week three reading notes

skwadi'lic, Board Feet, and the Cedar Tree

• How does our own individual frame of reference (culturally speaking) influence our view of what is real/true understanding of nature?
• Lummi Indians of Washington State 
• xwalxw'eleqw people used to be one tribe, were people after flood. Present day Lummis were part of this tribe. 
• xwlemi = "I am looking at you, and you are looking at me"
• belief in a history of a powerful Being - Xales (the transformer) created the Lummis and taught them how to live
• it was thought to be impossible to live in WA due to the whole temperate rainforest thing
• 1980- 838 billion board feet of timber had been removed from the forests of western OR and WA. Old growth forests accounted for 13 percent of forest land cover 
• By 2000, only 6% of WA and OR old growth forests still existed
• Direct (and bad) effect on Lummi Indians
• 1978 - Lummis started projects to preserve old growth forests in Whatcom county
• Inventory of Native American Religious Use, Practices, Localities and Resources: Study Area on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest  - created along with 12 other tribes in Western WA from Seattle to CAD border

http://nativecases.evergreen.edu/docs/RussoBoardFeet82311.pdf

• The Values Project Northwest: xwelmi
• Origins: inverse relationship with trees between loggers/timber industry and Lummi Indians
• Value based differences between cultural communities that can improve cross cultural communication
• Information gathered one on one using VOM method
• Significant variations in how both groups are oriented in situations involving change/control/work/decision making
• "

Another important variation between the two groups was found in the Person-Nature dimension.

• The situation Belief in Control, one of five situations in this dimension, takes up the question of how much control people can or should have over large-scale forces around them. The plurality of the tribal participants (46%) felt that it was neither reasonable nor wise to try to control these forces, and only 12% felt such control was even possible. This compared with 32% in the DNR who believe such control is both desirable and achievable, with one in four completely rejecting the notion of control (24%). In the area of perceptual diversity (not shown in the above illustration) only 16% of the respondents in the DNR predicted the tribe would favor the Subject To (“react to”) orientation in this situation. "