Donna L. Atkinson

MA History (2005), UNBC

Email: atkinsod@unbc.ca

Although I was born in the Okanogan, I have been living and recreating in and around Prince George since 1979. After completing two years of study at the College of New Caledonia, I spent several years travelling and working in Alberta, the Yukon, and Europe. By 1999, I decided it was time to head back to school - this time at UNBC - where I graduated with a B.A. in History in 2002. The following year I began a Master of Arts degree focused on the historical development of the native rights movement in the Russian Far North and its connection to the intensive development of oil and gas resources beginning in the 1960s. My thesis dealt specifically with the political mobilization of the Khanty and Mansi people of northwest Siberia who, in the height of Gorbachev's perestroika reforms of the late 1980s, established the first native association in the Soviet Union called Spasenie Yugri or the Salvation of Ugra.

Since joining the CURA Improved Partnership Stream in November 2004, I have worked on analyzing local perspectives on the process of effective forest co-management from interviews conducted with 56 local experts from Tl'azt'en Nation, UNBC, Fort St. James, and the Nak'azdli Nation. I am also involved in an IP project examining the nature and distribution of co-management outcomes from local participants by gender, affiliation, and ethnicity. In October, I will begin a research project funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC Partnering Fund that will document the history of the John Prince Research Forest, a research forest co-managed by UNBC and the Tl'azt'en Nation.

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