Year: 1996
Abstract:
Co-management of renewable resources between First Nations and the Province of Alberta is in its infancy. In 1994, a significant step was taken in making co-management a reality. This was accomplished through the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding between Whitefish Lake First Nation and the Government of the Province of Alberta, providing for a deciduous timber permit to Whitefish Lake First Nation and an agreement on a process to consult and cooperate on matters of mutual interest in the co-operative management of forests, wildlife, and fisheries. This research is a study of process through applied/development anthropology, social forestry, and change. The specific focus was to develop an "Implementation Plan" to facilitate the implementation of the Memoranda. The development of the Implementation Plan represents a process of dispute resolution--a process which is critical to the success of cross-cultural resource management structures. Unless parties to potential agreement are brought together and accommodations and reconciliations made, there is no possible hope of successful partnerships or resource sharing. In the case of Whitefish Lake First Nation and the Province of Alberta, what is crucial is that in the interest of reaching agreement on a workable and practical resource management Implementation Plan, the stakeholders have come together, putting rhetoric and differences aside and are operating on principles of equality, equity and fairness. The Implementation Plan reflects realistic co-operative management, as through the planning process, scientific, bureaucratic, and traditional ecological epistemologies are reconciled. This thesis also contains the components of a human theory of development. It is applied theoretical development based on reality as opposed to rhetoric, considerations of power and knowledge, the realities of economic participation and environmental conservation, issues of tenure, and the critical importance of culture in the implementation of decision-making dispute resolution, the acceptance of responsibility, and the perceptual basis of power equity.
