Epistemological inequality : Aboriginal labor and knowledge in the geological surveys of George Mercer Dawson, 1874-1901

Historical studies of Canadian science often ignore the assistance that Aboriginal people provided to frontier scientists. Monographs and biographies detailing the extraordinary career of Canadian geological surveyor George Mercer Dawson in the late nineteenth-century subsume the role that Aborigina...

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Main Author: Prkachin, Eva Jean
Format: Others
Language:English
Published: University of British Columbia 2009
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2429/12267
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spelling ndltd-UBC-oai-circle.library.ubc.ca-2429-122672018-01-05T17:23:41Z Epistemological inequality : Aboriginal labor and knowledge in the geological surveys of George Mercer Dawson, 1874-1901 Prkachin, Eva Jean Historical studies of Canadian science often ignore the assistance that Aboriginal people provided to frontier scientists. Monographs and biographies detailing the extraordinary career of Canadian geological surveyor George Mercer Dawson in the late nineteenth-century subsume the role that Aboriginal people played in his explorations. Postcolonial scholarship dealing with science criticizes the low epistemological status that scientific explorers accorded to Aboriginal knowledge, but neglects how collaboration between Aboriginal people and scientists influenced the knowledge that they produced in the New World. Dawson’s journals, technical notes, and scientific publications detail the numerous types of physical and intellectual labor that Aboriginal people contributed to his surveying expeditions in western Canada, particularly British Columbia, Alberta, and the Yukon. Using Aboriginal guides, general laborers, and informants enabled Dawson to cover substantial amounts of terrain during short surveying seasons, avoid hazards and delays, make ethnological observations, and record information on regions that he did not personally visit. Despite borrowing substantial amounts of knowledge from his Aboriginal guides and informants, Dawson did not equate Indigenous knowledge with scientific epistemologies. Dawson extracted the knowledge that Aboriginal people supplied him with from its epistemological packaging, but frequently acknowledged the Indigenous origin of his information, even in highly specialized scientific publications. Dawson’s work, then, serves as a powerful reminder of Aboriginal contributions to science produced during the exploration of North America. Arts, Faculty of History, Department of Graduate 2009-08-17T15:47:01Z 2009-08-17T15:47:01Z 2009 2009-11 Text Thesis/Dissertation http://hdl.handle.net/2429/12267 eng Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 690678 bytes application/pdf University of British Columbia
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language English
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description Historical studies of Canadian science often ignore the assistance that Aboriginal people provided to frontier scientists. Monographs and biographies detailing the extraordinary career of Canadian geological surveyor George Mercer Dawson in the late nineteenth-century subsume the role that Aboriginal people played in his explorations. Postcolonial scholarship dealing with science criticizes the low epistemological status that scientific explorers accorded to Aboriginal knowledge, but neglects how collaboration between Aboriginal people and scientists influenced the knowledge that they produced in the New World. Dawson’s journals, technical notes, and scientific publications detail the numerous types of physical and intellectual labor that Aboriginal people contributed to his surveying expeditions in western Canada, particularly British Columbia, Alberta, and the Yukon. Using Aboriginal guides, general laborers, and informants enabled Dawson to cover substantial amounts of terrain during short surveying seasons, avoid hazards and delays, make ethnological observations, and record information on regions that he did not personally visit. Despite borrowing substantial amounts of knowledge from his Aboriginal guides and informants, Dawson did not equate Indigenous knowledge with scientific epistemologies. Dawson extracted the knowledge that Aboriginal people supplied him with from its epistemological packaging, but frequently acknowledged the Indigenous origin of his information, even in highly specialized scientific publications. Dawson’s work, then, serves as a powerful reminder of Aboriginal contributions to science produced during the exploration of North America. === Arts, Faculty of === History, Department of === Graduate
author Prkachin, Eva Jean
spellingShingle Prkachin, Eva Jean
Epistemological inequality : Aboriginal labor and knowledge in the geological surveys of George Mercer Dawson, 1874-1901
author_facet Prkachin, Eva Jean
author_sort Prkachin, Eva Jean
title Epistemological inequality : Aboriginal labor and knowledge in the geological surveys of George Mercer Dawson, 1874-1901
title_short Epistemological inequality : Aboriginal labor and knowledge in the geological surveys of George Mercer Dawson, 1874-1901
title_full Epistemological inequality : Aboriginal labor and knowledge in the geological surveys of George Mercer Dawson, 1874-1901
title_fullStr Epistemological inequality : Aboriginal labor and knowledge in the geological surveys of George Mercer Dawson, 1874-1901
title_full_unstemmed Epistemological inequality : Aboriginal labor and knowledge in the geological surveys of George Mercer Dawson, 1874-1901
title_sort epistemological inequality : aboriginal labor and knowledge in the geological surveys of george mercer dawson, 1874-1901
publisher University of British Columbia
publishDate 2009
url http://hdl.handle.net/2429/12267
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