Copyright © 2008 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance.
Turner, N. J., R. Gregory, C. Brooks, L. Failing, and T. Satterfield. 2008. From invisibility to transparency:
identifying the implications. Ecology and Society 13(2): 7. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/
vol13/iss2/art7/
Insight
From Invisibility to Transparency: Identifying the Implications
Nancy J. Turner 1, Robin Gregory 2, Cheryl Brooks 3, Lee Failing 4, and Terre Satterfield 5
ABSTRACT. This paper explores the need for a broader and more inclusive approach to decisions about
land and resources, one that recognizes the legitimacy of cultural values and traditional knowledge in
environmental decision making and policy. Invisible losses are those not widely recognized or accounted
for in decisions about resource planning and decision making in resource- and land-use negotiations
precisely because they involve considerations that tend to be ignored by managers and scientists or because
they are often indirect or cumulative, resulting from a complex, often cumulative series of events, decisions,
choices, or policies. First Nations communities in western North America have experienced many such
losses that, together, have resulted in a decline in the overall resilience of individuals and communities.
We have identified eight types invisible losses that are often overlapping and cumulative: cultural/lifestyle
losses, loss of identity, health losses, loss of self-determination and influence, emotional and psychological
losses, loss of order in the world, knowledge losses, and indirect economic losses and lost opportunities.
To render such invisible losses more transparent, which represents the first step in developing a more
positive and equitable basis for decision making and negotiations around land and resources, we recommend
six processes: focusing on what matters to the people affected, describing what matters in meaningful ways,
making a place for these concerns in decision making, evaluating future losses and gains from a historical
baseline, recognizing culturally derived values as relevant, and creating better alternatives for decision
making so that invisible losses will be diminished or eliminated in the future.
Key Words: First Nations; decision making; resource use; negotiations; cultural values
INTRODUCTION
Human existence has always depended on our
ability to respond and adapt to change. However,
rapid change, particularly when enforced from the
outside, can have extremely negative consequences.
These are compounded when people experience
significant losses that are not acknowledged or
recognized. If a family is forced from its home, the
loss is direct and obvious, and compensation
typically is expected. However, if the loss is not
obvious to others, is not readily measured, is not
represented in a manner recognized as legitimate,
or is the result of a series of compounding impacts
that are not easily connected to an original action,
the consequences can be invisible even though they
prove devastating. This unfortunately describes
numerous government and industry policies and
practices that have affected First Nations’ access to
traditional lands and resources in western North
America.
In this paper we address these profound but
“invisible” losses to individuals or communities that
are not generally recognized or seen as important
by others. In the context of environmental
management decisions, they range from indirect
impacts not widely recognized, e.g., the loss of a
cherished berry-picking site because of urbanization
or road construction, to cumulative losses resulting
from a complex series of events or decisions, such
as a general decline in the productivity of traditional
food species because of habitat change from fire
suppression over several decades (Deur and Turner
2005) or in the health of wild salmon because of the
influences of commercial aquaculture (Krkosek et
al. 2006).
The decline or removal of key food sources can
introduce a cascading effect in which important
associated cultural practices and institutions are also
lost, e.g., cessation of “First Salmon” ceremonies
following prohibition of associated fishing
1University of Victoria, 2Decision Research & Value Scope Research, Inc., 3Indigenuity Consulting Group, 4Compass Resource Management, 5University of
British Columbia
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
technologies and decreasing salmon populations
(Turner and Berkes 2006). As well, such losses may
impose changes to an individual’s or a community’s
future options. Invisible losses, by their very nature
unrecognized and unacknowledged, are seldom
considered, awarded compensation, or mitigated by
decision makers and resource managers. Nevertheless,
in terms of risk to peoples’ overall health and
capacity for resilience, such losses may have even
more profound impacts on individuals and
communities than those that are more visible and
widely acknowledged.
We investigate here the nature of invisible losses,
focusing on cultural losses experienced by First
Nations in western Canada and the United States.
However, most of the points made in this paper
would apply equally to other Aboriginal
communities and to nonindigenous local communities.
We discuss why it is important to recognize invisible
losses and make them count in decision making, and
suggest ways in which they can be made more
visible so that the processes and deliberations that
tend to obscure them can be altered to render them
more transparent.
From a theoretical perspective, we suggest
developing and implementing a different way of
looking into environmental and social impacts on
groups of people. Rather than referring to legal
precedents or economics, we are saying: Ask the
people who were hurt about the nature of their
losses. To make this workable, we also supply the
outlines of some analytical tools for integrating a
more comprehensive set of losses into evaluations
and decision making. We draw on theory from
decision analysis, ethnoecology, and behavioral
decision making, all of which we cite in the text.
Ideas such as constructed preference and the use of
performance measures to define losses more
precisely are at the forefront of decision sciences
theory. In addition, we make a contribution that
links decision making, ethnoecology, environment,
and social-ecological resilience in the context of
cumulative losses.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
For North American First Peoples, colonial and
industrial history is replete with invisible losses. The
invisibility is a function of colonialism itself insofar
as one economic and political system was imposed
on other very different systems, with little
consideration given to the potential impacts. Some
losses have since been rendered more visible
through the repeated efforts of those who suffered
them, or through the efforts of their descendants and
advocates. See, for example, the compounding
impacts of Canadian residential schools; governments
and religious institutions have been forced to
acknowledge these effects and provide some
compensation for the destruction of the languages,
beliefs, and spirituality of indigenous peoples
(Indian and Northern Affairs Canada 1996, Fournier
and Crey 1997).
