Transgressions of the man on the moon: climate change,Indigenous expertise, and the posthumanist ethicsof place and space

Annette Watson • Orville Huntington

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract Indigenous peoples have been enrolled in

climate change research for decades, participating in

data-gathering, as writing collaborators, and serving as

the symbolic ‘‘canary in the coal mine’’ for public

outreach and policy-making. They have indeed experi-

enced some of the most rapid environmental changes,

but rather than emphasize their vulnerabilities, we argue

their expertise is narrowly understood in formulating

knowledge; the research on climate change has a limited

understanding of what it might mean to be inter- or

trans-disciplinary because research is formulated exclu-

sively through the assumptions of Enlightenment

thought, without sufficiently engaging non-Western

subjectivities. Qualitative social sciences and ‘‘Indige-

nous methodologies’’ can be used to better achieve

trans-disciplinarity; in this article we re-tell a story told

by Native elders from tribes across Alaska about the

‘‘man on the moon.’’ While literally referring to the US

moon landing, elders invoke this story when addressing

climate change: it teaches the ethics of the human-nature

relationship, developed from a ‘‘more-than-human’’ (or

‘‘posthuman’’) philosophy. Our data comes from

participant-observation and oral history; we draw upon

poststructuralist theory, and frame our analysis through

the literatures of critical geography, science studies, and

American Indian studies. To ensure that Indigenous

peoples are not used as props in Western policy agendas,

researchers must engage with non-Enlightenment intel-

lectual traditions. More than being a source of data or a

symbol of humanity’s ruin, Indigenous wisdom can

productively inform sustainable policy agendas to adapt

to climate change. What can be learned, for example, is a

more-than-human ethics of place and space.

Keywords Indigenous knowledges �Qualitative methods � Posthumanism � Arctic

Prologue: stories of place, 1

The landscapes of sub-Arctic Interior Alaska have

been populated by Koyukon Athabascans for thou-

sands of years; their villages remain isolated from the

paved highway system, along the Koyukuk and Yukon

rivers (Fig. 1). Huslia is home for over-300 residents, is

a mere 65 miles south of the Arctic Circle, and lies over

100 river miles from any other village. Koyukon and

Inupiaq families to the north (around Allakaket and

Alatna, and the Kobuk area) and the Koyukon families

to the south (around Galena, Koyukuk, Nulato, and

Kaltag) have long histories of direct colonial contact

with Russians and explorers representing the United

States, while the Koyukon families that subsisted in the

A. Watson (&)

Department of Political Science, College of Charleston,

Charleston, SC, USA

e-mail: watsonam@cofc.edu

O. Huntington

Department of Wildlife and Parks, Tanana Chiefs

Conference, Fairbanks, AK, USA

e-mail: Orville.huntington@tananachiefs.org

123

GeoJournal

DOI 10.1007/s10708-014-9547-9

area around present day Huslia remained more iso-

lated. Though all these families are related and share

stories of events from the colonial era and the ‘‘Distant

Time,’’ long before Western exploration.

In the ‘‘Distant Time’’ people migrated with the

seasons, to follow game and the ecological cycles that

nourished them. Koyukon stories note that humans

and non-humans are indistinguishable as species—

like the story told in winter, of the ‘‘ancient traveler’’

named K’etetaalkkaanee. He not only witnessed

human/nonhuman transformations, he himself became

a marten and then human again in the course of his

travels (Attla 1990; Watson and Huntington 2008).

Figure 1 indicates this nomadism by mapping both

rivers and trails, though not all trails are on marked on

this map. Because of their nomadism, even the hills of

the Upper Kobuk River near Kobuk were known to

Koyukon peoples as part of their land base, an area

beyond the current Koyukon boundaries shown on

maps, purposely not mapped here. There are stories that

date back to starvation times on both sides of those hills,

in Koyukon stories as well as that of the Inupiaq—

stories of Inupiaq (and later Russian) traders going back

and forth between these hills. Some people upriver, and

the people from the area around present-day Huslia,

made war with ones from the south—becoming referred

to as the ‘‘Nulato Massacre’’ (Dall 1870)—but there is

more to that story because Russians were there. And the

abandonment of the village of Dulbikaket may also have

been due to Russian contact. Before the founding of

Huslia and even the prior village of Cutoff, many would

gather in a place that also was abandoned. All that is

known from local oral tradition is that ‘‘bird flu’’ came;

and when one entire family died in their igloo, they cut

the ridge logs of the house and let it collapse on the

bodies, burning them, and the remaining families moved

to Cutoff. Those stories are also vague and full of

‘‘riddles’’—a way of speaking and presenting informa-

tion to make the listener think and draw connections

(Huntington and Watson 2012). So there is a

Fig. 1 ‘‘Countermap’’ of Native territory, with dates of village settlement

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relationship to see from how the story is told; there may

have been contact outside the village then.

One of the earliest colonial-era maps of the Koy-

ukuk River comes from the command of US Lieutenant

Henry Allen in the late 19th century (Fig. 2), whose

text noted the scattering of camps and families’ semi-

nomadic land tenure practices (Allen 1885). But

Allen’s representations, as well as that of the other

explorers, do not reflect the connections and bound-

aries that already existed across the landscape—

crossed by diseases, enemy tribes, Russians, US and

Canadian citizens. These boundary crossings long pre-

date the transgressions of the man on the moon.

Introduction

From the field of Indigenous/Native American studies,

scholars contend the ‘‘prologue’’ is essential to their

methodological practice. Within what is becoming

articulated as ‘‘Indigenous methodologies’’ (Kovach

2009; Louis 2007), a ‘‘prologue’’ structures ‘‘space for

introductions … a precursory signal to the careful reader

that woven throughout the varied forms of our writing—

analytical, reflective, expository—there will be story,

for our story is who we are’’ (Kovach 2009, 3–4).

Our prologue serves multiple purposes, the first

being to situate the reader in the geographical context

of this ‘‘case study’’ of climate change research. This

prologue also begins to situate the research collabora-

tion that produced this paper: within a long history of

cultural exchange across Interior Alaska, and within

the context of Arctic exploration and settlement by the

West (Bravo and Sorlin 2002). We as co-authors,

Native and non-Native, work to ‘‘decolonize’’ research

relations between Western scientists and Indigenous

peoples (Coombes et al. 2011; Watson and Till 2009;

Johnson et al. 2007; Louis 2007; Tuhiwai Smith 1999).

