PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #50: Traditional Ecological Knowledge.
Presiding: J. Ford
Wednesday, August 7. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Greenlee Meeting Room, TCC.
"Wildlife are Sacred": Integrating cultural values with ecological restoration.
Senos, Rene'*,1, 1 Jones and Jones Architects and Landscape Architects, Seattle, WA
ABSTRACT- Design and planning of projects on tribal lands provide a critical opportunity to initiate cultural landscape restoration that links repair of damaged ecosystems with the preservation or revitalization of traditional cultural values and practices. Re-design of a 55-mile highway corridor (US 93) through the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana has opened the door to restoring vital landscape systems that support the cultural, spiritual, and subsistence life of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes. Located within the Rocky Mountain Plateau, the Reservation is comprised of diverse ecosystems ranging from kettle pond complexes to alpine tundra, and is inhabited by numerous wildlife species, including grizzly bear, deer, pronghorn, elk, painted turtles, and several bird and fish species. Wildlife, rivers, and camas prairies are not only important natural resources, but also represent key traditional cultural resources. Standard highway expansion would threaten these values, but by linking cultural resources with environmental resources, the tribes and design consultants developed design guidelines to greatly reduce potential impacts while restoring wildlife passage, hydrologic connections, and native plant communities. Over 55 wildlife crossings will be incorporated in the new corridor; mitigation will be targeted to tribal restoration priorities; and interpretive facilities will narrate the landscape story. Conceptualizing natural resources as cultural resources, and working at the larger cultural landscape scale can serve as a model for restoration projects both on and off tribal lands, and recasts restoration in its broader socio-ecological context.
KEY WORDS: cultural landscape restoration, Flathead Indian Reservation, US Highway 93, wildlife crossings