Nevertheless, government decision makers still fail
to recognize many of the devastating effects of the
language suppression, insitutional diet, and general
denigration of indigenous cultures and life ways
common to residential schools. The erosion of
complex traditional knowledge systems, including
the loss of opportunity for intergenerational
transmission through indigenous language, stories,
ceremonies, observation, and participation, is a very
real consequence. Seldom identified or acknowledged,
this serves as an example of an invisible loss.
Our focus here is on resource management policies
that have also had cascading impacts, many
invisible and unacknowledged, for indigenous
peoples in North America. Examples include the
reserve system, which deprived First Peoples of
their traditional lands and resources (Government
of British Columbia1875); the banning of the
Potlatch and associated ceremonies from 1885 to
1952 (Trosper 1998, King 2004); restrictions on
landscape burning (Boyd 1999); and an entire series
of fisheries and forestry laws that reduced the food
security and health of indigenous peoples (Kuhnlein
1992, Turner and Turner 2007). Similarly, policies
that destroy traditional economic systems and affect
people’s security and capacity for resilience have
been little addressed in contemporary legal systems
(cf. R. vs. Van der Peet 1996 and R. vs. Gladstone
1996; Ommer and Turner 2004).
CHARACTERIZING INVISIBLE LOSSES
A number of themes emerge when examining the
invisible losses incurred by indigenous peoples as
a result of land management policies. These are
inextricably interconnected, but can be characterized
as discrete types of losses worthy of explicit
consideration. These losses are often precipitated
through dramatic changes in the traditional use of a
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
resource, including its extirpation, e.g., the loss of
a wild salmon run, prohibition of access, e.g., lands
confiscated or ownership transferred to the private
sector, or significant changes in quality, e.g.,
contamination of a traditional food source.
A prime example, at least for indigenous peoples
living in western North America, is the dramatic
restriction of access to Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus 
spp.), a “cultural keystone” species for these peoples
(Garibaldi and Turner 2004, Nabhan 2005). The
effects of this have been devastating and pervasive.
The point is not that the well documented decreases
in the number and genetic diversity of salmonid
populations have been invisible (King 2004,
Krkosek et al. 2006). Rather, despite considerable
public attention, little notice has been given to the
range and extent of the impacts of losing their
salmon on peoples’ lives, health, and well-being.
Innumerable other resources have been similarly
affected, directly and indirectly, by government and
industry actions such as the construction of dams,
draining of wetlands, clear-cut logging, mining,
road building, commercial fisheries, and so forth,
but decision makers seldom appreciate or properly
account for the full extent of such impacts on First
Nations communities.
Eight types of invisible losses are characterized
below. These are not intended to be comprehensive;
we highlight them as indicators of the broad scope
and fundamental nature of the invisible losses
experienced primarily by First Nations individuals
and communities. In the next section we describe a
number of ways in which the identity, magnitude,
and severity of these losses can be made more
transparent and therefore addressed appropriately
in policy and decision making.
Cultural and life-style losses
When externally imposed forces or decisions
negatively impact or prohibit a particular way of life
and the cultural values and practices that go with it,
the people affected may no longer be able to engage
in activities that are fundamental to their culture. As
a result, they feel profound loss and alienation.
Colonial history is full of episodes in which
newcomers sought to change the life ways of local
inhabitants or dismissed their practices as inferior
or unworthy, resulting in exasperation and despair
(Berger 1999, Turner 2005, Berkes 2008, Turner
and Turner 2008).
Loss of identity
Identity is a nebulous yet fundamental construct,
widely recognized as basic to human well-being and
resilience and a cornerstone of the ability of First
Nations to recover from large-scale social and
environmental impacts. It tells a people who they
are; to whom and where they belong; which
practices, e.g., fishing, potlatching, passages or
rights, etc., define them; what their individual
purpose and role in life is; and how they are
distinctive. Cultural expressions of identity can be
both material, such as a mask or a landbase, and
ideational, e.g., the belief in a trickster spirit or the
eternality of names and dances. Furthermore,
identity is not a static state; rather, it is like a tapestry
to which each additional thread, color, and pattern
adds richness and strength. Identity is continually
reinforced through key practices and social
institutions. The invisible yet pervasive character of
identity makes it hard to pin down the precise nature
of what is lost. Nevertheless, the impacts of lost
identity are devastating and highly correlated with
such evils as teenage suicide, alcoholism and
addiction, and violence (Kirmayer et al. 2000).
Health losses
Whereas obvious pollution and measurable
industrial impacts on food resources may be
recognized and compensated for, the effects of
pollutants on food sources are often more subtle and,
in a sense, more insidious. Even small amounts of
pollutants can affect food taste and quality
(Kuhnlein et al. 1982), leading to health and safety
concerns and ultimately to the elimination of foods
such as clams or seagull eggs from the traditional
diet. Once this happens, the knowledge related to
harvesting and preparing these foods diminishes.
Then, even if the quality of the food improves, its
consumption may not be resumed (Kuhnlein 1992).
Eventually, the entire diet transforms away from
local, traditional food toward processed, marketed
food of lower quality, which increases the risk of
health effects like heart disease and diabetes (Wong
2003). Moreover, because locally produced food is
often part of a larger subsistence economy, its loss
can greatly intensify poverty by forcing people into
greater reliance on external market-based products.
Such indirect and cumulative risks are seldom
linked to environmental pollution.
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
Loss of self-determination and influence
One of the worst possible punishments is to take
away people’s ability to control their own lives.
Nevertheless, enforced loss of self-determination
has been a common, ongoing story for First Peoples.
