Cultural environmental health risk perception in the Canadian north

This paper examines perceptions of various sources of environmental health risk in one Aboriginal community in Northern Canada to better understand how community members view those risks. The central question addressed is whether there is a pattern of perception, or form of cultural rationality, that informs risk perception generally, or are health risk perceptions created in an ad hoc manner, depending on local circumstances. A case study approach, involving both ethnographic and survey methods, was employed in three aboriginal communities in Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. This paper reports on one of those communities. Distinct cultural patterns of perception were found: a pattern that recognizes contingencies and conditions that produce dangerous circumstances--a pattern that is open to new forms of knowledge and sensitive to uncertainty.