Fig. 2 US military mapping of same territory as Fig. 1 (Allen 1885)

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Drawing on the aligned literatures of critical

geography, Native American/Indigenous studies, and

science studies, we begin with contextualizing how

‘‘the Arctic’’ and its peoples have been constructed as

objects of knowledge. Understanding the role of

Indigenous peoples in constructing contemporary

knowledge about climate change requires a review

of how knowledge of ‘‘the Arctic’’ has been

(re)produced.

Western exploration and sciences constructed

knowledge of ‘‘the Arctic’’ largely in terms of its

physical geographies and extremes, and accomplished

this in ways that made heroes of Euro-American men

while erasing Indigenous agency (Powell 2007a;

Bravo and Sorlin 2002). From 1569, when the

cartographer Mercator first circulated his map of the

polar projection, continuing through John K. Wright’s

plea to study this ‘‘terra incognitae’’ (Wright 1953),

geographers have taken a large role in constructing

Arctic landscapes and peoples as objects of knowl-

edge. In academic and popular literature, the Arctic

has been imagined as a ‘‘frontier’’ for resource

exploitation; as a ‘‘wilderness’’ to preserve in the

national interest; as a ‘‘harsh’’ environment through

which to construct a masculine identity; as a place of

geopolitical significance, particularly through World

War II; and even as a ‘‘wasteland’’ landscape upon

which to experiment with nuclear energy (Powell

2007a; Farish 2006; Keskitalo 2004; Bravo and Sorlin

2002; Kollin 2001; Kirsch and Mitchell 1998). The

practices of the sciences are deeply implicated in

forming these geographic imaginaries, including the

practice of erasing Indigenous expertise. Or misun-

derstanding the riddles told by Native peoples (whose

first languages were not English), and reproducing

these mis-translations (Huntington and Watson 2012).

Around the world Indigenous identities have since

coalesced in response to and in protest of colonial

geographic imaginaries and accompanying neoliberal

logics (Johnson et al. 2007; Laurie et al. 2005).

Significantly, these social movements articulated an

‘‘Indigenous’’ expertise when what Sarah Whatmore

(2009) calls ‘‘mode 2 science’’ emerged. Whatmore

explains that ‘‘scientific divisions of labor’’ became

‘‘reconfigured’’: first ‘‘to address more inter- or trans-

disciplinary objects of analysis’’—like that of ‘‘glo-

bal’’ climate change. Second was ‘‘a rekindling of

public confidence in science-based policy through

increased public engagement activities’’ (Whatmore

2009, 589). Today the UN Declaration of Rights for

Indigenous Peoples advocates including Indigenous

peoples in both governance and research agendas (UN

2007).

What partly justifies their inclusion is that they

proffer intimate knowledge of the environments

within which they live, a ‘‘local’’ knowledge that

had been absent in many contemporary environmental

management plans, yet required for effective gover-

nance. Laurie et al. (2005) note that a discourse of

‘‘Indigenous Knowledge’’ (IK) emerged among now-

‘‘professionalized’’ Indigenous activists, whereby IK

is ‘‘scaled’’ as a ‘‘global’’ knowledge and its practi-

tioners considered ‘‘experts:’’ ‘‘an episteme of gov-

ernment where IK is central and ‘normal’, with

general rather than empirical development applica-

tion’’ (Laurie et al. 2005).

Subsequent successes of Indigenous social move-

ments have increased Native participation in environ-

mental governance, but this participation becomes

necessary with the shifts toward de-centralized, neo-

liberal-style governance (Pinkerton et al. 2008).

Indigenous peoples affected the political geographies

that emerged from North American land claims, and

also gained political traction in both international and

localized governance structures to ‘‘represent’’ the

environments within which they live (Martello 2008;

Barnhardt and Kawagley 2005; Legare 2002; Rodon

1998). ‘‘Co-management’’ or ‘‘community-based’’

resource management institutional structures now

proliferate (Armitage et al. 2011; Tole 2010; Jones

et al. 2010; Houde 2007).

These politics both impacted and were impacted by

the practices of research in the Arctic. Instead of their

participation being erased, for the last decades Indig-

enous peoples became increasingly enrolled in

research on climate change: participating in data-

gathering, as writing collaborators, and often serving

as the ‘‘canary in the coal mine’’ for public outreach

and policy agendas. The National Science Foundation

(NSF) codified ethical ‘‘principles’’ for working with

Arctic Indigenous peoples, aiming to ensure the

accountability of researchers to the local communities

most affected by the practices of research; these

principles include directly involving Indigenous com-

munities in setting research agendas (NSF 2012).

Regulatory agencies have developed specific protocols

to engage with Indigenous communities, including

payment for Indigenous peoples’ intellectual labor,

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and describe careful methods to collect and represent

Native knowledges for environmental management

(Martello 2008; Miraglia 1998). With the purpose of

research thus aiming toward ‘‘decolonizing’’ relation-

ships between researchers and Indigenous communi-

ties, a growing collection of ‘‘interdisciplinary’’ Arctic

studies develop collaborations and co-authorships with

specific tribes, communities, and hunters/fishers/gath-

erers (e.g., Krupnik and Jolly 2002).

The imaginary geography of the Arctic today is a

landscape dramatically changing with the climate—

that calls forth the expertise of multiple disciplines and

the figure of the Indigenous person. By 2004 the Arctic

Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) depicted in full-

color images the climate data and projected future for

Arctic residents, to an audience of policymakers and

global publics. The ACIA was funded and co-

published by the Arctic Council, an international body

including representatives not only from eight Arctic

nation-states, but also six Arctic Indigenous groups.

The ACIA’s account of climate change depicted

Native peoples of the Arctic to provide a ‘‘human

dimension’’ to scientists’ calculation of ‘‘impacts’’

from climate change (Martello 2008). Authors noted

how Arctic communities serve as an important source

of data, since Native knowledges derive from their

direct reliance upon and experiences of the landscape,

and offer ‘‘complementary perspectives’’ to natural

sciences (ACIA 2004, 92).

