Nicholas Reo and Kyle Whyte have posted their paper, “Hunting and Morality as Elements of Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The legitimacy of contemporary subsistence hunting practices of North American Indians has been questioned because of hunters’ use of modern technologies and integration of wage-based and subsistence livelihoods. The legitimacy of tribal traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has been questioned on similar grounds and used as justification for ignoring tribal perspectives on critical natural resource conservation and development issues. This paper examines hunting on the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation in North Central Wisconsin, USA. The study documents contemporary hunting practices and the traditional moral code that informs hunting-related behaviors and judgments. Subsistence hunting is framed in the context of TEK and attention focused on the interplay between TEK’s practical and moral dimensions. Results indicate the importance of traditional moral codes in guiding a community’s contemporary hunting practices and the inseparability and interdependence of epistemological, practical, and ethical dimensions of TEK.