Kenichi Matsui is an associate professor of sustainable environmental studies at the University of Tsukuba, where he teaches environmental history and ethics. In his research, he has explored issues related to Native water rights, water ethics, biodiversity, and traditional ecological knowledge in Canada and the United States. Since 2010, Matsui has conducted a government-funded research project on traditional knowledge for community-led environmental governance, which investigates the roles traditional knowledge may play in empowering local communities and indigenous peoples in North America and several other countries. After receiving his PhD in history from the University of British Columbia in 2003, he taught Native American history at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. At the Rachel Carson Center, he will focus on the ethical and legal implications of traditional knowledge studies.
RCC Research Project: The Ethical and Legal Implications of Traditional Knowledge Studies: A Search for a New Direction in Applied Environmental Ethics (PDF, 9KB)
Film Interview with Kenichi Matsui
Selected Publications:
- Culture and Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples in North America. Tsukuba: University of Tsukuba Press, 2013.
- “Water Ethics for First Nations and Biodiversity in Western Canada.” International Indigenous Policy Journal 3, no. 3 (2012). Last modified, 31 October 2012: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/iipj/vol3/iss3/4.
- “Water-rights Settlements and Reclamation in Central Arizona as a Cross-Cultural Experience: A Reexamination of Native Water Policy.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 35, no. 3 (2011): 91–118.
- “Waterpower Developments and Native Water Rights Struggle in the North American West in the Early Twentieth Century: A View from Three Stoney Nakoda Cases.” In Aboriginal Title and Indigenous Peoples: Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, edited by Louis A. Knafla and Haijo Westra, 202–13. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010.
- Native Peoples and Water Rights: Irrigation, Dams, and the Law in Western Canada. Vancouver: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009.