But given the trend toward ‘‘decolonizing’’ the

practices of Arctic sciences, how else might these

‘‘perspectives’’ contribute to knowledge of environ-

mental systems and climate change? What happens

when those perspectives are not ‘‘complementary’’?

Across the Arctic, these perspectives are referred to

as ‘‘Traditional Ecological Knowledge’’ (TEK) as well

as IK and other terms (Berkes and Berkes 2009;

Sillitoe and Marzano 2009; Anderson and Nutall

2004). Many studies argue ways that IK can inform

natural scientists (e.g., Huntington 2000). Natives

have intimate knowledge of local spatial terrain, and

oral tradition also provides evidence for events at

much longer time scales than sometimes available via

methods in the natural sciences (e.g., McNeeley and

Schultzski 2011). But to achieve ‘‘integration’’ of IK

and Western sciences, some treat Native knowledge

only as an extension of scientists’ practices of

observation, without understanding possible chal-

lenges to Western ways of knowing; IK is often

‘‘integrated’’ with Western sciences in ways that

strengthens the explanatory power of Western sci-

ences alone (Cruikshank 2005; Nadasdy 1999). One

Australian researcher argues:

the preoccupation with the search for authentic

IK has been something of a yellow brick road.

What can be transferred between generations is

the summary codified information about a par-

ticular plant or animal but the ecology of the

plant or animal species in question must be learnt

experientially by each generation in situ over

time (Wohling 2009).

Some argue that beyond useful ‘‘local knowledge,’’ IK

is merely discursive or ‘‘strategic,’’ without relevance

at larger scales of management (Gilchrist and Mallory

2007; Gilchrist et al. 2005). Some argue that tradi-

tional practices are no longer relevant in a context of

changed social and environmental systems, and should

be understood instead as wholesale negative ‘‘distur-

bances’’ on the landscape (Thomas 2010). Criticizing

those scholars who claim that IK has a ‘‘spiritual’’

dimension, Wohling (2009) also argues,

The discourse on indigenous people as the

keepers of some form of magical, sacred, and

ancient knowledge has resulted in a semantic

sleight of hand that transforms indigenous

knowledge into a politicized discourse amenable

to a diverse range of interest groups such as

environmentalists, nationalists, new age spiritu-

alists, and dare I say it, ecological and social

researchers (Wohling 2009).

Yet many scholars coming from critical and qualitative

perspectives suggest that IK is unfairly ‘‘compared’’

with ‘‘Western sciences,’’ in part because of methods

that ‘‘de-contextualize’’ this knowledge (Bates 2007;

Louis 2007; Brook and McLachlan 2005; Nadasdy

1999, 2003; Agrawal 1995). Scholars from Native

American/Indigenous studies, cultural ecology, and

others informed by a qualitative methodological per-

spective often define IK as knowledge of a ‘‘sacred

ecology’’ (Berkes 1999). This definition emphasizes its

‘‘holistic’’ and ‘‘place-based’’ character; IK not only

produces ‘‘facts about things:’’ while ‘‘place-based’’ this

does not mean they only know the ecologies around

them. Circumscribing IK as ‘‘local’’ assumes that

Western sciences can alone produce ‘‘global’’ knowl-

edges (Watson and Huntington 2008; Louis 2007).

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Scholars concerned with ‘‘decolonizing’’ both

knowledge and governance find this problematic;

research from postcolonial and science studies dem-

onstrate that this assumption deserves further scrutiny.

For concurrent with these shifts in governance and the

emergence of the discourse of IK, academic under-

standings of the sciences have also changed. Beyond

the emergent practices of ‘‘mode 2’’ science, insights

from the social studies of science increasingly indicate

that ‘‘Western science’’ cannot broach a universal

‘‘truth,’’ the assumed goal of ‘‘generalizable knowl-

edge.’’ Through ethnographies, geographies, and his-

tories of scientific practice, scholars show instead that

‘‘truth’’ is far more ‘‘localized’’—all knowledge

(including that of Western sciences) is produced

through local cultures (Powell 2007b; Livingstone

2003; Harding 1998; Galison and Stump 1996). This

scholarship opens an epistemological space for ‘‘alter-

native’’ knowledge systems to explain observed

phenomena (Turnbull 2009; Figueroa and Harding

2003). Some scholarship describes how IK proceeds

from different epistemological and ontological

assumptions than Enlightenment-based sciences.

Most of the scholarship on ‘‘more-than-human

social geographies’’ (Panelli 2010) are informed by

the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (1998) and by

science studies scholar Bruno Latour (1993), who

claimed that ‘‘we’’—meaning the West—‘‘have never

been modern.’’ Modern Enlightenment-based knowl-

edges, Latour argued, are created through scientific

representations that insist on the (false) separation

between humans and nonhumans, nature and culture;

thus the West only thinks we are modern. Critical

social theory is thereby developing ‘‘posthumanist’’

understandings of reality, through relational ontolo-

gies—and these social theorists have begun research-

ing human-nonhuman relations without ontologically

separating them (Braun and Whatmore 2010; Bennett

2010; Braun 2004a, b; Whatmore 2001, 2004; Castree

2003). Some argue that IK demonstrates a ‘‘more-

than-human’’ or ‘‘posthuman’’ philosophy through its

‘‘place’’-based (and not just ‘‘local’’) ways of knowing

(Panelli 2008, 2010; Watson and Huntington 2008).

It should perhaps be obvious to turn to those

peoples most often accused of not being modern to

understand climate change from a relational ontolog-

ical perspective. But this would mean to develop

collaborations between IK and Western sciences in

ways that do not ‘‘de-contextualize’’ the ‘‘spiritual

dimension’’ of IK. We argue that engaging with non-

Enlightenment knowledges is possible.1 But method-

ologically, to engage with non-Enlightenment ‘‘per-

spectives’’ requires using more tools. We explicitly

engage with ‘‘Indigenous methodologies’’ as another

kind of social theory, to construct a different geo-

graphic imaginary of the Arctic. This imaginary

articulates a ‘‘more-than-human’’ landscape.

