SEEING THE LANDSCAPE WITH TWO EYES: THE SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF NIMÍIPUU ETHNOGEOLOGY

Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk, a Mi'kmaw word) is an approach of inquiry and solutions in which investigators come together to view the world through an Indigenous lens with one eye (perspective), while the other eye sees through a Western lens. It has been used in a variety of Indigenous-partnered research projects. Working collaboratively and gathering Indigenous knowledge of the geologic landscape may lead to improved understanding of Pleistocene and other processes and landscape evolution.

Indigenous stories of landscapes and climate change are often considered “myths” by Euro-Americans and many geologists. But repeated correlation of Indigenous “myths” with scientifically documented events related to climate change, natural disaster, and geologic processes indicates that these stories accurately record real events and an acute understanding of landscape history that modern science should embrace. (Bishop, 2014: Baraniuk, 2022; Nunn and Cook, 2020, Bishop and Amerman, 2023.)

For example, the Yakama name for Rattlesnake Mountain—the highest point adjacent to the Yakima and Tri-Cities, Washington basins—is Lalíik which means “land above the water.” In 1923 J Harlen Bretz proposed that catastrophic Ice Age floods inundated both the Yakama and Tri-Cities basins. However, Yakama, Nez Perce, Cayuse, and other tribal stories, recorded the occurrence of these floods and high standing refuges across the Columbia Basin, long before J Harlen Bretz’s insight. Other stories that spring from first-hand observation and experience range from human encounters with mammoths in the western-most Columbia Basin and destructive jökulhlaups on the Salmon River 16,500 years ago, to Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene landslides on the Clearwater River.

In North American indigenous cultures, valuable information about landscape and cultures are woven into memorable stories told accurately for generations. Stories about events and landscapes may include memorable characters (the trickster Coyote and his friend Fox, for example) that enhance their replicability. The information contained there-in should be considered factual.