Trail of Story, Traveller's Path - 9781897425350

Trail of Story, Traveller's Path examines the meaning of landscape, drawn from Leslie Main Johnson's rich experience with diverse environments and peoples, including the Gitksan and Witsuwit'en of northwestern British Columbia, the Kaska Dene of the southern Yukon, and the Gwich'in of the Mackenzie Delta.

With passion and conviction, Johnson maintains that our response to our environment shapes our culture, determines our lifestyle, defines our identity, and sets the tone for our relationships and economies. With photos, she documents the landscape and contrasts the ecological relationships with land of First Nations peoples to those of non-indigenous scientists. The result is an absorbing study of local knowledge of place and a broad exploration of the meaning of landscape.

"Trail of Story, Traveller's Path is unique in the literature on place and ethnoecology. Leslie Main Johnson combines in-depth analyses of northwestern Canadian First Nations' ways of thinking and being on the land with compelling and nuanced cross-cultural comparisons of particular kinds of landscapes, which figure prominently among northern indigenous foragers' environmental perceptions and interactions. Johnson navigates this path with agile sensitivity and deep respect for the individuals and communities whose stories and trails she shares."---Thomas Thornton, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Portland State University & author of Being and Place among the Tlingit