We now re-tell a story told by tribal elders across

Alaska about the ‘‘man on the moon.’’ While literally

referring to the 1969 US moon landing, elders invoke

this story when addressing climate change: it is a story

that teaches the ethics of human-nature relationships,

developed from a ‘‘more-than-human’’ philosophy. To

ensure that Indigenous peoples are not used as props in

Western climate change agendas, researchers must

engage with non-Enlightenment intellectual tradi-

tions. More than being a source of data or a symbol

of humanity’s ruin, Indigenous wisdom can produc-

tively inform sustainable policy agendas to adapt to

climate change.

Methods

This paper results from collaboration between two

people: a non-Native professor of geography; and an

Indigenous leader, wildlife manager, and biologist

who hunts, fishes, gathers, and practices his cultural

traditions. Our empirical data comes from Hunting-

ton’s oral traditions and training as a wildlife biologist,

and Watson’s participant-observations in Huslia and

other villages across Interior Alaska, from 2003-pres-

ent. Huntington grew up in Koyukon villages, learning

the practices of his ancestors, but also learning the

practices of scientists when he obtained his B.S. in

Wildlife Biology, applying both kinds of knowledges

in work for various governmental and non-govern-

mental agencies.2 From 2004 to 2008 Watson lived in

Interior Alaska, and spent 2–4 months at a time in

1 This is not to say that everything to be learned from an

Indigenous community has a spiritual dimension, or that IK/

TEK is always relevant to a particular research question.2 Huntington has worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service

and for the regional nonprofit Tanana Chiefs Conference, in

addition to board positions for which he volunteers his expertise,

such as the Board of Fisheries of the State of Alaska, the Alaska

Federation of Natives, and the Alaska Native Science

Commission.

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Huslia, visiting other villages for periods of days to

weeks; since 2008 Watson has continued this field-

work about 3 months per year, having now accumu-

lated over 40 months of experience in the places

depicted in Fig. 1.

Important to note that this quantification of Wat-

son’s field experience cannot by itself justify the rigor

of our methods, nor can Huntington’s ‘‘insider’’

position3—they can only contribute to rigor. Our rigor

crucially comes from the inclusion of both our

perspectives; methodologically, our work attempts to

link critical qualitative social sciences with what is

becoming known as ‘‘Indigenous methodologies.’’

The qualitative social sciences have most often

engaged with the ‘‘spiritual dimension’’ of Native

knowledges; as Kovach (2009) argues, they are

epistemologically alike, and those scholars informed

by a critical position

can assist in making space for Indigenous

methods (protocols, ethics, data collection pro-

cesses), but also for the epistemic shift from a

Western paradigm that Indigenous methodolo-

gies bring. In this effort, critical theorists will be

asked to consider a worldview…which will, at

times, align with Western thought and at other

times not (Kovach 2009, 86).

This ‘‘alignment’’ is what we explore in our co-

authorship; influenced by Haraway’s (1988) notion of

‘‘situating’’ knowledge by developing ‘‘conversa-

tions’’ between perspectives, we as co-authors have

proliferated ‘‘conversations’’ by analyzing our empir-

ical data through our differing (and sometimes similar)

intellectual traditions. We have carefully cultivated

this collaborative writing partnership since 2006,

aiming to model a method of engaging with IK that

does not affirm a ‘‘pan-Indian identity’’ or otherwise

‘‘essentialize Indigenous peoples’’ (Coombes et al.

2011; Kovach 2009). We continue to explore an

intersubjective approach to our writing that recognizes

that we as individuals are not separable into positions

of ‘‘Westerner’’ or ‘‘Indigenous,’’ but that these

positionalities emerge in the co-production of

knowledge.

In practice this article was accomplished through

the following process: we first discussed in person,

over a period of years, our mutual witnessing of the

event recounted in this paper, of a climate change

workshop held by a research team in Huslia, Alaska.

One of us (Huntington) was a member of the research

group carrying out this workshop in his home com-

munity, while the other (Watson) witnessed that

workshop. We each heard multiple tellings of the

story an elder told at this workshop, as well as multiple

recountings of the workshop itself, years later. The

time we took for this understanding is also crucial to

our rigor, since a story can change in response to the

context within which it is told (Schneider 2002;

Morrow and Schneider 1995; Cruikshank 1990);

sometimes the story is told in different ways to avoid

endangering or hurting the one who shares the story.

We strategically took the time to understand this oral

tradition in its multiple contexts, as well as to consult

with elders and others who have told us the story. After

developing a joint analysis of the elder’s story told

during the climate change workshop, we discussed an

outline for this article. Watson wrote a first draft,

inserting some questions for Huntington to answer in

the text, and he wrote more in response. In multiple

iterations of this writing/editing process, our perspec-

tives became interwoven in the narrative that follows;

we do not identify which of us contribute to what

sentences or sections, keeping an intersubjective style.

Our representation practices also attempt to demon-

strate how attention to ‘‘story’’ is one kind of ‘‘Indige-

nous methodology.’’ Stories told by Indigenous peoples

not only contain information; stories are ‘‘simulta-

neously signifying relationships’’ through imagining

Indigenous geographies (Kovach 2009, 94; see also

Coombes et al. 2011). As such, Indigenous methodology

is similar to qualitative work that attempts to maintain

the context of the stories—often demonstrated in the rich

literature on Arctic oral history (Schneider 2002;

Morrow and Schneider 1995; Cruikshank 1990). Nev-

ertheless, Kovach (2009) argues that story is employed

differently within Indigenous methods:

The anthropological focus on the rich oral

traditions within tribal societies has tended to

relegate story to a historic cultural method that

lacks currency within contemporary knowledge

centres. The underlying assumption is that oral

tradition is of pre-literate tribal groups that no

3 We place ‘‘insider’’ in quotes to indicate that this positionality

is not static; for example, when Huntington worked for the US

Fish and Wildlife Service, this blurred the boundary between

insider and outsider.

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longer has the same application in a literate and

technological world (Kovach 2009, 96).

