From Sheep to Fish: What Scientists can learn from ethnohistory

Recently I picked up a book about sheep ranching in Navajo Country and began thinking about the recent protest by fisherman in Gloucester, Mass, and Orange Beach, Alabama against National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS) new policies intended to prevent overfishing and help stocks recover.

The book, Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books) focuses on the 1930s government instituted plan of livestock reduction in response to devastating overgrazing. The government plan was, according to the author, Marsha Weisiger, based upon scientific reality and was well-intended but when implemented without the input and cooperation of the people most effected was doomed to failure. Animosities created then between government representatives and tribal members stand in the way of the creating a continuing cooperative policy to work with the land.

Reading the newspaper articles and especially the comments relating to the Gloucester, Mass protest the parallels are obvious.NMFS maintains that their policy is based upon scientific reality and is intended to preserve stock. The fisherman insist the science is flawed but really focus on how the new policies will kill the smaller fisherman, i,e. the culture of the local fisherman. Carrying banners reading "National Marine Fisheries Service: Destroying Fisherman and their Communities Since 19??" they protest the end of their way of life.

Weisiger concludes her book stating that "conserving the range was not simply an ecological problem; it was a cultural one, too...[government officials] lost sight of the fact that a truly sustainable relationship with the natural world requires an ethical relationship with the land, with those who people it, and with the cultures that give it meaning."  Isn't it past time the fisheries problem was looked at as more than a ecological problem?

There are obvious strong, vibrant cultural, and associated cultural meanings that must be taken into consideration if a true solution to the fishery problem is to be reached.