Essay Five - American Indian, Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Requirements

Each student will write a rougly three page essay.  This essay is due via email attachment by 5 PM on Friday, April 3rd.  The essay must be in MS Word 2007 or below or WordPerfect 12 or below or pdf.  I often cannot open Microsoft Works or other files. You should send with a return receipt or ask me to reply to make sure I have received the attachment.  If you copy yourself, you should also be able to see if the attachment worked.  Note the policy on late papers in the policy section at the end of the syllabus. If your paper will be late, please send via email so there is a time and date  it was sent.

1. Your essay should be word-processed, double-spaced, one-inch to one and one-half inch margins. It should be spell-checked and grammar-checked. Pages Numbered. Font no smaller than 12 point.

2. You should have a cover page with title, date, prompt, class and section, and your name. 

3.    Number each paragraph.     Bold your thesis.  After the end of the essay, attach an OUTLINE of the essay with the thesis clearly stated and at minimum a line for each paragraph.

4. Each essay should be approximately three pages long (not including the title page or Works Consulted page).

5. You must include a Works Consulted/Cited Page and/or Complete Footnotes/Endnotes.  You may use MLA, Turabian, Harvard, or University of Chicago in-text, footnote, or endnote styles. APA is OK, provided you add page numbers to it. CAREFUL AND CORRECT CITATION IS REQUIRED. WHEN IN DOUBT, CITE. Remember that simply paraphrasing or changing every third word is not OK. Quote and cite or radically summarize and cite. Use quotation marks when quoting or indent if quote is five lines or longer. Guessing at where your information comes from is not OK. Use page numbers in your in-text citations, footnotes or endnotes. Book or journal titles are italicized or underlined.  You need not consult any other sources than what we have read for class.  Those sources and any other sources you consult must be included in your Works Consulted/Cited and cited in-text or in footnotes/endnotes.

6. Your essay should define any key terms used, use examples to illustrate and support your thesis where appropriate, and discuss likely alternatives or respond to possible objections.

Please consult the Essay Grading/Proofreading Rubric for further details.

Choose One of the following prompts:   

1. What is one issue Callicott identifies in "American Indian Land Wisdom? Sorting Out the Issues" and why is it important? Why does Callicott discuss American Indian land wisdom in the first place?

2. Describe and comment upon two connections between Berkes’s "Traditional Ecological Knowledge" and Callicott’s "American Indian Land Wisdom? Sorting Out the Issues".

3. Describe the spectrum Nasdady identifies. What light does this spectrum and his focus on defining "environmentalism" shed on understanding the Kluane specifically and the sometimes troubled relations between indigenous peoples and Western environmentalists?

4. What light does the spectrum Nasdady identifies shed on one of the continuing debates we have observed in the course of the semester?

5.  Argument analysis. Pick a main conclusion of any of the authors we read for this section of the course. Charitably, show how the author reached this conclusion (presuppositions, reasons, etc.) and offer an assessment of the argument.

6. ***Wild Card. Topic of your choice, but get approval of instructor first.