Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon

by Paul Nadasdy

Overview

This book challenges this conventional wisdom that land claims and co-management – two of the most visible and celebrated elements of this restructuring the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state – will help reverse centuries of inequity. Based on three years of ethnographic research in the Yukon, the author examines the complex relationship between the people of Kluane First Nation, the land and animals, and the state. This book moves beyond conventional models of colonialism, in which the state is treated as a monolithic entity, and instead explores how “state power” is reproduced through everyday bureaucratic practices – including struggles over the production and use of knowledge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780774809849
Publisher:	University of British Columbia Press
Publication date:	07/01/2004
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Aboriginal-State Relations in Kluane Country: An Overview

2 “It’s Not Really ‘Knowledge’ at All, It’s More a Way of Life”

3 The Politics of TEK: Power and the Integration of Knowledge

4 Counting Sheep: The Ruby Range Sheep Steering Committee and the Construction of Knowledge

5 Knowledge-Integration in Practice: The Case of the Ruby Range Sheep Steering Committee

6 “Just Like Whitemen”: Property and Land Claims in Kluane Country

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

"An important and sobering look at the nature of Aboriginal-state relations in northern Canada today .. Nadasdy's focus on the use of power and knowledge in co-management and land claims is both refreshing and long overdue, as he identifies many of the systemic barriers and insidious processes of assimilation inherent in these discourses. In fact, everyone currently involved in these processes should attempt to read Hunters and Bureaucrats before contemplating another decision .. Hunters and Bureaucrats might very well become one of the most important books ever written about Aboriginal-state relations in northern Canda, and it should open the gates to a flood of literature that sets out to de- and reconstruct co-management and land-claim processes."—Arctic

From the Publisher

An important and sobering look at the nature of Aboriginal-state relations in northern Canada today .. Nadasdy's focus on the use of power and knowledge in co-management and land claims is both refreshing and long overdue, as he identifies many of the systemic barriers and insidious processes of assimilation inherent in these discourses. In fact, everyone currently involved in these processes should attempt to read Hunters and Bureaucrats before contemplating another decision .. Hunters and Bureaucrats might very well become one of the most important books ever written about Aboriginal-state relations in northern Canda, and it should open the gates to a flood of literature that sets out to de- and reconstruct co-management and land-claim processes.

Arctic