Indigenous engagement with the Alexander Archipelago Wolf: Cultural context and traditional ecological knowledge

Abstract

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska conducted a Species Status Assessment in response to a petition to list the Alexander Archipelago wolf under the Endangered Species Act. This federal undertaking could not be adequately prepared without including the voices of the Indigenous People who have a deep connection with the subspecies. The Indigenous knowledge presented in this report is the cultural and intellectual property of those who have shared it. The purpose of the report is to communicate the knowledge shared with us to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help inform the Species Status Assessment and future tribal consultations, wildlife research, and management. Due to a constrained regulatory timeline, we employed rapid appraisal research to expeditiously develop a preliminary understanding of Indigenous People’s ecological knowledge of wolves. We applied the social scientific methods of qualitative ethnography and inductive coding from grounded theory for text analysis. We conducted archival research and literature reviews on the cultural significance of wolves in Tlingit society and social organization to supplement in-depth conversations with traditional knowledge holders who are local wolf experts. The study was informed by two tribal consultations.