For example, Cruikshank (2005) asked if ‘‘glaciers

listen’’ as the elders’ stories said they did; but her

interpretation of this oral tradition articulated the literal

‘‘colonial encounters’’ and co-productions of knowl-

edge on the Little Ice Age, rather than speak to

contemporary debates about climate change adaptation

and environmental management. Oral history in con-

temporary climate change research is used to supple-

ment the existing data record; for example, one study

recounts oral tradition about how dogs’ tails in Interior

Alaska froze off in winter when temperatures reached 70

below zero F, which does not happen anymore

(McNeeley and Schultzski 2011). But using oral history

only in this way erases Indigenous ways of knowing

time—for time is not always linearly experienced, like a

tree and its growth, but instead, as argued by Nabokov

(2002), Indigenous peoples experience a ‘‘forest of

time,’’ affecting their narratives of causal relationships.

Thus in this article, although we maintain some

narrative forms more recognizable to academic disci-

plines in our version of ‘‘integrating’’ IK and Western

Science, we are also employing story as method in ways

that might seem unfamiliar. We already employed use of

the ‘‘prologue,’’ the Koyukon-specific use of the ‘‘rid-

dle,’’ and the technique of the ‘‘countermap.’’ Analytical

practices of critical social theory also inform our story—

and analysis—of research on climate change. What these

practices allow is a different understanding of subjec-

tivity—for articulating the ‘‘more-than-human’’ means

to understand one’s humanity different than assumed by

Enlightenment-based disciplines.

We write about the relevance of critical qualitative

social sciences to studies of climate change, as well as

about how to engage with Indigenous methodologies

in ways that do not always translate Native knowl-

edges into Enlightement-based epistemic and onto-

logical frameworks.

Stories of place, 2: indigenous geographies

of change

The families of the Koyukuk River valley would

sometimes gather in the place they called ‘‘Cutoff’’ or

‘‘Old Town,’’ where Huntington’s father Jimmy

operated a general store in the 1940s. By this time,

the US aimed to establish a federal post office and a

school; back then people did not even know what

‘‘meeting’’ meant, but the tribe’s leaders searched for

an environmentally appropriate place to build a

permanent settlement. Just south of Cutoff, Jimmy

Huntington helped select the place that became settled

as Huslia, and by 1972 federal monies built not only

the post office and the school, but also the first

underground piping system for running water and

sewage.4 There are still no roads to Huslia from the

city of Fairbanks, unless you count the river or a

winter’s snowmachine trail, routes used by Native

travelers, but rarely by non-Natives. Except during

moose hunting season, when non-Native hunters come

into the country. A new kind of gold rush, using Native

allotments—many tribal members find these border

crossings a problem. Non-local hunters compete for

the same resource; yet because the people of Huslia no

longer move with the game, this large species has

become essential to local food security. Comple-

mented by store-bought processed foods, the dominant

elements of a Koyukon diet from this area are not only

moose, but also geese and ducks, fish, berries, bear,

caribou, beaver, and medicine like spruce. But some

animals Huslia residents will not talk about, and many

hold strict beliefs about not singing their songs outside

of the village.

Though their subsistence economy certainly exists

in a complicated hybridity with capitalism, as it does

in all Alaska Native communities, people up and down

the Yukon River drainage refer to this village as a

place where traditions hold strong, and where elders

thrive. ‘‘That is a very spiritual people,’’ an elder from

the downriver village of Holy Cross said, when

Watson described how much time she has spent in

Huslia. The anthropologist Richard Nelson (1983)

spent 2 years there, his work ‘‘Make Prayers to the

Raven’’ inspiring a documentary film series, as well as

other academics (Ingold 2011). Over the last 15 years

Orville Huntington has made an effort to introduce

numerous researchers to the land and people—

including Watson—with the aim of carefully teaching

these researchers which of those values and knowl-

edges should be shared. Huntington argues that it is

important to share some (not all) stories, knowledge,

and wisdom, and that sharing might not happen with

4 ‘‘Permanent settlement’’ as in having the same zip code; the

Koyukuk River has in the last 40 years eroded most of the

original structures and infrastructure built in Huslia.

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123

all people, depending on their age and who they are.

He also argues that most written material has flaws in

them because writers are not Indigenous, and/or did

not grow up in the area; he teaches with wisdom

granted to him for who he is, though unashamed to

admit that his knowledge is also partial. And these old

ways are a living knowledge that should go beyond

written knowledge; it has to be lived, to be practiced

and understood as a practice, rather than just ‘‘facts

about things.’’ This knowledge therefore has to be

shared in the physical context of the rural environment

of its significance, because of the affect of that place

on the teller and learner, because you can see what you

will never see in a city, and you will be less likely to

misinterpret what was shared.

But for those who cannot travel there, we now tell

one story about sharing knowledge of climate change:

On her earliest winter trips to the village of Huslia,

Watson observed a series of ‘‘climate change work-

shops’’ bringing together not only elders and other

tribal leaders from Huslia and neighboring villages,

but also a collection of interdisciplinary researchers,

both Native and non-Native, that represented expertise

across the natural and social sciences, including

residents on their research team.5 This was unsurpris-

ing within the context of increasing researcher-com-

munity collaborations across the Arctic. At these

Huslia workshops, researchers aimed to create a forum

to exchange information about climate change affect-

ing the Koyukuk River valley. The community hall, an

octagonal log cabin structure heated by a double-

barrel wood stove, was at times packed with not just

the researchers, but elders, a large group of high school

students, and other interested Native community

members who would shuffle in and out in large rubber

‘‘bunny’’ boots.

When it was his turn to share his expertise, one of

the climatologists in the research group stood near the

bed sheet that comprised the makeshift projection

screen, pointing to his PowerPoint slides. He apolo-

gized for showing a chart with so many numbers, and

launched into an explanation of the frequency of

extreme events. It did not take long until Catherine

Attla, one of the community’s most respected elders

(and Huntington’s aunt) said: ‘‘I have a question.’’

Catherine Attla grew up in the semi-nomadic

camps throughout the Koyukuk River valley, long

before there was a permanent village called Huslia,

raised by the last medicine man of the area. She often

shared her personal stories as well as traditional

Koyukon stories preserved through publication (Attla

1989, 1990).6 At the climate change workshop she

said:

They must have studied the weather, how it’s

changing in Alaska, since John somebody walk

on the moon. That’s when all our old people, my

husband was riverboat pilot, up and down the

Yukon and Tanana River to Fairbanks, and he

heard lot of people, said the same thing that this

one old man that was living here, Chief Henry.

Things is gonna change. That moon is put up

there for a purpose, to control the weather. We

didn’t talk much of it, but we kindof believe him.

