Next spring will mark the first offering of the Cultural Landscape Field School in Veneto, northeastern Italy. The three credit course will be offered from May 12 to 26, 2010 to upper-level undergraduate and masters students from the faculties of Environment and Geography, Geology, the Natural Resources Institute, and Architecture at the University of Manitoba.

The objective of the course is to introduce students to the dynamics of landscape formation, including natural and cultural processes, and the contemporary efforts to conserve cultural landscapes. Over an intensive two-week journey along the short, yet diverse transect that links the Venice Lagoon to the Dolomite mountains near the Austrian boarder, the course will provide students with the conceptual frameworks to identify the connections between historical and present day management systems, and gain hands-on experience in techniques of landscape research. Students will be working with an interdisciplinary group of peers, faculty, Italian scholars and local practitioners.

Proposals for (Individual) Contributions to the 12th International Congress of Ethnobiology in Tofino British Columbia Canada (9-14 May 2010) are due 18 September  2009.

This project reflects some of the uses being made by indigenous peoples of new media in communicating about conflicts over the shaping of cultural landscapes.  The material is in Spanish but the website is well worth a look.

Part of my Anishinaabe education while working in Pikangikum involves learning to procure food on the land — trapping, hunting, and fishing. On a mild winter day I’m invited by elders Oliver Hill and norman Quill to set a fish net under the ice. The chosen location is a bay on Pikangikum Lake, a short 15 minute snowmobile ride from the community. We set up just off the winter road, a busy communication route between northern communities north of Red Lake.