants. They consistently chose to relate their accounts as narratives that provided fundamental guidance about how to live or "to be" in the world. This presentation will discuss how their insights contribute to -- and often challenge -- debates about academic and policy research in Canada's North. JULIE CRUIKSHANK is Professor Emerita (Anthropology) at the University of British Columbia where she also held the McLean Chair in Canadian Studies, 2001-2003. Her work focuses on living traditions in the Subarctic, particularly oral literature and storytelling in the Yukon Territory. For more than a decade, she lived in the Yukon Territory where she worked with indigenous women who were eager to record life stories. She has also done research in Alaska and Siberia. Her books include Life Lived Like a Story and The Social Life of Stories (1998). Her most recent book, Do Glaciers Listen? received two prizes from the American Anthropological Association. Conference Video sponsored by: Health Sciences Association of Alberta http://www.hsaa.ca/ With additional support from: United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 401 http://www.gounion.ca/ Conference Video produced by: KTNEXUS http://ktnexus.ca/