You must know what he’s talking about, but

who’s gonna think about that? My grandchild-

rens, you live up to it. You live up to a warm

weather that wouldn’t be the right place at the

right time. Like, in August, it rain. It never snow

in September. [But now] We seen … rain all fall

when it’s freezing up time. It’s just all mixed. I

was just wondering, they study that, since the

man walk on the moon.

The climatologist had been listening quietly, as had

everyone in the hall. He responded that indeed,

‘‘scientists have looked at the weather and climate

data, and there did seem to be a shift in the climate in

the North Pacific area that affected Alaska, but it did

seem to come a few years after the, I think the moon

landing was 1969. …The shift that affected the North

Pacific seemed to come in the mid-1970s, so it’s in that

same general period, but the match doesn’t seem to be

perfect.’’

Catherine Attla replied, ‘‘Yeah. I just wanted to

know, because I wonder how those old people know its

gonna be change, big change, that’s the thing, it really

struck me.’’ She said these last words slowly.

The climatologist shook his head. ‘‘I would hope

we would pursue that one,’’ he said, ‘‘as the meeting

goes on. How do you know in advance?’’

5 Watson was not officially part of this group, but invited by

Huntington to learn from the workshop.

6 In 2007 Catherine Attla received an honorary doctorate

degree from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, in recognition

of this work and her role as culture-bearer. She passed in 2012.

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123

‘‘Right,’’ Catherine replied with emphasis. ‘‘You

people will live up to it, he tell us. But not us. But it’s

gonna happen. We often wonder about it.’’7

IK has become a popular source of data for both

natural and social sciences and their interdisciplinary

collaborations, but this particular exchange did not get

meaningfully incorporated into the scientific work of

this research group, whereas many other exchanges

during the weather workshops certainly did (e.g.,

Chapin et al. 2008; Huntington et al. 2006). This

communication from Attla, which she insisted was so

important, did not come in a form that was compre-

hensible to the academic task at hand. But why?

Fetishizing ‘‘facts’’ can disenfranchise Indigenous

peoples: because IK is also based on spiritual wisdom,

and what we are calling ‘‘posthumanist’’ ethics. The

research on climate change has thus far employed a

narrow understanding of what it might mean to be inter-

or trans-disciplinary because research is formulated

exclusively through the assumptions of Enlightenment

thought, without sufficiently engaging non-Western

subjectivities.

The transgressions of the man on the moon

Huntington heard elders talk for almost all his adult

life about the moon landing with the same sense of

foreboding that Attla communicated to the climatol-

ogist. Concerns about ‘‘the man on the moon’’ have

been recounted by elders in other Alaska Native

villages, even Gambell Island and the villages of

Kodiak peoples, hundreds of miles from Huslia. The

story uses a non-Native event because non-Native

scientists might not listen, or selectively listen, and

miss the ‘‘riddle’’ in the telling of the story. We argue

this is a story critical of modernity, and tries to teach

the ethics of the human-nature relationship from a

posthumanist philosophy of place and space.

First, let us understand Attla’s story. Oral historians

and anthropologists have long understood how Arctic

elders tell stories not only to particular audiences, but

that these stories exhibit multiple meanings during a

single telling as well as through each additional telling

(Schneider 2002; Cruikshank 1990). When Attla

interrupted the climatologist, she did so when the

high school students were also present at the commu-

nity hall, at one point even directly addressing them as

‘‘my grandchildrens.’’ These students and other locals

knew of Chief Henry, one of the revered and deceased

leaders of the community. Chief Henry was known for

his prophesies and spiritual guidance at a time when

the village was not so connected to the outside world,

through perhaps just a radio that broadcasted about life

outside the Interior villages. Attla not only pointed out

that it was Chief Henry who was upset with the US

moon landing, but also added that this concern was

widespread, pointing to evidence from her husband,

who in his travels as a barge operator during the 1960s

and 1970s, heard similar concerns from elders up and

down the third largest river in North America. Attla

emphasized that Chief Henry was right to be con-

cerned, and that he knew there was ‘‘gonna be… big

change.’’

The climatologist might have known nothing of

Chief Henry (anthropologists in the research group

did). His response though, was to counter that the

climate data showed the change happened later, rather

than alongside events occurring exactly in 1969—

indicating he thought Attla tried to establish direct

causality for climate change.

But the moon itself is an important figure in this

story, demonstrating how IK is not just about empir-

ical ‘‘facts’’ (or testable causal relationships) that

might be plugged into Western ontological and

epistemological frameworks. Koyukon do not tell

stories about the heavens in the same way they tell

stories about the land and its human and non-human

animals. Instead, observations of the heavens are

traditionally used to tell (or ‘‘control,’’ as Attla said)

the weather. ‘‘That moon is put up there for a

purpose,’’ she explained. Indeed, Huntington has long

been instructed about how to use observations of the

heavens (and other elements of nature and its health) to

guide his way, as well as how to understand his

environmental observations to predict the weather for

a safe journey. The full moon, for example, ‘‘pulls in

the weather’’ for the month—that is, whether it is clear

or cloudy, the condition of the skies at the time of the

full moon is supposed to be the predominant weather

condition for the month. The moon tells the weather.

Koyukon also use their observations of animal

behaviors to guide their actions and to make prepa-

rations for events they think are coming. The moon

7 The reactions and transcript comes from both Watson’s

fieldnotes as well as the raw recording deposited in the Huslia

Tribal archive and a copy that is in Huntington’s possession.

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123

though is a spiritual place, one that has guided actions

for millennia.

And, therefore, the moon deserves special respect.

