In this episode Michael spoke with Natalie Ban, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Natalie spoke with Michael about her work with coastal indigenous communities in British Columbia, and the importance she places on engaging with her local partners in the right way, without imposing her own research questions or hypotheses, looking for windows of opportunity for her work, and trying to make sure that her work has local value. Natalie also described a distinction between two fundamentally different ways of viewing natural resource use: one that views use as extractive and detrimental, and the other which combines use with stewardship, as the indigenous communities that Natalie works with do.
Natalie’s website: https://natalieban.wordpress.com/
Relevant articles by Natalie:
Ban, N. C., E. Wilson, and D. Neasloss. 2020. Historical and contemporary indigenous marine conservation strategies in the North Pacific. Conservation biology: the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology 34(1):5–14.
Ban, N., E. Wilson, and D. Neasloss. 2019. Strong historical and ongoing indigenous marine governance in the northeast Pacific Ocean: a case study of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation. Ecology and Society 24(4):10.
https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11091-240410