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Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, And Social Imagination
The glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on.
- Percy Shelley, "Mont Blanc," 1816
Glaciers in America's far northwest figure prominently in indigenous oral traditions, early travelers' journals, and the work of geophysical scientists. By following such stories across three centuries, this book explores local knowledge, colonial encounters, and environmental change.
Do Glaciers Listen? examines conflicting depictions of glaciers to show how natural and social histories are entangled. During late stages of the Little Ice Age, significant geophysical changes coincided with dramatic social upheaval in the Saint Elias Mountains. European visitors brought conceptions of Nature as sublime, as spiritual, or as a resource for human progress. They saw glaciers as inanimate, subject to empirical investigation and measurement. Aboriginal responses were strikingly different. From their perspectives, glaciers were sentient, animate, and quick to respond to human behaviour. In each case, experiences and ideas surrounding glaciers were incorporated into interpretations of social relations.
Focusing on these contrasting views, Julie Cruikshank demonstrates how local knowledge is produced, rather than "discovered," through such encounters, and how oral histories conjoin social and biophysical processes. She traces how divergent views continue to weave through contemporary debates about protected areas, parks and the new World Heritage site that encompasses the area where Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory now meet. Students and scholars of Native studies and anthropology as well as readers interested in northern studies and colonial encounters will find Do Glaciers Listen? a fascinating read and a rich addition to circumpolar literature.
Winner of the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, 2006
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on.
- Percy Shelley, "Mont Blanc," 1816
Glaciers in America's far northwest figure prominently in indigenous oral traditions, early travelers' journals, and the work of geophysical scientists. By following such stories across three centuries, this book explores local knowledge, colonial encounters, and environmental change.
Do Glaciers Listen? examines conflicting depictions of glaciers to show how natural and social histories are entangled. During late stages of the Little Ice Age, significant geophysical changes coincided with dramatic social upheaval in the Saint Elias Mountains. European visitors brought conceptions of Nature as sublime, as spiritual, or as a resource for human progress. They saw glaciers as inanimate, subject to empirical investigation and measurement. Aboriginal responses were strikingly different. From their perspectives, glaciers were sentient, animate, and quick to respond to human behaviour. In each case, experiences and ideas surrounding glaciers were incorporated into interpretations of social relations.
Focusing on these contrasting views, Julie Cruikshank demonstrates how local knowledge is produced, rather than "discovered," through such encounters, and how oral histories conjoin social and biophysical processes. She traces how divergent views continue to weave through contemporary debates about protected areas, parks and the new World Heritage site that encompasses the area where Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory now meet. Students and scholars of Native studies and anthropology as well as readers interested in northern studies and colonial encounters will find Do Glaciers Listen? a fascinating read and a rich addition to circumpolar literature.
Winner of the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, 2006
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 12, 2018
This is one of the first and definitely the best ethnographies that I have ever read. Pretty straightforward and an easy reading book that goes through the Oral history and stories of Indigenous people of Northwest Canada, i.e. their movements, settlement, etc. Unpacking their local knowledge of the glaciers, the author made these fascinating stories speak to and challenge the colonialist's primary encounters with glaciers, and their pieces of evidence and reports from the region, as well as the current scientific knowledge of the environmental scientists. For me, the indigenous understanding of non-humans and generally the nature, such as glaciers and their advancement, as sentient and alive entities was at the same time remarkable and thought-provoking (and a little bit unsettling). I recommend you to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VT..., before delving into the stories.
And even if you did not read the book, just please do not ever fry bacon close to the glaciers, they'll get angry.
And even if you did not read the book, just please do not ever fry bacon close to the glaciers, they'll get angry.
November 2, 2020
"Anthropologists have recently addressed the need for more differentiated portrayals of colonial encounters. A postcolonial metanarrative that depicts coherent, homogenous colonialism as an intractable template with predictable outcomes, they point out, now seems too globalizing and too ahistorical. Such representations of history also err in their apparent relegation of colonialism safely to the past...This underlying universalism can be interpreted as refueling an intellectual imperialism that once again presents Europe as the key historical agent, as though no other actors existed. Yet the aftermaths of colonialism are always local." (9)
These words in the introduction of Julie Cruikshank's dynamic and intriguing anthropological work, "Do Glaciers Listen?"struck me powerfully as I realized the enormity of their implication. Though I have long recognized the indigenous genocide that has been a repercussion of global European colonialism, I have never given much thought to how the very framework of my thoughts is still based on the lens of colonialism.
