Informal Session: Naturalist Histories: Making Nature in Oceania
Organizers: Jamon Halvaksz and Joshua Bell

From early explorers to contemporary scientists, naturalists have examined island flora and fauna of Oceania. Sometimes focusing attention on the discovery of new species, but also carefully documenting the lives of animals, their work has been central to the wider image of Oceania (consider recent discoveries in the Foja Mountains of New Guinea). These ‘discoveries’ and exploratory moves have had profound local and global impacts. But often, local knowledge and communities are silent in the ethologies and histories that naturalists produce.  This session will examine the ways that indigenous and non-indigenous naturalists have made island natures visible to a wider audience, their relationship with the communities where they work, as well as the unique natures that they explore and help make.

In staking out an area of naturalists histories, we invite contributors from a range of disciplines whose work might address the following questions: What is the relationship between naturalists and Oceanic communities? How have naturalists’ histories shaped place and practices in the past and present?  How have their works influenced communities, conservations, and development projects? What is the relationship between scientific and indigenous knowledge? Whose natures are revealed, and alternatively concealed, in the final work? 

Jamon Halvaksz, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle,  San Antonio, TX 78249, USA; jamon.halvaksz@utsa.edu

Joshua A. Bell, Natural History Museum, Smithsonian Institution, PO Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012, USA;bellja@si.edu