The entire Indian reserve system represents such a
loss. Individual testimony during the McKenna-
McBride Royal Commission hearings of 1912–
1914 in British Columbia reflects the distress that
those testifying felt from losing so much of their
lands and livelihoods because of imposed
government policy. A plethora of government
restrictions and regulations continues to this day, in
areas such as water use, tree cutting, fishing,
hunting, and gathering plant foods, materials, and
medicines, that prevents people from reassuming
control over their resources. This includes
curtailment of peoples’ ability to manage and
enhance their resources, thus causing further
depletion of their traditional foods and other cultural
products. For example, restrictions on the landscape
burning practices of indigenous peoples have
reduced productivity and biological diversity across
various ecosystems, causing overall resource
depletion, and made forests more susceptible to
insect infestations and catastrophic wildfire (Boyd
1999, Pyne 2002). Establishing parks and protected
areas on First Nations territories has further
impeded traditional management and access (Deur
and Turner 2005, Sinclair and Ommer 2006).
Emotional and psychological losses
The ability to provide for one’s family and fulfill
obligations to one’s culture is central to a person’s
self-confidence, self-esteem, and feelings of
worthiness. When this ability is denied, it can lead
to frustration, helplessness, and loss of self-respect
that can last an entire lifetime and affect a whole
family or community. Many situations, seldom
recognized or acknowledged, can cause this type of
loss. One example is the shame and sadness that for
many First Nations has accompanied their forced
relocation, e.g., because of mining or dam
construction, away from their ancestral lands to
another place in which some traditional practices
may no longer be possible because of lack of access
to sacred sites or familiar resources (Tsay Keh Dene
Band et al. 2006). Access denied to traditional
fishing grounds, camping spots, harvesting areas,
or sacred sites also means an inability to pass on the
knowledge associated with these sites to younger
generations.
Loss of order in the world
Apprehension and confusion can result from
external changes that affect the expected and
anticipated cycles of life, including disruptions of
the regular return of migratory species or changes
in the seasons. Stemming from development,
enforced relocation, restricted access to former
territories, or climate change, these factors affect
peoples’ security and well-being at a fundamental
level, often resulting in profound disorientation.
Feelings of helplessness and anxiety may affect
peoples’ entire lives and livelihoods, yet not be
acknowledged or recognized by others, including
those who caused the disruption. The Inuit peoples
of Alaska and northern Canada, who for generations
have marked the coming of the seasons with
activities and ceremonies related to the migrations
and cycles of both aquatic and terrestrial animals,
provide a good example (Manseau et al. 2005). In
recent decades, the timing of these ceremonies has
changed: Activities that used to take place in early
June may now occur in early May or even late April
because of global warming and associated
temperature and precipitation changes (Krupnik and
Jolly 2002). Such changes also affect the social
relations within a community. Individuals or
families who are known for their relationship to a
natural resource, e.g., the best fishers, trackers, and
clam diggers and makers of harpoons, spears, and
nets, can, over time, lose the respect and honor
associated with their skills if the resource disappears
or is adversely affected.
Knowledge losses
The traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous
peoples is generally transmitted orally and through
cultural processes that include observation,
demonstration, participation, and stories, ceremonies,
and teachings at particular times of one’s life or
during special occasions such as feasts and
potlatches (Turner et al. 2000). Many regulations
imposed by colonialism and government policy,
such as residential schools and the banning of the
potlatch and certain fishing practices, to name just
a few, have curtailed or outright prohibited these
forms of knowledge transmission from generation
to generation (King 2004). Other factors, such as
the necessary participation of many indigenous
people in the wage economy when their traditional
livelihoods were no longer available, have also
resulted in barriers to intergenerational knowledge
transmission. Collectively, the cascading effects
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
have eroded traditional knowledge, including
indigenous languages, to the point at which many
young indigenous people do not know how to
identify some of the most common traditional foods
of their grandparents’ generation or how to survive
in places in which their ancestors have lived for
hundreds of years. This knowledge is not simply for
the benefit of the individual; the traditional land and
resource management practices that represent a
practical manifestation of this knowledge help to
maintain and enhance habitats and resources, and,
without the application of this traditional
knowledge, these resources have noticeably
declined (Berkes 2008). This overwhelming, but as
yet little recognized, erosion of cultural diversity
parallels, and is linked to, the escalating loss of
global biodiversity (Davis 2001, Carlson and Maffi
2004).
Many traditional activities are seasonal and place
based. Traditional education, including instilling
children with traditional values, is curtailed or
eliminated altogether if children miss out on
seasonal activities that take place during the school
year. If families take their children out of school,
they worry that the children will fall behind in their
schoolwork and will not be able to catch up, putting
them at a disadvantage in mainstream society.
However, if they do not take their children out, for
example, to harvest herring eggs or pick seaweed,
the children won’t be able to learn the harvesting
skills, the preserving skills, the safety skills, and all
the place-based knowledge of the lands and waters
of their home territories that is the basis of their
culture and, ultimately, their security. They will also
miss the chance to gain other important knowledge
such as family history and stories, the things that
only extended and intimate time together in a family
group will allow.
Indirect economic losses and lost opportunities
If the range of cultural losses and impacts on
peoples’ health and well-being are little recognized
by those whose actions cause these losses, the loss
of opportunities for a community’s own economic
development is almost never acknowledged. In
most situations, the financial benefit for those
implementing an action, such as building a dam for
hydro development, constructing a road or railroad,
logging a forest, or developing a ski resort, means
a lost opportunity for local peoples to use those areas
and resources in different, and often more
sustainable, ways. For example, in the discussions
around increasing tanker traffic on the north coast
of British Columbia if pipelines are built to Kitimaat
from the Alberta oil patch, the plans of the coastal
communities for developing ecotourism opportunities
or sustainable shellfish culture ventures are
generally not factored into the equation of the major
players. This is one form of what economists call
“opportunity costs,” the loss of future benefits as a
result of taking actions that preclude some types of
future options. Similarly, the impacts of such traffic
on fish, whales, and other marine life that are so
closely connected culturally and spiritually with the
lives and well-being of coastal First Nations are
rarely considered.
