Spiritual stewardship in aboriginal resource management systems

Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en tribal groups in northwestern British Columbia are an example of aboriginal peoples involved in the practice of sacred or spiritual stewardship in their ancestral homelands. All aspects of tribal organization and function are infused with spiritual expression including the use of dreams, visions, teachings from the myths of oral tradition, and the symbolic representation of their tribal worldview (including both earthly and supernatural elements) in language, material culture, social and geographic organization, art, dance, and song. The practice of spiritual stewardship involves the ritual taking and use of natural resources according to cultural protocols established in tribal mythology and validated within a cosmology that views human beings as part of an interacting life force continuum that includes animals and spirit beings. Animals and fish are viewed as intelligent societies having the power to influence events and, as such, they must be treated with respect using instructions encoded in the myths and teachings of the people's oral tradition. In the context of this cosmological framework and its associated sacred geography, sociocultural resource management practices are based on a body of heuristic and phenomenological aboriginal knowledge. Spiritual stewardship represents a cosmic sanctioning of ethics that ensures the continued future supply of strategic life-supporting resources and thereby ensures the future of the people who depend on them for cultural and physical survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]