Traditional Ecological Knowledge and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Restoration Program
By Henry P. Huntington

When oil from the Exxon Valdez spread from Bligh Reef through Prince William Sound, along the outer Kenai Peninsula, and on to Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula, it damaged not only the plants and animals it touched, but also the lives of those who live in the area and depend on its resources. Restoring the ecosystem is one step to helping the people who live there recover as well.

But how does one restore an ecosystem after an oil spill? Restoration is the mission of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council (EVOS TC), established to oversee the money paid by Exxon Corp. in the civil settlement of lawsuits brought by the state and federal governments. The Trustee Council is responsible for a massive science program designed to assess the extent of damage done by the spill, to monitor recovery of injured resources, and to evaluate the success of direct restoration activities such as oil removal from beaches.

Among the many scientific projects funded by the EVOS TC is one that attempts to involve the area's residents in the work of the overall restoration program. One aspect of this project is community involvement, with part-time community facilitators in each of ten affected communities. These individuals are responsible for helping community concerns reach the ears of the EVOS TC, and for providing information about the restoration program to community members.

A second aspect of the project is supporting the inclusion of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in the scientific work done as part of the restoration effort. TEK is a developing field in Alaska, and only a few projects have made systematic attempts to document or use TEK, none of them as extensive as the EVOS restoration program.

Interest in TEK stems from two sources. First, there is often a dearth of information about the region from before the spill, and thus it is difficult to make comparisons to determine whether species have recovered compared with their status prior to March 1989. Second, using TEK is an opportunity for area residents to contribute to a program with an important mission and to have a greater say in how the program is run and what it focuses on. While the TEK project is a small part of the overall EVOS program, we are proceeding along two paths. First, we are working with researchers who want to document TEK to add to the overall understanding of a particular species or area. This work has included assisting Jody Seitz's work to document TEK about juvenile herring, which is a contribution to the Sound Ecosystem Assessment project funded by EVOS. Jody has interviewed fishermen, pilots, and Native residents of Prince William Sound and the outer Kenai Peninsula to gather information about herring.

Second, we are holding a series of information workshops in area communities in which scientists meet with community members to discuss their research and to listen to what area residents have observed about the area and species the researcher is studying. The goal of these workshops is to allow the scientists and the community members to understand one another better, to find areas for collaboration to benefit both parties, and to improve the overall understanding of the ecosystem, its status, and the prospects for recovery.

To date, we have held two workshops, and a third is planned for mid-March. They have been received well, and several communities and researchers have indicated a desire to hold more in the future. In addition, as an outcome of the first workshop we held, Dan Rosenberg of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has been working with the Tatitlek school to design a collaborative research project on sea ducks. Students will keep track of bird locations using data from satellite tags and may also interview community elders to gather TEK for use in the community and to share with Dan.

While the TEK project has had promising results, it is a small effort amid a great deal of frustration and anger at the spill. Nothing can be done to give back the years lost since the spill, years in which subsistence and other uses of the area's resources have been hurt, years in which communities have suffered the trauma of disaster. We can only hope that our effort will contribute to restoring the area for future use and enjoyment by all.