Risk Analysis: Changes Needed from a Native American Perspective
Title:
Risk Analysis: Changes Needed from a Native American Perspective
Author:
Harris, Stuart G.
Appeared in:
Human and ecological risk assessment
Paging:
Volume 6 (2000) nr. 4 pages 529-535
Year:
2000
Contents:
The objective of this article is to help risk assessors and managers step back from paying sole attention to finer and finer detail (e.g., measuring nuances of a single chemical's biochemical action at the molecular level). As professionals, we must always remember that the higher service that risk assessment provides is to improve everyone's long-term well being and survival. It is especially important to note that there are many lessons all Americans should experience as early as possible. For instance, our Native American tribal members are taught from birth that we all live enmeshed within the environment, not isolated from it or superior to it. Our practical every day needs, including basic nutritional, spiritual, and economic needs, are all derived directly from a clean, functioning environment. In return, we must accept the fact that we are not masters or owners of the environment, and that we don't have dominion over ecological processes. Our relationship is best viewed as part of a human-eco-cultural system. The risks to this system as a whole must be reflected in new transparent system-level models that easily show the relationships among, and equality of, all of these elements. Transparent, user-friendly, system-level models must become standard tools in every risk assessors toolbox. Such models are being developed and have already made a difference. Tribal risk information, in particular, needs to be produced at the community and system level, must include eco-cultural metrics, and requires geospatial and temporal integration that most conventional models cannot accomplish. I expect that risk assessors, once enlightened, will insist that such models will become a required part of risk analysis in the near future.
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