‘‘Respect’’ for Koyukon is both a spiritual concept and

a geographical one, because it exhibits a distinctly

spatial dimension. ‘‘Respect’’ refers to the many rules

that a Koyukon must follow to affirm one’s humility:

the most proper stance to take in relationship to other

living and nonliving beings. Showing respect means

that an individual understands ‘‘their proper place’’ in

relationship to other beings, both animate and inani-

mate. There is a distinct spatiality to both the

practicing of the rules, as well as in the consequences

of not following those rules. Over the last decade,

Watson has witnessed this respect coming in the form

of distance taken from an animal that is encountered

‘‘out of season,’’ but respect is not only practiced that

way. In one of the stories documented from Chief

Henry, for example, he described how even though

there were a lot of lynx around during one particular

winter and spring, he had offended the spirit of the

lynx so he ‘‘was in disfavor with the lynx at that time’’

and they avoided his traps. The Koyukon translator of

the story, Eliza Jones, explained in her marginal notes

that ‘‘People believe that all animals have a person-

ality, and so we treat them accordingly when they are

caught. If an animal isn’t treated right its spirit will be

offended and won’t want to be caught in one’s snares’’

(Chief Henry 1982, 6). Similarly, Huntington often

relates a story about how he had fallen in disfavor with

bear, and how, only when showing great respect to a

deceased warrior, the bear ‘‘came back to me’’ after 20

long years between successful hunts (see also Hun-

tington and Watson 2012).

While other research has spoken about Koyukon

beliefs about respect with regard to the land and

animals (Watson and Huntington 2008; Nelson 1983),

Attla at the workshop argued how the US government

did not properly respect the moon when they sent

human beings to set foot upon its surface. It was a

transgression that now her grandchildren, in the room

listening to her, would have to ‘‘live up to.’’ Because

now, she explained, the ‘‘weather’’ was not in ‘‘the

right place at the right time.’’ Where before the climate

regularly produced a rainy August and snow-free

September, the pattern had changed. ‘‘It’s just all

mixed,’’ Catherine explained, ‘‘since the man walk on

the moon.’’

This is a logic that cannot be understood through

Western scientific causality—as the climatologist

noted, the dates do not ‘‘match up.’’ Because it was

prophesy, these things were what they knew before-

hand. Huntington says that he has thought on how or

why to bring up this prophesy: many say all the ‘‘talk

of the cold weather will get old.’’ He doubts anyone

puts enough thought into that or what it really means.

It is one particular prophecy—and maybe that’s why it

is not understood.

In her field notes, Watson finds numerous quotes

from Koyukon like ‘‘scientists are so stupid, not

respectful’’—this quote said in response to news

reports of a research program designed to test bombs

on moon. She finds it is the same distain when local

people describe how biologists ‘‘bother’’ the migra-

tory birds or other non-human animals with their

efforts at tagging or collaring species for their

research programs (Watson 2013). Trained as a

wildlife biologist, Huntington nevertheless refuses to

dissect animals, and does not like it when biologists

affect them, with collars and bands, pulling their

teeth, sedating them, touching them and giving them

names. All these things have changed their wild

spiritual being. Just doing science for the sake of

science when it really is not needed, except by

students and professors and their name. This is a

critique of curiosity, a curiosity borne from Enlight-

enment-based sciences. Not only do Western Scien-

tists assume they are ‘‘modest witnesses,’’ but they

assume that they must witness everything—this is an

Enlightenment subjectivity that practitioners of IK

do not necessarily share.

As we have argued elsewhere (Watson and Hun-

tington 2008), Koyukon ethics demonstrate a kind of

‘‘posthumanism’’—though really ‘‘prehumanist’’

because these ways of knowing predate the Enlight-

enment. Here we argue that Indigenous ‘‘social

theory,’’ as it were, has an explicitly spatial ontology,

as demonstrated in Koyukon notions of ‘‘respect’’ and

the humility of that subject position. So Attla’s lesson

becomes more understandable through this cultural

context: we understand the story of the ‘‘man on the

moon’’ as a critique of modernity, an argument

reminiscent of the literature on risk that criticizes

our modern fetishism with technology and ‘‘conquer-

ing’’ nature (Kirsch and Mitchell 1998; Wynne 1996;

Beck 1992).

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123

Humility is not, however, unique to Koyukon

spiritual beliefs, but also reflected in the broader

literature of Native American/American Indian Stud-

ies. Indeed, in the dialoguing essays of Vine Deloria,

Jr. and Daniel Wildcat in their 2001 book, Power and

Place: Indian Education in America, they portray

‘‘place’’ as more than just a location. What Deloria and

Wildcat (2001) argue is that Western education, in

forcing students to learn about ‘‘facts,’’ they are not

taught how to cultivate either ‘‘living relationships’’

with other beings or things, or cultivate their ‘‘per-

sonalities,’’ developed through experiencing place and

spiritual power. ‘‘Place’’ is thus understood by Deloria

and Wildcat as made through one’s ethical relations

with other living and non-living beings. We read

‘‘personalities’’ here as ‘‘subjectivity,’’ because the

knowledges being produced through posthumanist

Indigenous ontologies depend also on sharing a

common identity, even if only for a short time

(Watson and Huntington 2008; Hensel 1996). This

‘‘same-ness’’ shared between humans and nonhumans

are, however, always in tension with the spatial

distance practiced by ‘‘respect.’’

Such posthumanist theories of the social can

produce ideas about causality that greatly differ from

that assumed by most natural and social sciences.

Rather than a linear relationship between subject and

object, cause to effect, causality is often explained in

Koyukon society through the concept of ‘‘luck’’

(Watson and Huntington 2008; Nelson 1983). And

because of the transgressions of the man on the moon,

the Koyukon people have had to live with the bad luck

of others. ‘‘My grandchildrens,’’ Catherine Attla said

to the students, ‘‘you live up to it.’’

The elders, in other words, will not live to see all

those changes and hardships that come from the

actions taken by people of this era or by Western

scientists—but the younger generations and the

unborn will have to contend with the most difficult

challenges presented by rapid climate change. Most

Koyukon do not speak of how bad it will be in other

places on the planet; those peoples have their own

prophecy.

The exchange between Attla and the climatologist

demonstrates the difficulty of successful communica-

tion between Western and IK systems. That the moon

became such a prominent figure in the way elders

responded to the meeting at once intrigued and

bemused the research group, who also remarked on

the other major event of the meetings that featured the

moon: when discussions went late into one night,

concentration erupted into hurried chatter when

someone walked in and announced that they could

see a ring around the moon. A phenomenon never

witnessed by one of the Native elders at the meeting,

one expressed fear as she hurriedly pulled on her parka

and fled the room. The event left all others (including

the researchers) a new topic for the non-official

discursive spaces of the meeting: the significance of

the moon and how many things were out of their

proper place.

