Dennis Martinez
History, Fire and Tradition
Thursday, January 18, 2001, 11:30 AM
Dennis Martinez
is of Oodham/Chicano/Anglo heritage. His academic background is
in the history and philosophy of science. He is also trained in
the Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and is chair of the Indigenous
Peoples' Restoration Network, a working group of the Society for
Ecological Restoration International and is co-director (with Agnes
Pilgrim of Siletz Confederated Tribes) of the Takelma Intertribal
Project which brought back the Salmon Homecoming Ceremony after an
absence of 150 years.LECTURE SUMMARY
Dennis Martinez gave a captivating talk contrasting the environmental implications of 17th century European philosophy and political theory (quoting Locke and Hobbs verbatim) and western science with traditional knowledge and social/belief systems of indigenous peoples. Oh yes, he talked some about fire and restoration...and paleoecology, and basket-weaving, and agriculture, and individual tree selection forestry, and coyote/raven stories...and after an hour of eloquent discourse entirely without notes, he answered questions for another twenty minutes.