Another type of lost opportunity, difficult to frame
but nonetheless real, can be called the loss of the
ability to focus forward. Cheryl Brooks (personal
communication) frames this as follows: “So much
of our [indigenous peoples’] leadership time and
energy is dedicated to resolving these past injustices
and concerns, for example, locating and repatriating
stolen artifacts, changing policies that allow for the
apprehension and removal of our children from
Aboriginal communities, resolution of the land
claims questions; so many of our energies are
focused on trying to fix the injustices of the past that
it is hard to focus on moving forward and seizing
opportunities that might otherwise be available. In
many cases we are so involved with trying to serve
and or fix broken individuals and spending
enormous sums of money on this, that we can’t
pursue opportunities.”
The eight themes described above overlap with each
other; most are exacerbated by the compounding of
two or more effects in a turmoil of interlinked causes
and effects that are exceedingly difficult to
distinguish (Turner and Turner 2008). In many
cases, the combination of these different kinds of
losses adds up to a loss of resilience, or “backup”
systems, for First Nations communities. The loss of
self-identity, the erosion of economic opportunities,
and the absence of an intact social structure to
transmit knowledge across generations all result in
a lowered ability to withstand change and to respond
with confidence and in positive ways that sustain
and reinforce traditional cultures. As such, these
losses accumulate and profoundly affect not only
individuals but entire communities and multiple
generations. As a result, an added threat from a new
development, such as a ski resort or an aquaculture
facility, can be devastating.
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
One example of this complexity and loss of
resilience is in northern Alberta, where numerous
Métis settlements have been adversely affected by
industrial development, particularly in the oil and
gas sector. Key activities, including subsistence
hunting, fishing, and gathering, have been given
little standing as part of current compensation
agreements, and there is scant recognition of their
important role in the ongoing cultural, social, and
spiritual life of the community. Of particular
concern to the Métis are a variety of activities and
associated ceremonies that used to occur on a
regular basis in response to natural events, such as
the return of certain species and the breakup of ice
in the lakes, but now no longer take place because
of decreases in the available number of animals,
restrictions placed on people’s movements, or the
contamination of food sources, e.g., by leakage from
oil and gas wells. These losses are rarely included
in compensation agreements; most involve
nonmarket resources for which conventional
economic markets do not exist (McDaniels and
Trousdale 2005, TEK Project 2006).
DISCUSSION: TOWARD MAKING
INVISIBLE LOSSES TRANSPARENT
Given the complex and broad-ranging nature of the
invisible losses described above, what can decision
makers do to better characterize these losses, make
them more visible, and include them in meaningful
ways as part of consultations, negotiations, and
policy formulation? Clearly, the challenges these
questions present are immense, and we cannot hope
to address everything. We focus here on six key
questions that we believe can and must be addressed
in decision processes to help expose, describe, and
account for invisible losses:
 
1. How do policy and decision makers identify
what matters most to the people affected, even
when this is hard to articulate and even harder
to quantify?
 
2. How can invisible losses, including cultural
losses, be described and acknowledged in
ways that are meaningful and compelling to
other stakeholders, decision makers, and
regulators?
 
3. How can invisible concerns be made
transparent and, in turn, given a central place
in decisions that affect the lives of First
Nations members?
 
4. What are concrete ways to acknowledge past
conditions of invisible losses so that future
losses and gains are put in perspective and
can be evaluated more accurately?
 
5. How can culturally derived values forming
an important part of knowledge be
acknowledged and accommodated in
decision making?
 
6. How can better management alternatives be
created that are both responsive to past
invisible losses and able to begin to repair
some of the past damage, in part by not
continuing to create/perpetuate new damage
and invisible losses into the future?
 These questions lead to corresponding processes or
actions, which are considered in the following
discussion. The eight types of invisible losses and
the six processes suggested to help reduce invisible
losses are represented schematically in Fig. 1.
Focusing on what matters
Rapid, profound changes in ecological conditions
because of hydroelectric dam construction or
climate change and the associated disruption of
social systems, village relocations, and changes in
traditional life-styles and the roles of individuals
and governance have led to major breaks in the
transmission of spatially specific knowledge and are
causing a breakdown in entire knowledge and social
systems (Kirsch 2001). In spite of that, decision-
making processes involving First Nations
communities often focus only on what politicians,
lawyers, or scientists have identified as important.
Discussion is directed to factors that are politically
prominent, professionally interesting, readily
identifiable, or easily quantifiable, but may
overlook the perspectives of those who are the most
affected. For example, the courts still tend to give
less credibility to oral history or the oral testimony
of elders than to written “academic” or “expert”
information.
An alternative view, one that has gained prominence
since the publication of the influential report
Understanding Risk (U.S. National Research
Council 1996), is to focus on those things that matter
to the people living in an impacted community.
Techniques for, e.g., eliciting values in a defensible
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram showing eight identified types of invisible losses, to be addressed or
counteracted by six processes that may help alleviate these types of losses.
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
manner or presenting this information in a way that
facilitates better decision making have been
advanced by decision analysts, psychologists,
anthropologists, and others with an interest in
making environmental compensation agreements
and choices more democratic. A key concept is that
of “value-focused thinking” (Keeney 1992), an
approach for exposing and clarifying what matters
to those affected in their own language and in a way
that reflects their own terms and concepts. Such
approaches can provide a crucial starting point for
consultations that help to make visible a wide
variety of environmental, social, and cultural
priorities (Gregory et al. 2007).
