About Epoch
Epoch EthnoEcology is a new independent consultancy based in Navajo Nation / Gallup, New Mexico.
Our niche is linking ethnobiology, ecological analysis, and management design, especially where historical baselines are incomplete, Indigenous values are underused, or partners need a clearer path from knowledge to action.
Our vision
We believe ecological management should draw from broader baselines, coevolved Indigenous value systems, and a wider range of defensible management priorities and actions. Rigorous science can help evaluate those pathways without treating mainstream assumptions as the only starting point.
Species distributions, especially historical distributions, are often poorly documented. Indigenous Knowledge, oral histories, place names, archival records, and ecological models can reduce those gaps and widen the range of defensible restoration, recovery, and rewilding options.
Management is never value-neutral. Mainstream management reflects one cultural system; Tribal systems carry values shaped through long relationships with place. Paired with rigorous science, those values can open different choices for resisting, accepting, or directing ecological change and for shaping social-ecological futures.
Tribal programs often work with limited staff and funding inside institutions organized around mainstream management norms. Epoch seeks to add technical capacity so community knowledge and values can shape priorities, methods, and action rather than being appended to approaches selected in advance.
Ecological work can also strengthen language, foodways, harvesting practices, education, stewardship, and relationships with culturally important species and places. These outcomes should be built into projects when communities want them and the scope supports them.
Discuss a project
Contact Epoch to discuss the need and a practical role.
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