“Local knowledge has been framed repeatedly as a foil for concepts of Western rationality that inevitably reflect more about Western ideology than about ways of apprehending the world…Such formulations seem to deny varieties of local knowledge their own histories. Modernist recasting of “traditional ecological knowledge” continues to present local knowledge as an object for science rather than as intelligence that could inform science.” (257)
How much have we lost in our quest for scientific rationalism? How long have we dismissed as "mythical" or "magical" thinking, when it is in reality a legitimate way to view phenomena in the world that is no more or less truth than our own? What does this loss and realization of this loss have to teach us?
These are the questions that are increasingly preoccupying me. The more I read on scientific, ecological and antiracist topics, the less I am able to see them as separate disciplines. Julie Cruikshank ends her work by asking what indigenous knowledge could potentially contribute to science when taken on its own terms. Though the taboo against cooking with grease near a glacier may seem incomprehensible to us, what is lost to us when we dismiss it? After all, the Tlingit people have side by side with glaciers for centuries. Why should we deny their wisdom, even if it doesn't fit within our conceptual framework as to how the world works? Has rationality really been working so well in terms of our species' relationship with the Earth?
While the organization structure and some of the writing felt a bit off-kilter and clumsy, I gave this book five stars because of the underlying questions it poses. This is a necessary work, and I high recommend it to anyone interested in indigenous perspectives of the land.
These words in the introduction of Julie Cruikshank's dynamic and intriguing anthropological work, "Do Glaciers Listen?"struck me powerfully as I realized the enormity of their implication. Though I have long recognized the indigenous genocide that has been a repercussion of global European colonialism, I have never given much thought to how the very framework of my thoughts is still based on the lens of colonialism.
“Local knowledge has been framed repeatedly as a foil for concepts of Western rationality that inevitably reflect more about Western ideology than about ways of apprehending the world…Such formulations seem to deny varieties of local knowledge their own histories. Modernist recasting of “traditional ecological knowledge” continues to present local knowledge as an object for science rather than as intelligence that could inform science.” (257)
How much have we lost in our quest for scientific rationalism? How long have we dismissed as "mythical" or "magical" thinking, when it is in reality a legitimate way to view phenomena in the world that is no more or less truth than our own? What does this loss and realization of this loss have to teach us?
These are the questions that are increasingly preoccupying me. The more I read on scientific, ecological and antiracist topics, the less I am able to see them as separate disciplines. Julie Cruikshank ends her work by asking what indigenous knowledge could potentially contribute to science when taken on its own terms. Though the taboo against cooking with grease near a glacier may seem incomprehensible to us, what is lost to us when we dismiss it? After all, the Tlingit people have side by side with glaciers for centuries. Why should we deny their wisdom, even if it doesn't fit within our conceptual framework as to how the world works? Has rationality really been working so well in terms of our species' relationship with the Earth?
While the organization structure and some of the writing felt a bit off-kilter and clumsy, I gave this book five stars because of the underlying questions it poses. This is a necessary work, and I high recommend it to anyone interested in indigenous perspectives of the land.
August 22, 2013
My undergrads hated this -- they thought it rambling and in need of tighter editorial control. I wanted to like it more than I did, though I did like it more than they did. I imagine Cruikshank dictating the book in a small tape recorder and then reproducing that text unedited. It reads in places like you're having a conversation with someone who is very smart, works on cool stuff, but is having an off day or trying to cover up having not done the reading (or having read it a while ago and forgotten some of the key parts). Had the potential to be great didn't reach it. (Spoiler: yes. Also, do NOT cook with grease in front of glaciers, they don't like that shit.).