Describing what matters in meaningful ways
Of critical importance to many First Nations is not
simply what the losses are but also how they are
represented and described. To represent loss is, in
part, to represent lived experience, which can be
anything from grief over the disappearance of a
language to narratives of activities no longer
possible. Increasingly, it is recognized that oral and
life-history narratives, including audiovisual
representations, are acceptable ways of articulating
both knowledge and experience. These include
narratives as conveyed through public venues or
personal interviews of cosmological origin and
attachment to a homeland, or those explaining the
physical or historical impacts of colonialism and
other external forces (Basso 1997, Cruikshank
2005).
Simply providing opportunities for individuals to
express, in their own words, their frustrations or
feelings can enable others to understand a situation
more fully. Courts of law, by allowing victim impact
statements in serious crime cases, give formal
recognition to the right of individuals to give voice
to their own reactions in the case of an injustice or
trauma. An example of a meaningful and effective
personal impact description comes from an
Anishenaabe fisherman, testifying about mercury
poisoning (Shkilnyk 1985:192): “Everyday I used
to bring home fish. One day I got a letter from the
government saying that I had a high mercury level.
I think it was over 200. The letter said I was at risk.
But what does that mean? ... I sometimes get angry
at this here mercury ... but I don’t know what to do
about it.”
The Supreme Court of Canada (Delgamuukw vs.
British Columbia 1997) confirmed that oral history
is legitimate legal evidence, to be treated as equal
in weight to written or documentary evidence.
Today, many community mapping, videography,
and related visual representations of traditional
knowledge, place names, and cultural traditions are
widely used for purposes of community education,
government-to-government deliberations, and
group decision making for individual First Nations
communities or co-management purposes.
Sometimes a comparison or metaphor that may have
meaning to others from a different culture may be
an effective means to convey cultural loss; for
example, describing a sacred cave or prayer pool as
“a cathedral” may help those without experience in
indigenous sacred geography to better understand a
value. Framing a traditional harvesting area as a
grocery store can convey its importance in terms of
providing food security. Terms like “cultural
keystone species” may help ecologists and other
scientists to understand the crucial role of species
such as western red-cedar and salmon to the cultures
and cultural identity of indigenous peoples
(Garibaldi and Turner 2004).
Using more quantitative assessments may also assist
in recognizing and evaluating invisible losses
alongside other categories of costs and benefits
(Gregory 2000). Even simple numeric scores, such
as a 1-5 index to denote different levels of impact
on a site of significance such as a burial ground, can
help to render visible a previously ignored impact.
One example of the use of such a constructed scale
comes from work done with the Yakima First Nation
in eastern Washington State in the context of the
proposed siting of a hazardous waste treatment
facility. Rather than trying to measure the “value”
of nearby sacred sites, which would be rejected by
the participants, a simple scale was developed to
compare the distance of proposed facilities from
sacred sites; preferred facilities were located farther
away. This made it possible to factor into the
equation the impact of the facility on sacred sites,
and any facilities that might seriously affect a sacred
site could be eliminated from further consideration
without assigning an explicit value to the sites
themselves (Keeney and Gregory 2005).
Making a place for invisible concerns in
decision making
Although the use of narratives, metaphors, cultural
practices, or place names may help First Nations
express what matters to them meaningfully, other
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
audiences such as planners, policy makers, and
stakeholders may be indifferent to such messages
or uncertain how to deal with them in a decision-
making context. Typically, they must find ways to
express and compare losses or gains across
categories of impact and across various
management or policy alternatives under
consideration. Although absolute measures of loss
may not be appropriate, often it is possible to
demonstrate relative desirability by comparing the
presumed benefits of a proposed action, e.g., new
jobs, against its costs, e.g., possible contamination
of a food source, or the benefits or losses associated
with one proposed action against those of an
alternative. Usually, multiple kinds of impacts are
considered; decision makers need help in placing
invisible losses in perspective with other compelling
issues. A useful framework for doing this is multi-
attribute evaluation (Keeney and Raiffa 1993). In
contrast to cost-benefit analysis, multi-attribute
analysis reports impacts in natural units and focuses
decision makers on the nature of the impact and the
trade-offs with other kinds of impacts. Failing et al.
(2007) have documented success in using decision
analysis tools in a multi-attribute framework to
evaluate impacts of importance to First Nations
communities, including impacts related to cultural
and spiritual values.
An example comes from a multistakeholder water-
use planning process at the Campbell River
hydroelectric facility on Vancouver Island. The
focus was to evaluate alternative flow regimes
downstream from a dam, with the goal of balancing
power generation, recreation interests, and fish
impacts. Beginning with a value-focused thinking
approach, participants were encouraged to
articulate what mattered to them in terms of water
flows and why. It became apparent that the current
configuration of the dam facility violated a
fundamental principle of the We Wai kum
(Campbell River) First Nation, which is that water
flowing naturally in one direction, in this case west,
should not be made to flow in the opposite direction.
An attribute was created to report which alternatives
under consideration violated this principle, and, in
consideration with attributes for power production,
salmon habitat, and recreational quality, new
alternatives were developed to avoid violating it.
This was clearly a crude placeholder for a much
richer dialogue, but it served the purpose of making
the concern transparent and putting the loss created
by a violation of principle on an equal footing, i.e.,
in the same matrix of consequences, with more
conventional expressions of impact.
Recognizing a historical baseline for evaluating
losses and gains
One reason why losses can remain invisible is
because of our usual choice of baseline for making
assessments. In most resource management
decision-making contexts, a base case is established
representing current conditions. Aboriginal people
often argue that this is either incorrect or
insufficient. For them, the real benchmark is the
historical condition, and current conditions already
represent significant losses compared with the past.
