Cultural Landscapes » Podcast Feed

“Cultural Landscape” — is the term not redundant?

Michael O'Flaherty — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:30:29 +0000

Wherever people have travelled they have entered the land into their imagination and, insofar as this has been a collective endeavour, into their culture. But actually delimiting an area of influence for a specific culture, where it begins and ends in time, space and imagination can be a very difficult task; it requires we define who are the members of such-and-such a culture. The complexities of defining the spatial boundaries of a cultural landscape are discussed with reference to south-eastern Zimbabwe.

Read the full pdf version.

Survival

Nathan Deutsch — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:55:12 +0000

In the community of Pikangikum, Ontario, commercial trapping and fishing were primary income generating activities until the last two decades when prices dropped and costs rose, making it difficult to live on the land. Even as extensive government subsidies were introduced in the post-war period, Pikangikum people continued to hunt, fish and trap on their family areas, which are in some cases remote from the community. It is only recently that we find people settled in the town site of Pikangikum year-round.

In the post-war period, the answer of the Canadian social state to habitation of Indigenous peoples in the north was government support for what was perceived to be a problem of basic subsistence and survival for a people exposed to the vagaries of bush life, and fluctuating fur markets. Today, settlement of people in villages on northern reserves is nearly complete. Pikangikum now faces a flailing economy with food, materials, services, and funding for community projects all coming from the south. As discussed in a , the continuity of cultural landscapes becomes a question of economics. Pikangikum people continue to go out on the land to hunt, fish, and trap. However, these relationships with the land continue to be reproduced today largely through recreational activities, rather than through subsistence and commercial activities, since it has almost become economically unfeasible in some cases to access and use land that families traditionally recognize as their traplines.

In the audio clips attached, we find a key message from Pikangikum elder Whitehead Moose: the land will continue to be important for the survival of Pikangikum people. Whitehead winds together a lesson about trapping, family areas, government welfare, and new and old economic opportunities. He refers to trapline boundaries of family areas; these institutions are of importance in that people practising both subsistence and commercial activities are embedded in social exchanges guided by rules and values of the system of family areas. The trapping way of life, he affirms, will continue to play a role in Pikangikum peoples’ survival. Returning to the land through a community forestry initiative is a way to address the issue of greater economic autonomy that Whitehead experienced until recently within his lifetime.

Turning Into Stone: Places in Pangnirtung Inuit Oral Tradition

Carlos Julián Idrobo — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:59:07 +0000

For Inuit, songs are a form of oral tradition. They are passed on stories that embody people’s relationships with the landscape. Narrating about hunting journeys, the chores of butchering and flensing animals, as well as unusual events, singing embraces people experiences on the land. Music becomes a milieu that connects the proximal environment with individual and collective “memoryscape”.

From Pangnirtung, this podcast presents a lullaby sang by Elisapee Ishulutaq’s.

Oliver Hill Weeskay Jak Story

Iain Davidson-Hunt — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:50:21 +0000

One of the complexities of cultural landscapes is that they are not just the physical or tangible things that we can see but the way in which meaning inheres in the tangible. One way that meaning can be expressed is through the stories people tell about the landscape. In the Anishinaabe corpus of oral knowledge ideas, ethics and meaning are often expressed through Weeskay Jak and his adventures on the land. This is one such story told by Oliver Hill in Anishinaabe with the English version told by Paddy Peters. This is a test to see how podcasts can be used to share these stories.