There is a presumption that the primary goal of creating alternative resource management systems is to increase the efficiency of the management
decisions made. However, changing the rules of resource management leads to institutional uncertainty, and such instability is an integral part of developing alternative management systems. In the case of barren ground caribou management, these rule changes include adding the voices of resource users to decision-making, in particular, the marginalized voices of aboriginal caribou-hunting communities. Trust-building is an important process in the development of new management institutions in such crosscultural situations. Trust develops in conditions where the multiple perspectives of diverse stakeholders are addressed, so that the information for management decisions is clear, accountable and legitimate to all parties.
The trust put in the knowledge of linked and dynamic social and ecological conditions changes through time. In this paper the fluctuating trust put in the knowledge of caribou ecology and behaviour is examined with the aid of panarchy thinking and common property theory. This analysis is grounded in the relationship between barren ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and people in the Dene community of ŁutsÎl KíÈ on the eastern arm of Great Slave Lake, in Canada's Northwest Territories
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