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Interestingly, Justin names both “tribal members” and “loggers” as feeling this
anxiety. It is also important to note that at this point Justin has not located himself
specifically within this relationship—he is narrating it from a relational distance.
Sarah: Are they doing things more scientifically here now, or what, or is that some of the
problem between...?
Sarah takes up Justin's construal of “a great anxiety” and science's dominance.
She assumes a comparative frame and wants to analyze the difference in more
specific detail. She uses the words “more scientifically,” pulling out a possible
implication of Justin's comment that science is taking the upper hand and implicitly
accepting the opposition of science with tradition.
Justin: There aren't many tribal lumber mills [reference to the Menominee Mill which
celebrated its centennial in 2008] that are a hundred years old. So they don't have a real,
the record that we do, and part of the practice, traditions, and oral history that contribute to
how they drew up proscriptions [plans for forest management]. But, but science is definitely,
I think, is creating a lot of anxiety among different tribes because the people who have the
knowledge aren't the people who are making the public policy decisions , and, and for some
reason they can't talk, yeah come together or talk, find a way to talk about it where they're
understandable and make sense vs. what they know to have had success in the past.
Justin's response to Sarah's question is multilayered. He wants to complicate
Sarah's quantification of scientific practices and appears to read Sarah's comment
as suggesting that previous forest management was unscientific. Further, he sug-
gests that the scientists do not have the same record of sustainable forestry that
Menominees do, with the implication that Menominees have deeper database of
sorts, implying that Menominee knowledge is older and deeper than the scientific
knowledge now driving the management of the forest. The exchange also suggests
that Justin has multiple frames for thinking about what power is and where it lies
within this situation. Justin suggests that Menominee practices and traditions fleshed
out or completed a perspective that drove the management of the forest, something
that is missing from the current management plans.
There is also a shift from speaking about science as a disembodied entity in his
earlier comment to something people do or knowledge that people have. Note also
that he backs off from the simple dichotomy of science and tradition to suggest
that part of the problem lies with a lack of communication between policy people
(e.g., the Tribal Legislature) and people who have the formal knowledge (MTE).
Justin notes that the anxiety that is being felt on the Menominee reservation is not
something unique. He expands his argument to something that is felt by many tribes
and notes that the people in power are not the ones with the appropriate knowledge.
Justin ends his turn by locating the problem in the dialogue between the people
involved and their inability to understand one another. Implied in Justin's comment
is that this misunderstanding is one based on how scientists are not making sense
in comparison to what people know from experience. This last phrase continues
the oppositional dichotomy that was originally cast and the comparative frame that
Sarah used, but at a different grain size. It has now been located at the conversa-
tional level between people. The power dynamic in this comment is multivoiced
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