August 18, 2021
I found this hard to read but I thought its focus on oral tradition and passed down narratives was interesting. The book discusses how indigenous peoples in Alaska continue to pass down stories about glaciers, and use them to understand changing conditions such as European exploration and ecological change
July 23, 2009
This book is very well researched, excellently objective, engaging, captivating, wholly original, and honestly exciting. In this book the author seeks to examine various aspects of history from the perspective Southeast Alaskan and northern British Columbian glaciers and their interaction with man and the environment. The bulk of the study focuses on the Little Ice Age period and after, roughly 1500-1900 and uses historical accounts from Euro-explorers and mostly Tlingit Native American Indians. The author does a great job with her use of sources, placing European narratives alongside Tlingit narratives, while also keeping the reader interested. Much of the book documents some of the many exploration ventures to Alaska during the 1700s and 1800s and man's interaction--for better or worse--with glaciers. It tracks explorers like La Perouse, John Muir, and others. The author's discussion on early travel, the relationship between glaciers and mankind, and glaciers and the environment is excellently done and captivating. It shrewdly captures the dangers inherent in Alaskan waters and glaciers. A truly unique and interesting study. In many ways the book works to make the reader see how glaciers 'live' and have a history of their own.
May 23, 2023
I visited the Yukon right before the pandemic really took off in Toronto and at the time I was looking for interesting environmental books on the area. This would have been a lovely read then. There are three sections in this book, which map onto the three main themes that Cruikshank explores here.
Her first section, Matters of Locality, focus on Indigenous oral traditions and various debates about local knowledge. The first chapter focuses on memories and oral accounts of the Little Ice Age (16th - 19th centuries), which rendered certain territory once again accessible, and the interactions of both Indigenous peoples and 18th century Europeans with this land. Next a framework is offered for listening to oral traditions, and the accounts of three inland Yukon women elders are gathered (Kitty Smith, Annie Ned, and Angela Sidney) as well as contextual notes and the storytellers’ concerns about 20th century life and modernity (Chapter 2 -3).
In the second section, Practices of Exploration, Cruikshank traces how glacier stories echo through both scientific and exploration literature. She follows the traces left behind by the brief visits of these strangers, their interactions and encounters with oral traditions, local knowledge, and collective practices, and how they were then transformed by these encounters with Indigenous nations. The three travellers Cruikshank focuses on are: Jean-Francois de La Perouse, an 18th century French expedition leader who visited a Tlingit community at Lituya Bay in 1786 (Chapter 4), the American environmentalist John Muir and his exchanges with Tlingit guides in 1879 and 1880 (Chapter 5), and British writer Edward Glave who visited the Yukon in 1890 and 1891 before leaving for the Belgian Congo and documenting the brutal slave trade that was happening there Under King Leopold (Chapter 6).
I think the Muir chapter was particularly enjoyable for the way it shows how water has been enrolled into the sphere of public history through popular travel accounts that later find their way into museums. Cruikshank discusses how stories travel and move to later audiences – both traditional Tlingit accounts and the stories of John Muir visiting Tlingit communities at a glacier-fed inlet that is now part of Glacier Bay National Park. According to Muir, the Tlingit saw glaciers as living creatures, though this story was editorially excised from publication. Yet these stories have survived within Tlingit communities, and stories Muir documented in 1879 have been heard a century later in museums where Tlingit elders have been invited to interpret displayed ceremonial objects. Cruikshank describes Tlingit elders as late as 1993 sharing stories of their ancestors meeting Muir the same year the US Navy administered martial law in Alaska. Tlingit elders know the value of their stories and when asked to share “traditional ecological knowledge” with Glacier Bay National Park, the elders agreed on condition that they would regain hunting rights within the park’s boundaries. We see then how water and stories of water are deeply threaded into histories of both imperialism and resistance.
Finally, Cruikshank’s third section, Scientific Research in Sentient Places, thinks about themes of borders, boundaries, and nationalist narratives in relation to Indigenous peoples. Cruikshank traces the history of mapping and international boundary-making by following the accounts of surveyors (Chapter 7). She also looks to the future and thinks how the themes of previous chapters reframe current debates about Indigenous land claims and glaciers melting under a rapidly changing climate.
