S & BIBLIOGRAPHIES Bibliography of Agriculture Biological Abstracts Botany Subject Index (U. S. Dept. of Agriculture) Chemical Abstracts Craker, L. E., A. F. Chadwick, & J. E. Simon. 1986. An introduction to the scientific literature on herbs, spices, and medicinal plants. Recent Adv. Bot. Hort. Pharm. 1: 1-9. Excerpta Botanica Index Medicus Index to American Botanical Literature Simon, J. E., A. F. Chadwick, & L. E. Craker. 1984. Herbs: an indexed bibliography, 1971-1980: the scientific literature on selected herbs, and aromatic and medicinal plants of the temperate zone. Shoe String Press. 770 pp.

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Plants & Civilization; An Introduction to the Interrelationships of Plants and People

The evaluation of the cultural significance of plants in ethnobotanical studies is an essential step in various types of investigations, including research on lexical retention of plant names in diverging languages, on trade and material exchange between groups, on subsistence strategies, and on folk classification. An index of cultural significance was developed, based on ethnobotanical data on Thompson and Lillooet, two Interior Salish groups of British Columbia. For a given plant taxon, the index is a composite of a wide variety of potential applications of a plant, ranked according to the contribution of each separate application to survival in traditional cultures, together with estimates of intensity and exclusivity of use for each. Example calculations of the derivation of the index are provided, as well as a summary of calculations for more than 500 plant species from Thompson and Lillooet territories. The index has some limitations, but overall it seems to provide a meaningful and valid assessment of the relative importance of a plant taxon in Thompson and Lillooet.

“The Importance of a Rose”: Evaluating the Cultural Significance of Plants in Thompson and Lillooet Interior Salish

Knowledge and practices of indigenous peoples relating to local plants used for food, medicine, materials, and other purposes are threatened in many parts of the world. The reasons for declining kn...

“Where our women used to get the food”: cumulative effects and loss of ethnobotanical knowledge and practice; case study from coastal British ColumbiaThis paper was submitted for the Special Issue on Ethnobotany, inspired by the Ethnobotany Symposium organized by Alain Cuerrier, Montreal Botanical Garden, and held in Montreal at the 2006 annual meeting of the Canadian Botanical Association.

Knowledge and practices of indigenous peoples relating to local plants used for food, medicine, materials, and other purposes are threatened in many parts of the world. The reasons for declining knowledge and use of traditional re- sources are complex and multifaceted. We review a series of case examples of culturally valued food plants in British Co- lumbia and identify a suite of interacting social and environmental factors that have resulted in decreased use of and dwindling cultural knowledge about these plants over the past 150 years. Reasons for this loss include compounding influ- ences of changing knowledge systems owing to religious conversion and residential schools, loss of indigenous languages, loss of time and opportunity for traditional practices owing to participation in the wage economy, increasing urbanization of indigenous populations, loss of access to traditional resources, restriction of management practices for sustaining these resources, and most recently, forces of globalization and industrialization. Efforts to renew and restore traditional practices and relationships with plants and environments must recognize the cumulative effects of these factors and find ways to re- tain and reinforce the knowledge and practices still held by individuals and communities, to reverse some of the negative influences on cultural retention, and to develop new, relevant, and effective ways to revitalize languages, cultures, and eth- nobotanical knowledge within contemporary contexts.

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''Where our women used to get the food'': cumulative effects and loss of ethnobotanical knowledge and practice; case study from coastal

Popular concern over water quality has important implications for public water management because it can both empower water utilities to improve service but also limit their ability to make changes. In the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, obtaining sufficient high-quality water resources for a growing urban population poses a major challenge. Decision makers and urban hydrologists are aware of these challenges to water sustainability but the range of acceptable policy and management options available to them is constrained by public opinion. Therefore, this study examines cultural models of water quality and water management, termed ethnohydrology, among urban residents. The study yields three key findings. First, urban residents appear to have a shared model of ethnohydrology which holds that a) there are significant water quality risks associated with low financial investments in city-wide water treatment and the desert location of Phoenix, and b) government monitoring and management combined with household-level water treatment can yield water of an acceptable quality. Second, people with high incomes are more likely to engage in expensive water filtration activities and to agree with the cultural ethnohydrology model found. Third, people living in communities that are highly concerned about water quality are less likely to share high agreement around ethnohydrology. The results have implications for water policy making and planning, particularly in disadvantaged and vulnerable communities where water quality is perceived to be low.

/pdf/urban-ethnohydrology-cultural-knowledge-of-water-quality-and-2gbdk4qaes.pdf

Urban ethnohydrology: Cultural knowledge of water quality and water management in a desert city

It is known that the Coast Salish Indians of Vancouver Island used 122 species of plants. Means of collection, preparation, and utilization of these plants are outlined. The role of plants in Salish culture and economy for food, technology, medicine, religion, recreation, linguistics, and migration and settlement patterns is discussed. When possible, phonetic transcriptions are given of Salish names of plants. The ethnobotanies of the Island and related Salish and other Northwest Coast Indian groups are briefly compared. Sixty percent of the plants used by the Western Washington Salish and 20% of the species used by the Thompson Interior Salish were used similarly by the Island Salish. It is concluded that these differences are mainly the result of differences in regional vegetation, extent of trade and inter-group communications, similarity of cultural traits, and the degree of secrecy surrounding use. A map shows the territory of the Vancouver Island Salish and linguistic subdivisions. Summaries of plant uses are given in an Appendix.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4253212.pdf

Nancy Chapman Turner

Papers

The ethnobotany of the Coast Salish Indians of Vancouver Island