Year of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

Anthropology

Department or School/College

Anthropology

Committee Chair

Dr. Anna Prentiss

Commitee Members

Dr. Gregory Campbell, Professor Jennifer Harrington, Souta Calling Last

Keywords

cultural anthropology, ethnobotany, montana, missoula, newport, washington state

Subject Categories

Anthropology | Social and Cultural Anthropology

Abstract

The creation and implementation of interpretive ethnobotanical trails can be used to help preserve and teach about the use of native, and in some instances, non-native plants that were brought into use, both historically and in present day by Indigenous peoples. As examples, I will use my work assisting on the Reserve Street Trail in Missoula, Montana and the Pioneer Park Campground Interpretive Trail on the Colville National Forest in Washington. The Reserve Street Trail is still in its beginning phases but has the goal to cultivate plants identified as being culturally significant to Indigenous peoples and to create trail signs that would utilize multiple Indigenous languages including Crow, Blackfeet, Salish, Kootenai, and others. The Pioneer Park Trail includes trail signs of culturally significant plants, ground hearths, and publicly available tribal information in English and Kalispel Salish.

Using language preservation programs and the interpretive trails, I also intend to touch on the longstanding—and in many cases, ongoing—destruction of traditional Indigenous lifeways and languages. When so much information is tied to place and language, the uprooting of peoples and banning of their languages created obvious gaps in physical, material, and spiritual aspects of culture. The loss of language is the loss of knowledge and connection when it comes to naming plants. The inability to interact with those plants and call them by their names is a loss of culture and a loss of part of the tribes’ identities.

Download

Share

COinS
 

© Copyright 2024 Riza James McClurkin