An important theme in tis book is the way local knowledge is often dismissed as superstition. Cruikshank names Schwatka as an example:
"Frederick Schwatka, a veteran of the United States Army who took up “exploration,” passed through this region in the summer of 1891. Schwatka’s accounts seem to typify a kind of exploration that geographer Felix Driver, borrowing from Joseph Conrad, has called “Geography Militant,” characterized by aggressive naming practices, crude census taking, detailed mapping, and extravagant military metaphor.39 This was not Schwatka’s first trip to the Yukon River: in 1883, he had led down the Yukon River a United States-sponsored expedition framed as a military reconnaissance in search of “hostile Indians,” of whom he found none.40 His legacy today largely consists of many place names, those intangible wormcasts of exploration, that he left along the Yukon River.
…During a glacier crossing that he describes as “simply frightful,” he noted that the guides “besought us to make no noise while on the ice or the crevasses would open wider and swallow us up ... They firmly resented even our whispering, so fearful were they of the consequences.” His con- clusion conveys both his relief after their safe crossing and a sense of how ideas were already being differentiated hierarchically. “Before crossing, they all ‘made medicine’ and no doubt it saved many valuable lives. Their fear of glacial ice is too pronounced and manifest to be based on any general physical reasons, and must be accounted for wholly by superstition.
…My intention here is not to single out Schwatka, whose hubris would undoubtedly have been praised as “pluck” by his nineteenth- century colleagues. More telling is the persistence of such ideas.”
Cruikshank then emphasizes how in many ways glaciers and glacial landscapes are not pure objects of nature (as Latour would also claim) but are also social, sentient, act, behave, and move — in some cases in response to human action — first in Indigenous oral accounts, and later in scientific ones.
Her first section, Matters of Locality, focus on Indigenous oral traditions and various debates about local knowledge. The first chapter focuses on memories and oral accounts of the Little Ice Age (16th - 19th centuries), which rendered certain territory once again accessible, and the interactions of both Indigenous peoples and 18th century Europeans with this land. Next a framework is offered for listening to oral traditions, and the accounts of three inland Yukon women elders are gathered (Kitty Smith, Annie Ned, and Angela Sidney) as well as contextual notes and the storytellers’ concerns about 20th century life and modernity (Chapter 2 -3).
In the second section, Practices of Exploration, Cruikshank traces how glacier stories echo through both scientific and exploration literature. She follows the traces left behind by the brief visits of these strangers, their interactions and encounters with oral traditions, local knowledge, and collective practices, and how they were then transformed by these encounters with Indigenous nations. The three travellers Cruikshank focuses on are: Jean-Francois de La Perouse, an 18th century French expedition leader who visited a Tlingit community at Lituya Bay in 1786 (Chapter 4), the American environmentalist John Muir and his exchanges with Tlingit guides in 1879 and 1880 (Chapter 5), and British writer Edward Glave who visited the Yukon in 1890 and 1891 before leaving for the Belgian Congo and documenting the brutal slave trade that was happening there Under King Leopold (Chapter 6).
I think the Muir chapter was particularly enjoyable for the way it shows how water has been enrolled into the sphere of public history through popular travel accounts that later find their way into museums. Cruikshank discusses how stories travel and move to later audiences – both traditional Tlingit accounts and the stories of John Muir visiting Tlingit communities at a glacier-fed inlet that is now part of Glacier Bay National Park. According to Muir, the Tlingit saw glaciers as living creatures, though this story was editorially excised from publication. Yet these stories have survived within Tlingit communities, and stories Muir documented in 1879 have been heard a century later in museums where Tlingit elders have been invited to interpret displayed ceremonial objects. Cruikshank describes Tlingit elders as late as 1993 sharing stories of their ancestors meeting Muir the same year the US Navy administered martial law in Alaska. Tlingit elders know the value of their stories and when asked to share “traditional ecological knowledge” with Glacier Bay National Park, the elders agreed on condition that they would regain hunting rights within the park’s boundaries. We see then how water and stories of water are deeply threaded into histories of both imperialism and resistance.
