ABSTRACT
As this brief history of clam bed management in Tomales Bay shows, traditional academic research has largely excluded or ignored native community concerns and
needs. At best, the involvement has been primarily extractive, where information, local contacts and other forms of assistance are provided by a host community, with little or no reciprocity on the university side. At worst, damaging policy decisions are made on the basis of research that is conducted without community understanding, guidance, involvement or informed consent. Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p2) addresses the notion that research inevitably benefits people: ‘It becomes so taken for granted that many researchers simply assume that they as individuals embody this ideal and are natural representatives of it when they work with other communities.’ Indigenous communities in the US and elsewhere have different experiences. The case of the clam beds at Tomales Bay is an example of research leading to regulations that ignore traditional cultural management and damage a tribal subsistence economy. This case and others like it have led many native communities to be extremely wary of formal research and other external processes.
