Caribou Hunters and Researchers at the Co-Management Interface: Emergent Dilemmas and the Dynamics of Legitimacy in Power Sharing

A member of my community] just put a burr in my pants....Someone is making some very negative statements, and too bad it happened behind my back. Now, there are some things I don't agree with that go on, but there's also a lot of things, a lot of good that comes from it [research]. Research is necessary.- Native Community Representative to a Caribou Co-management BoardYou take a group of Native people and you put them on a board and you give them the mandate to make decisions based on information, and they want damn good information. They want [science-based] information. I've seen this with the Porcupine Caribou Board, the Mayo Council, the [Yukon] Fish and Wildlife Management Board...once they're part of the management process and decision making process, they realize the importance of this information. But when they're outside of this process, they have some fundamental problems with it.- Government Agency Representative to a Caribou Co-management BoardIntroductionFew conflicts of northern resource management are more contentious than those arising from the threeway intersection of peoples' traditional relations with animals, proposals for industrial development, and natural scientists' quest to advance knowledge of wildlife. Historical aspects of such conflicts are well articulated in the literature (Berger 1977; Freeman 1989a; Page 1986). The legacy of internal colonialism in the Arctic by nation states (Osherenko and Young 1989), differences in root metaphors that underpin conflicts of and science-based knowledge (Berkes 1999; Cruikshank 1981, 1998; Gamble 1986; Scott 1996) and the inseparable link between property relations, cultural views on control of nature, and power (Asch 1989; Feit 1986; MacPherson 1978; Usher 1983) have been noted.Twenty years ago, as northern peoples, scholars and resource managers assessed these conflicts, there was anticipation and hope about the potential benefits of establishing alternative institutions providing for communitygovernment power sharing in wildlife management (Berkes 1981; Freeman 1981). As a part of that discourse, Berkes (1981), Usher (1971; 1986; 1987), Osherenko (1988a; 1988b), Feit (1973; 1986; 1988), Freeman (1989b), Freeman and Carbyn (1988) and others framed the problems as conflicts between and indigenous of wildlife management, making explicit the assumption that institutions for the management of wildlife reflect culturally defined authority systems of property relations, practices, and beliefs affecting resources, resource users and their greater community (Bromley 1992a, 1992b). Considering the potential of community-state power-sharing alternatives, those advocating the implementation of co-management argued that more holistic insights into ecosystem dynamics would result from an integration of traditional and science-based knowledge, the self-regulatory features of systems would lower enforcement costs for the state, and challenges to the legitimacy of state claims to management would be resolved through a redistribution of rights and duties leading to greater community involvement in decision making. There were also questions and speculation about the ultimate shape of future systems of co-management. Anticipating problems in the integration of local and state approaches to management, Feit (1988) spoke of dual systems of knowing that could interact to resolve common resource management challenges. Pinkerton (1989), concerned about the forces of bureaucratization, asked if nascent co-management arrangements could remain resilient and accountable to local communities. Looking ahead, Berkes (1981) suggested the emergence of a third system of management, which drew on the respective strengths of differing cultural traditions.Some three decades after the implementation of several legally based co-management agreements in Arctic Canada, there is an opportunity to move beyond speculation and reflect on experience to understand these processes and their underlying dynamics. …

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