Dr. Leslie Main Johnson, Associate Professor
My association with Athabasca University began in 1999 when I wrote a course in ethnobiology (ANTH 491) for distance delivery at AU. I assumed a teaching position in the Anthropology Program in spring of 2000.
My undergraduate degree in Anthropology was earned at Stanford University in 1971. I completed my graduate studies in Anthropology at the University of Alberta (MA 1993; PhD 1997). After finishing my PhD I was Grant Notley post-doctoral fellow in the Anthropology Department at the University of Alberta from 1997-2000. While at the University of Alberta I initiated a research project on ethnoecology of First Nations in northwestern Canada . Before returning to graduate school in 1991 I lived in northwestern British Columbia where I developed close ties to local First Nations communities. (I also developed an appreciation of the challenges of access to universities and good libraries while living in rural northwest British Columbia).
I am fascinated by the kinds of things people know and the connections among these forms of knowledge. I am especially interested in knowledge of the land and how people “fine-tune” their ability to live in local environments. My research interests include ethnobiology (cultural knowledge of living things), ethnoecology, subsistence, and concepts of health and healing among northwestern Canadian First Nations. I began my field-work with the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en of northwestern British Columbia in the mid 1980’s.
In more recent years I expanded my research to work with the Kaska Dena of the southern Yukon, the Gwich’in of the Mackenzie Delta region of the Northwest Territories and the Sahtu people of Deline on Great Bear Lake.
I’m an active member of several professional societies and am presently Secretary of the International Society of Ethnobiology. I’m also Adjunct Professor in the School of Native Studies, the Department of Anthropology, and the Department of Rural Economy at the University of Alberta, and a Research Associate at the Canadian Circumpolar Institute.
Recent publications included various papers on ethnoecology and ethnobiology of First Nations in northernwestern Canada, a chapter on past evidence of plant use in the Chac Mool proceedings for 2005, and two books on landscape ethnoecology in 2009. I'm also working on a textbook chapter on researching cultural knowledge of landscape with Iain Davidson-Hunt of the University of Manitoba.
I am presently academic coordinator for:
- ANTH 275 Faces of Culture: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
- ANTH 390 Community Based Research Methods
- ANTH 401 Ethnography, the Writing of Culture
- ANTH 402 Ethnographic Research Methods (Reading course)
- ANTH 407 Advanced Readings in Regional Ethnology
- ANTH 408 Method and Theory in Anthropology
- ANTH 491 Ethnobiology: Traditional Biological Knowledge in Comtemporary Global Perspective
- ANTH 499 Medical Anthropology
- ANTH 591 Ethnobiology: Traditional Biological Knowledge in Contemporary Global Perspective
Personal interests include playing Celtic and Early music and British Isles folkmusic; spinning, dyeing and weaving; watercolour painting; and gardening.