Many communities have witnessed generations of
losses. Thus, when decision makers base their
analyses on the status quo, this represents a profound
injustice, another form of invisible loss. In fact, our
perceptions do shift according to our experience, so
that the concept of a “big tree” or a “big halibut”
has a different meaning for the residents of coastal
British Columbia in the 21st century than it did to
the generations who lived there in the 19th or early
20th centuries (Pauly et al. 2000).
Many decision makers, on the other hand,
pragmatically state that, because processes cannot
go back in time, the only relevant baseline is the
current condition, with changes reported as losses
or gains from there. Nevertheless, a large body of
economic theory and applied research clearly
demonstrates that people consistently and
significantly value losses more than foregone gains
of an equivalent magnitude (Kahneman and
Tversky 1979). Thus, the choice of reference point
and the way in which the impact is framed do matter.
Recognizing culturally derived values as a
relevant input
One category of invisible loss, described earlier, is
the loss of influence or self-determination. For
Aboriginal communities, this typically means a loss
in the ability to influence decisions about the
resources on which they depend and which, based
on assertions of Aboriginal title, they rightfully
own. This is closely linked to a loss of respect for
culturally derived values and wisdom in resource
management. Researchers often hear claims that a
decision-making process did not adequately deal
with traditional knowledge, whereas managers and
academics, having diligently conducted interviews
and collected facts from elders, contend that they
are “incorporating” traditional knowledge. The
problem is that the definition of knowledge by the
scientific community is at variance with knowledge
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
as understood by Aboriginal knowledge holders.
Academics try very hard to provide objective, fact-
based inputs involving knowledge about “what is,
&#8221 e.g., where fish spawn, how they are
affected by different water flows, etc., excluding,
or at least attempting to exclude, subjective value
judgments about “what should be.” Many
Aboriginal participants, on the other hand, explicitly
include both fact-based judgments, e.g., where fish
spawn, and value-based judgments, e.g., spawning
habitat should not be altered. Often, decision-
making processes will conclude that there is no
traditional knowledge on, say, the subject of mining
or climate change because there is no historical fact-
based knowledge about these processes. Nevertheless,
there often are relevant, culturally based value
judgments to be considered in such cases (Nadasdy
1999). Recognizing that values are part of
knowledge means that there must be space for value-
based discussions in any decision-making process
whose intention is to restore the voice of Aboriginal
communities in the management of resources
(Turner et al. 2000, Failing et al. 2007).
Creating better alternatives
Only over the past few years have policy makers
begun to sit down with the parties who have been
affected by changes to the environment and elicit
their input into developing new management and
compensation alternatives. A significant body of
theoretical and practical work shows that improved
alternatives often can be created if careful attention
is given to ways in which those things that matter
most to people can be profiled (Keeney 1992).
Building on language introduced earlier, the best
way to create broadly responsive alternatives is to
engage in participatory, value-focused thinking that
accounts for historical conditions and brings
attention to losses, as well as gains, that might
otherwise be rendered invisible.
One of the advantages of value-responsive
alternatives is that ways can be found to satisfy what
might first appear to be hopelessly contradictory
values. In work in Malaysia, for example, a land-
use planning process was initially framed as a choice
between a development option, specifically the
mining of thermal coal reserves, and the
preservation option of protecting biodiversity
within the pristine rainforest (Gregory and Keeney
1994). Scientific analyses fell into two camps, one
favoring economic development and the other
environmental preservation. Further analysis was
poised to focus on improving the quality of the
associated baseline data by reducing the
uncertainties that distinguished these two options.
Instead, value-focused thinking transferred the
attention of decision makers from these alternatives
back to the underlying objectives, resulting in
alternatives that all parties agreed could provide
both ecological protection and economic benefits.
Scientific studies were then reassigned to a new set
of issues and questions. In this decision-making
situation, as in many others, reaching agreement and
making a good decision hinged not on resolving
differences in scientific opinion, but on creating new
and better alternatives based on an exploration of
stakeholder objectives.
Given the nature of the indirect, cumulative, and
interconnected invisible losses identified here, it
seems unlikely that they can be addressed by simple
tweaks of the status quo. What is needed is a
commitment to explore new and innovative
alternatives. Various co-management schemes that
directly involve First Nations, and often other local,
residents in the resolution of natural resource
conflicts recognize a fundamental redistribution of
power and, as such, provide a good forum for the
development of innovative alternatives (Berkes
2008). It takes time and resources to identify,
implement, and evaluate such novel processes and
alternatives. These activities also require a
multidimensional framework that allows fundamentally
different kinds of costs and benefits to be given
equal visibility and standing in the process.
CONCLUSION
This paper has explored a range of issues related to
the need for a broader and more inclusive approach
that recognizes the legitimacy of cultural values and
traditional knowledge in environmental decision
making. We have used the term “invisible losses”
to describe indirect and cumulative losses that have
not been adequately acknowledged, recognized, or
addressed in the past. We stressed the need to
recognize and accommodate invisible losses, past
and present, alongside the more easily measured,
observed, and understood impacts of development
and discussed some aspects of recognizing and
characterizing invisible losses.
We hope that these ideas will help to alert planners,
policy makers, and negotiators to the critical
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
importance of recognizing and incorporating the full
spectrum of impacts incurred by local communities
from resource development and to the fact that there
are practical methods for making these impacts
more visible and relevant in decision making and
policy. This is only possible through an inclusive
consultation process that allows individuals to
express themselves fully in their own words,
facilitates the comprehension of decision makers
through culturally appropriate and mutually
understandable means, and creates a place for the
consideration of cultural perspectives and values in
ways that are decision relevant, using measures that
successfully bring into the equation attributes that
were previously felt to be “intangible” or
“invisible.”
