Nancy Turner and Kyle Clifton

The closing plenary talk at the International Marine Conservation Congress was devoted to Pacific Northwest Coastal Native traditions of marine management and concerns about preserving the marine environment. The talk “Traditional Ecological Knowledge Systems of Coastal First Peoples” was co-presented by Nancy Turner, of the University of Victoria School of Environmental Studies, and Kyle Clifton, the Marine Use Planning Coordinator for the Gitaga’at First Nation, whose lands are on the Canadian mainland due east of the Gwaii Haanas Reserve on Haida Gwaii Island north of Vancouver Island.
Nancy Turner cited a definition of traditional knowledge as “A cumulative body of knowledge, practices and beliefs, evolving by adaptive process and handed down through generations by cultural transmission” (Berkes, 2008).…