The observation foretold a rain storm coming,

which in the area was not a normal occurrence in

winter; rain and snow in the sub-Arctic winter can

mean death to those traveling outside the village.

Huntington also says that after years of thinking on it,

and reading of different interpretations of events, we

must look at things like those before us, in new ways of

understanding. Again, this is not a Western causal

system, because these are not wholly Western

subjectivities.

Discussion and conclusion

These researchers genuinely tried to work with the

Native community; and they published some of what

they learned about Koyukon spirituality in qualitative

anthropological literatures (Natcher et al. 2007), and

many years later, some of the same workshop

collaborators recount how they have learned from

the spiritual contributions of tribal peoples (Cochran

et al. 2013). But Attla’s story of the moon remained in

the researchers’ archives. Few outlets are ‘‘appropri-

ate’’ to share this kind of ethical knowledge with the

broader climate change research community; ethical

contributions have not provided the answers to the

research questions they have asked.

We argue that the research on climate change has

until now had a narrow understanding of what it might

mean to be inter- or trans-disciplinary, because

research had been formulated exclusively through

the assumptions of Enlightenment thought. Though

celebrated as ‘‘interdisciplinary’’ they do not include

‘‘non-modern’’ subjectivities in their productions of

knowledge. Natural and social sciences, based upon

Western subjectivities, can only tell part of the story

about climate change and how might humans adapt.

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123

Climate change is itself one of the greatest challenges

to Enlightenment thought; climate change forces

humanity to confront the failures of its sciences and

technologies. Interestingly, many scientists keep

insisting on using only scientific knowledge to adapt

to these environmental changes, while others argue

that it is time to ‘‘democratize science.’’

Koyukon (and other tribes’) teachings about the

posthumanist ethics of space and place can be brought

to bear on research and policy-making in the areas of

climate change and related resource-management

decisions. These stories of ‘‘the man on the moon’’

have been deployed as a commentary about the human

use of technology and the literal ‘‘command and

control’’ relationship that Western society has with

nature. A posthumanist ethical narrative, elders indi-

cate that the man on the moon warns of humanity’s

excesses as well as reminds the West of other ways to

more sustainably organize human life. Many tribes

have shared similar warnings, yet the same decisions

are reached over and over again.

We also argued that Indigenous participation in

‘‘interdisciplinary’’ climate change research more

often than not erases the spiritual (and spatial)

dimensions of their wisdom. This is because the

practice of ‘‘research’’ fetishizes empirical ‘‘facts’’

over their spiritual ‘‘wisdom.’’ These practices have

political effects: because Indigenous peoples of the

Arctic continue to live their every day within the

regulatory frameworks that are grounded in these

assumptions of Western Enlightenment-based sci-

ences (Huntington and Watson 2012; Anderson and

Nutall 2004).

Rather than see our use of IK as being ‘‘politically

correct,’’ our efforts to ‘‘decolonize’’ method are

grounded in careful theorizing from the academic

literature. These knowledge traditions have empiri-

cally demonstrated that Western ways of knowing

produce only ‘‘partial’’ rather than ‘‘impartial’’ knowl-

edge—not so much ‘‘objective’’ as it has been called

‘‘irresponsible’’ in the ways in which it has produced

objects of knowledge and affected decision-making.

In this paper we show that Indigenous people draw on

‘‘universals’’ just as Westerners do in guiding their

interpretation of the natural world. Like other meth-

ods, IK proceeds from its own set of intellectual

theories, and can be used to generalize about the

world. Thus if scholars really aspire to be trans-

disciplinary, which many argue is necessary to deal

with our most ‘‘global’’ problems, then they need to

also be critical of the worldviews through which they

formulate their research questions about environmen-

tal phenomena. They need to engage with IK on an

epistemological and ontological level, and recognize

the ‘‘culture’’ and partiality of ‘‘Western sciences’’

within their methodological practices. When both

natural and social sciences always insist on the

Enlightenment’s subject/object dichotomy, this rein-

scribes an expertise that is at once ‘‘objective’’/partial

as it erases non-Western subjectivities and relational

ontologies. Scholars engaging with posthumanist

approaches suggest that practices of representing

knowledge might change when ontologies of nature/

culture are no longer divided (Watson and Huntington

2008; Whatmore 2004). Our narrative experimenta-

tion demonstrates one way to develop research

partnerships with Arctic Indigenous peoples—an

example of a possible way to ‘‘co-produce’’ knowl-

edge that attempts to recognize non-Enlightenment

worldviews and epistemological assumptions.

Because all knowledge is local, we do not argue that

‘‘locally’’-focused IK studies are wholly incorrect in

their conclusions. However, we argue that those IK

studies that engage only with IK’s local dimension are

incomplete, and vulnerable to committing the same

erasures of Indigenous peoples that occurred across

colonial sciences. ‘‘Local’’ knowledge holders them-

selves exhibit theoretical knowledge. Researchers

have recently used community processes of review

to, for example, record new observations and to

develop new ways to analyze weather patterns

(Weatherhead 2010); others argue that ‘‘fuzzy logic’’

might be a better way to dialogue across these cultural

differences (Berkes and Berkes 2009). But the

rapprochements of Western and IKs remain largely

missed opportunities.

But also, the West needs to produce ‘‘wisdom,’’ and

not just ‘‘facts;’’ academics have greater wisdom to

share beyond what they write as ‘‘facts,’’ a point often

argued by critical geographers. Social theories,

including Indigenous social theories, can be one way

to communicate this wisdom.

Natives have indeed experienced some of the most

rapid environmental changes, but rather than empha-

size their vulnerabilities, we demonstrate how aca-

demics can more effectively engage the expertise of

Indigenous peoples. Given time to understand all that

is said, and not just rush it off to print to move projects

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123

or finish degrees (how much work is compromised

because of a rush to satisfy others?), in this way we

begin to broaden the understanding of what it means to

be inter- or trans-disciplinary. More than being a

source of ‘‘data’’ or a symbol of humanity’s ruin in the

face of climate change, Indigenous peoples and their

wisdom can inform the ethics through which all

human communities may live. To ensure that Indig-

enous peoples are not used as props in Western climate

change agendas, researchers must find ways to engage

with non-Enlightenment intellectual traditions.

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