Deciding how to accomplish this requires
recognition of the consultation context: the nature
of the environmental management problem, the
extent of prior losses, the role of different
stakeholders and tribal participants, and the forum
selected for discussions, e.g., informal meetings vs.
structured deliberations or court proceedings.
Drawing from our analysis, we suggest six practical
steps or processes that can increase the visibility and
influence of these impacts in decisions and policies:
 
1. Focus on what matters to the affected people.
 
2. Describe the important issues in meaningful
ways, using narratives, stories, and visuals.
 
3. Make a place for these issues and concerns in
decision making, using a multidimensional
framework and incorporating hard-to-
quantify impacts.
 
4. Acknowledge historical losses by evaluating
activities from a historical baseline rather
than just from the present.
 
5. Recognize culturally derived values as
relevant and significant, and include them as
legitimate inputs to decisions.
 
6. Create better alternatives to decision making,
so that invisible losses will be diminished or
eliminated in the future.
 Undertaking these initiatives may require more
time to develop necessary relationships and to
enable people’s concerns to be heard and
considered. In the end, however, the extra time and
effort will pay off in the form of more effective and
satisfactory environmental management decisions
and in the improved health and well-being of both
Aboriginal communities and the larger society.
There will always be losses to individuals and
communities caused by the actions of others, but
with care and attention these losses can be
minimized, and decision makers can demonstrate
their sincerity and intent and find lasting solutions
through listening followed by action, by the
mitigation of adverse impacts, and through fair
compensation or accommodation. A major need is
for comprehensive, meaningful dialogue and
involvement that covers the things that matter to
local communities, including valuing culture and
traditional knowledge and finding ways for these to
truly influence environmental decisions and
resource-based negotiations. Ultimately, a goal of
all good community-based decision making is to
allow people to voice and represent their concerns,
to convey what matters, and to express their views
in a manner that renders them understandable to
decision makers (Battiste and Henderson 2000).
Acknowledging, respecting, and addressing the
historical, current, and potential future invisible
losses of First Nations communities is essential to
sustainability for all of us.
Responses to this article can be read online at:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/responses/
Acknowledgments:
Conversations with many people have contributed
to the ideas in this paper, including Earl Claxton
Sr., Helen Clifton, John Elliott Sr., Lynne Hill and
Ernie Hill Jr., Dr. Mary Thomas, Chief Adam Dick,
Greg Sam, Dr. Daisy Sewid-Smith, Kim Recalma-
Clutesi, Graham Long, and William Trousdale. A
special thanks to Janis Brooks, who helped with the
inception of this paper. We are also grateful to the
editors and to two anonymous reviewers of an
earlier draft of this paper for their constructive and
helpful suggestions. Funding has been provided
through Award SES-0451259 to Decision Research
from the U.S. National Science Foundation,
Program in Decision, Risk, and Management
Science, and from Social Sciences and Research
Council of Canada awards (#17R27953 to Terre
Satterfield and #410-2005-1741 to Nancy Turner).
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
The ideas expressed in this paper are those of the
authors alone.
LITERATURE CITED
Basso, K. 1997. Wisdom sits in places: landscape
and language among the western Apache.
University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque,
New Mexico, USA.
Battiste, M., and J. S. Youngblood Henderson. 
2000. Protecting indigenous knowledge and
heritage. Purich Publishing, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,
Canada.
Berger, T. R. 1999. Long and terrible shadow: white
values, native rights in the Americas, 1492–1992. 
Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver, British
Columbia, USA.
Berkes, F. 2008. Sacred ecology: traditonal
ecological knowledge and resource management. 
Second edition. Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, USA.
Boyd, R., editor. 1999. Indians, fire and the land in
the Pacific Northwest. Oregon State University
Press, Corvallis, Oregon, USA.
Carlson, T. J. S., and L. Maffi, editors. 2004.
Ethnobotany and conservation of biocultural
diversity. Advances in Economic Botany, Volume
15. New York Botanical Garden Press, Bronx, New
York, USA.
Cruikshank, J. 2005. Do glaciers listen? Local
knowledge, colonial encounters, and social
imagination. University of British Columbia Press,
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and
University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington,
USA.
Davis, W. 2001. Light at the edge of the world: a
journey through the realm of vanishing cultures. 
Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada, and National Geographic
Society, Washington, D.C., USA.
Deur, D., and N. J. Turner, editors. 2005.
“Keeping it living”: traditions of plant use and
cultivation on the northwest coast of North America. 
University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington,
USA, and University of British Columbia Press,
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Failing, L., R. Gregory, and M. Harstone. 2007.
Integrating science and local knowledge in
environmental decisions: a decision-focused
approach. Ecological Economics 64(1):47-60.
Fournier, S., and E. Crey. 1997. Stolen from our
embrace. Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada.
Garibaldi, A., and N. Turner. 2004. Cultural
keystone species: implications for ecological
conservation and restoration. Ecology and Society 
9(3): 1. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.
org/vol9/iss3/art1.
Government of British Columbia. 1875. Papers
connected with the Indian Land Question, 1850–
1875. (Reprinted 1987 as Indian Land Question,
1850–1875, 1877.) Government Printer, Victoria,
British Columbia, Canada.
Gregory, R. 2000. Using stakeholder values to
make smarter environmental decisions. Environment 
42:34-44.
Gregory, R., L. Failing, and M. Harstone. 2007.
Meaningful resource consultations with First
Peoples: notes from British Columbia. Environment 
50(1):34-45.
