The Anti-Politics of TEK: The Institutionalization of Co-Management Discourse and Practice [Traditional Ecological Knowledge]

IntroductionOver the past 20 years, co-operative management (comanagement) has become the accepted-even preferred-approach to wildlife management in the Canadian north.1 Throughout this period, provincial and territorial governments have worked with First Nations to establish a wide variety of co-management boards and committees throughout the region. Some of these co-management initiatives have been ad hoc responses to specific management problems; but, increasingly, First Nations and governments are establishing permanent co-management bodies through the land claims process. Given the cross-cultural nature of co-management, it is not surprising that anthropologists have been involved with such efforts from the beginning. Whether based at universities, working as consultants, or employed directly by First Nation governments, anthropologists have played an important role in advocating, designing and evaluating processes of wildlife co-management. Despite this involvement, however (and perhaps partially because of it), anthropologists and other scholars studying co-management have generally failed to engage in much critical analysis. Although they have identified numerous problems with the design and implementation of various co-management schemes, few have critically examined the project of co-management itself and the assumptions underlying it. Instead, most have accepted at face value proponents' claims about the potential beneficial effects of co-management and have worked to improve and facilitate co-management processes.2In the standard view advanced by its proponents, co-management has two important potential benefits. First, proponents believe that co-management will lead to an overall improvement in the practice of wildlife management. For one thing, it allows for the integration of "traditional ecological knowledge" (TEK) held by First Nation hunters with the knowledge produced by wildlife biologists, thus increasing the overall stock of knowledge on which management strategies are based. In addition, decentralized co-management regimes are potentially more responsive to local ecological conditions and more adaptive to highly variable northern ecosystems than are more centralized systems of state management. Secondly, proponents of co-management claim that the use of TEK will empower the aboriginal elders and hunters that hold such knowledge-and, by extension, aboriginal communities more generally (on the potential benefits of co-management, see e.g., Berkes 1994; Freeman 1992; Freeman and Carbyn 1988; Johannes 1989; Johnson 1992).In this article, I argue that we must not simply accept these claims at face value if we hope to understand co-management as a social phenomenon and gauge its real impact on northern native communities. Accordingly, I question-rather than proceed from-the standard assumptions about co-management. Without denying the sincerity of those who hope for improved management and the empowerment of First Nation people through co-management, we must also acknowledge that the complex process of co-management may have a number of other unforeseen-and unintended-consequences (see Ferguson 1994: 20-21). To get at these unintended effects, I focus on the "institutionalization" of co-management discourse and practice. The need to integrate co-management processes with existing institutional structures of state management has led to a tendency to view co-management as a series of technical problems (primarily associated with the question of how to gather "traditional knowledge" and incorporate it into the management process), rather than as a real alternative to the existing structures and practices of state management. This view effectively obscures the political and ethical dimensions of co-management. Indeed, it has engendered and naturalized a discourse that specifically excludes political and ethical considerations, which are treated as externalities, if they are considered at all. …