Finally, Cruikshank’s third section, Scientific Research in Sentient Places, thinks about themes of borders, boundaries, and nationalist narratives in relation to Indigenous peoples. Cruikshank traces the history of mapping and international boundary-making by following the accounts of surveyors (Chapter 7). She also looks to the future and thinks how the themes of previous chapters reframe current debates about Indigenous land claims and glaciers melting under a rapidly changing climate.
An important theme in tis book is the way local knowledge is often dismissed as superstition. Cruikshank names Schwatka as an example:
"Frederick Schwatka, a veteran of the United States Army who took up “exploration,” passed through this region in the summer of 1891. Schwatka’s accounts seem to typify a kind of exploration that geographer Felix Driver, borrowing from Joseph Conrad, has called “Geography Militant,” characterized by aggressive naming practices, crude census taking, detailed mapping, and extravagant military metaphor.39 This was not Schwatka’s first trip to the Yukon River: in 1883, he had led down the Yukon River a United States-sponsored expedition framed as a military reconnaissance in search of “hostile Indians,” of whom he found none.40 His legacy today largely consists of many place names, those intangible wormcasts of exploration, that he left along the Yukon River.
…During a glacier crossing that he describes as “simply frightful,” he noted that the guides “besought us to make no noise while on the ice or the crevasses would open wider and swallow us up ... They firmly resented even our whispering, so fearful were they of the consequences.” His con- clusion conveys both his relief after their safe crossing and a sense of how ideas were already being differentiated hierarchically. “Before crossing, they all ‘made medicine’ and no doubt it saved many valuable lives. Their fear of glacial ice is too pronounced and manifest to be based on any general physical reasons, and must be accounted for wholly by superstition.
…My intention here is not to single out Schwatka, whose hubris would undoubtedly have been praised as “pluck” by his nineteenth- century colleagues. More telling is the persistence of such ideas.”
Cruikshank then emphasizes how in many ways glaciers and glacial landscapes are not pure objects of nature (as Latour would also claim) but are also social, sentient, act, behave, and move — in some cases in response to human action — first in Indigenous oral accounts, and later in scientific ones.
January 29, 2010
This book was a fascinating look at conflicting cultural views of the landscape at the borders of BC, the Yukon, and Alaska. It provided a lot of background information about the groups and individuals who ended up there and many sources for further reading. There were a few points at which it seemed a bit too much like a textbook, but for the most part it was an enjoyable read about an interesting topic.
December 28, 2019
I quite enjoyed this book but I need to make some remarks. Firstly I personally find the first chapters too redundant. If one is able to keep reading after this part, he/she will be fully rewarded since close to the half the book gets quite adventurous and addictive. Secondly, I still don’t get the parallel the author made with the Belgian Congo and the topic treated in this book. Despite the fact that I could see some parallelisms between the two and their repercussions on Glave’s accounting style changement in his notes, I still think there was no need to dedicate a full detailed and long chapter to it. It could have been mentioned but more in general. In this way the reader might get lost in the comparison and may need to refocus on the main topic of the book after finishing the 6th Chapter. Really interesting the pictures and drawings of indigenous people presented in the book. I found that pictures were really useful to plunge oneself into the core narrative of the book.
December 31, 2017
Cruikshank presents narratives of glacial areas in the St. Elias Mountains area of North America from the perspectives of native people and western explorers. The contrast in these perspectives is quite interesting and immediately leads the reader to an assessment of truth, fact, use, and ways that such stories influence who we are and who we become, as well as the influence on others who read such accounts. Cruikshank also notes the original source of diaries and journey accounts by explorers, such as John Muir, and the printed editions which excised some material and some of the original perspective, producing a very different document and perspective.
I found the book to challenge my own perceptions of the world and exploration narratives with which I am familiar, including writings of John Muir. An excellent and scholarly, yet accessible, presentation. Highly recommended.
I found the book to challenge my own perceptions of the world and exploration narratives with which I am familiar, including writings of John Muir. An excellent and scholarly, yet accessible, presentation. Highly recommended.
March 15, 2016
So far, this is my favorite book I've read all year. As an ethnographic text it weaves together ideas of culture, space, and time to put into conversation "modern scientific" knowledge of the environment and "traditional local" knowledges through the lens of the colonial encounter and postcolonialism. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in indigenous knowledges and oral traditions and/or environmentalism. It's well-written and well organized, and presents a strong argument that our worlds are shaped in plurilectical processes between space, time, society, and its others.