Gregory, R., and R. Keeney. 1994. Creating policy
alternatives using stakeholder values. Management
Science 40:1035-1048.
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. 1996.
Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal
Peoples. Available online at: http://www.ainc-inac.
gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sgmm_e.html.
Kahneman, D., and A. Tversky. 1979. Prospect
theory: an analysis of decision under risk.
Econometrica 47:263-291.
Keeney, R. 1992. Value focused thinking: a path to
creative decision making. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Keeney, R., and R. Gregory. 2005. Selecting
attributes to measure the achievement of objectives.
Operations Research 53:1-11.
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
Keeney, R., and H. Raiffa. 1993. Decisions with
multiple objectives. Cambridge University Press,
New York, New York, USA.
King, L. 2004. Competing knowledge systems in
the management of fish and forests in the Pacific
Northwest. International Environmental Agreements:
Politics, Law and Economics 4:161-177.
Kirmayer, L. J., G. M. Brass, and C. L. Tait. 2000.
The mental health of Aboriginal peoples:
transformations of identity and community.
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 45(7):607-616.
Kirsch, S. 2001. Lost worlds: environmental
disaster, “culture loss,” and the law. Current
Anthropology 42(2):167-198.
Krkosek, M., M. A. Lewis, A. Morton, L. N.
Frazer, and J. P. Volpe. 2006. Epizootics of wild
fish induced by farm fish. Proceeds of the National
Academy of Science (USA) 103:15506-15510.
Krupnik, I., and D. Jolly. 2002. The Earth is faster
now: indigenous observations of Arctic environmental
change. Arctic Research Consortium of the United
States, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA, and The
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA.
Kuhnlein, H. V. 1992. Change in the use of
traditional foods by the Nuxalk native people of
British Columbia. Ecology of Food and Nutrition 
27:259-282.
Kuhnlein, H. V., A. C. Chan, J. N. Thompson, and
S. Nakai. 1982. Ooligan grease: a nutritious fat used
by native people of coastal British Columbia.
Journal of Ethnobiology 2(2):154-161.
McDaniels, T., and W. Trousdale. 2005. Resource
compensation and negotiation support in an
Aboriginal context: using community-based multi-
attribute analysis to evaluate non-market losses.
Ecological Economics 55:173-186.
Manseau, M., B. Parlee, and G. B. Ayles. 2005. A
place for traditional ecological knowledge in
resource management. Pages 141-164 in F. Berkes,
R. Huebert, H. Fast, M. Manseau, and A. Diduck,
editors. Breaking ice: renewable resource and
ocean management in the Canadian north. 
University of Calgary Press, Calgary, Alberta,
Canada.
Nabhan, G. P. 2005. Renewing Salmon Nation’s
food traditions. Ecotrust, Portland, Oregon, USA.
Nadasdy, P. 1999. The politics of TEK: power and
the ‘integration’ of knowledge. Arctic Anthropology 
36(1/2):1-18.
Ommer, R. E., and N. J. Turner. 2004. Informal
rural economies in history. Labour/Le Travail:
Journal of Canadian Labour Studies 53:127-157.
Pauly, D., V. Christensen, R. Froese, and M. L.
D. Palomares. 2000. Fishing down aquatic food
webs. American Scientist 88:46-51.
Pyne, S. J. 2002. Fire: a brief history. University of
Washington Press, Seattle, Washington, USA.
Shkilnyk, A. M. 1985. A poison stronger than love:
the destruction of an Ojibwa community. Yale
University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Sinclair, P. R., and R. E. Ommer, editors. 2006.
Power and restructuring: Canada’s coastal society
and environment. ISER Books, Memorial
University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland,
Canada.
TEK Project. 2006. Integrating traditional
environmental knowledge in land reclamation. Fort
McKay—Albian Sands Energy Inc. TEK Project,
Fort McKay, Alberta, Canada.
Trosper, R. L. 1998. Incentive systems that support
sustainability: a First Nations example. Conservation
Ecology 2(2): 11. [online] URL: http://www.consec
ol.org/vol2/iss2/art11/.
Tsay Keh Dene Band, Kwadacha Nation, Office
of the Premier, and BC Hydro. 2006. News
release: agreement settles decades of flooding
impacts, Dec. 12, 2006. Available online at: http://
www2.news.gov.bc.ca/news_releases_2005-2009/2
006OTP0184-001498.pdf.
Turner, N. J. 2005. The Earth’s blanket: traditional
teachings for sustainable living. Douglas and
McIntyre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,
and University of Washington Press, Seattle,
Washington, D.C. USA.
Turner, N. J., and F. Berkes. 2006. Coming to
understanding: developing conservation through
Ecology and Society 13(2): 7
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/
incremental learning. Human Ecology (Special
Issue on Developing Resource Management and
Conservation) 34(4):495-513.
Turner, N. J., M. B. Ignace, and R. Ignace. 2000.
Traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom of
Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia. Ecological
Applications 10(5):1275-1287.
Turner, N. J., and K. L. Turner. 2007. “Rich in
food”: traditional food systems, erosion and renewal
in northwestern North America. Indian Journal of
Traditional Knowledge 6(1):57-68.
Turner, N. J., and K. L. Turner. 2008. “Where our
women used to get the food”: cumulative effects
and loss of ethnobotanical knowledge and practice;
case studies from coastal British Columbia. Botany 
86(1):103-115.
U.S. National Research Council. 1996. Understanding
risk: informing decisions in a democratic society. 
National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., USA.
Wong, A. 2003. Reversing the high prevalence of
obesity, diabetes, hypertension and depression
among the Aboriginal people. Pages 76-80 in A.
Wong, editor, First Nations Nutrition and Health
Conference Proceedings. Arbokem, Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada.