Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon

by Paul Nadasdy

This book challenges this conventional wisdom that land claims and co-management – two of the most visible and celebrated elements of this restructuring the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state – will help reverse centuries of inequity. Based on three years of ethnographic research in the Yukon, the author examines the complex relationship between the people of Kluane First Nation, the land and animals, and the state. This book moves beyond conventional models of colonialism, in which the state is treated as a monolithic entity, and instead explores how “state power” is reproduced through everyday bureaucratic practices – including struggles over the production and use of knowledge.

Genres: Nonfiction, Indigenous

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Shannon]

Really interesting. Well written and has a personal narrative feel lacking in other academic books on environmental management--just easy to read and interesting things to say.

[Gabby R]

I’d recommend this text to scholars interested in First Nations and Indigenous contexts (especially in the North) multispecies relationships, conservation, and incommensurability literature. Nadasdy’s argument counters the multiple world thesis/pluriverse in a very interesting way. I’ll be coming back to this text!

[Justin]

This is excellent. Read all of it. Take notes, take heed...

[Susan Wolf]

Great insight into the lives and realities of northern natives.