March 7, 2024
A few of my takeaways from this dense yet interesting book:
1. “Glaciers appear as actors in this book. In accounts we will hear from Athapaskan and Tlingit oral tradition, glaciers take action and respond to their surroundings. They are sensitive to smells and they listen. They make moral judgements and they punish infractions. ... English is a language rich in nouns but lacking verb forms that distinguish animate from inanimate subjects. Both Athapaskan and Tlingit languages have comparably fewer nouns but are verb-rich and hence often define landscape in terms of its actions" (p. 3).
2. John Muir was a condescending jerk to his Native guides, but he at least tried to understand their worldview.
3. “Narrative recollections and memories about history, tradition, and life experience represent distinct and powerful bodies of local knowledge that have to be appreciated in their totality, rather than fragmented into data, if we are to learn anything from them. Rarely do management-driven studies of [traditional ecological knowledge] or environmentalist parables tap into the range of human engagements with nature -- the diverse beliefs, practices, knowledge, and everyday histories of nature that might expand the crisis-ridden focus of environmental politics" (p. 259).
1. “Glaciers appear as actors in this book. In accounts we will hear from Athapaskan and Tlingit oral tradition, glaciers take action and respond to their surroundings. They are sensitive to smells and they listen. They make moral judgements and they punish infractions. ... English is a language rich in nouns but lacking verb forms that distinguish animate from inanimate subjects. Both Athapaskan and Tlingit languages have comparably fewer nouns but are verb-rich and hence often define landscape in terms of its actions" (p. 3).
2. John Muir was a condescending jerk to his Native guides, but he at least tried to understand their worldview.
3. “Narrative recollections and memories about history, tradition, and life experience represent distinct and powerful bodies of local knowledge that have to be appreciated in their totality, rather than fragmented into data, if we are to learn anything from them. Rarely do management-driven studies of [traditional ecological knowledge] or environmentalist parables tap into the range of human engagements with nature -- the diverse beliefs, practices, knowledge, and everyday histories of nature that might expand the crisis-ridden focus of environmental politics" (p. 259).
January 26, 2021
Cruikshank's study magnificently transects several of my most compelling research and teaching interests. Her work brings an anthropological sensitivity together with sophisticated historical analysis of juxtaposed narrative accounts from distinct cultural archives which express the values and insights of competing worldviews. In particular, I am excited by her critique of the limits of Enlightenment rationality, the exercise of establishing "natural" territorial boundaries, and the implications of glacial 'testimony' to our ongoing struggle to apprehend processes of regional and global climate change.
December 30, 2019
Sort of....
October 24, 2024
Interesting concept and methodology, couldn't follow a lot of it tho
December 29, 2025
Honestly, to be re-read when I haven't so much going on in life.
March 26, 2017
3.5 Interesting ideas about things I never thought much about.
April 25, 2008
This book put a different spin on linguistics than books I've read previously. It read more like a history book than a linguistic analysis, which was great. The author tried to blend Athapaskan and Tlingit oral narratives with European and Euro-American written records of the late Little Ice Age, which lasted roughly from 1500 to 1900 in northwestern North America. Her intent was to compare different cultural views of glaciers and how both cultures dealt with encountering each other in a changing landscape. The book was a little choppy, but overall pretty good. I'd recommend it if you're interested in colonial encounters.
March 8, 2012
While well written and informative, this book tried to bring to many concepts under its control rather than sticking to a central main point that the reader could follow throughout- just looking through different reviews shows how different readers assumed the author was trying to highlight very different points, all confused on which the main point really was and which was just filler.
May 2, 2015
Julie Cruikshank details the entanglements of local and global in ways that reveal “how porous knowledge practices are”. She explains how many terms Western-educated scholars assume are self-explanatory are in fact highly contested. Her examples include “land,” “hunting” “resources,” and “property”.
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September 29, 2015Cruickshank examines how environmental change and cross-cultural encounters have been framed through oral history narrative in aboriginal communities of northern British Columbia.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews