An emerging area of research into what is variously called local, indigenous, folk or traditional knowledge seeks to learn how people who rely on weather and climate for their livelihood traditionally recognize or forecast meteorological events. These literatures are serving as background for my historical and contemporary examination of the ways in which Oklahoma Indian Nations knew or presently know weather and climate; such knowledge may be in part culturally and locally formed and have place-based meaning, and may evolve through movement. Understanding traditional knowledge of nature among Oklahoma tribes is complicated by a history of forced relocation, as it may have been founded upon and developed through experiences in other places and must be considered in the context of its adaptation to new surroundings and the social changes that such movement may have brought, including changes in livelihood that may have altered traditional ways of coming into contact with nature.

Recent work in what has been called ethnoclimatology has sought to uncover local ways of forecasting weather and climate events and to evaluate their scientific validity. For example, Orlove, Chiang and Kane (2002) uncovered a scientific basis (lack or presence of El Niño-produced subvisual cirrus clouds) for the successful forecasts of coming rains by potato farmers in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia. The degree of obscuration of the stars in the Pleiades, as observed by the farmers in June, foretell either a dependable rainy season (bright and numerous stars) or an erratic one (dim and sparse stars), leading to different planting strategies. These researchers found that the farmers were not “fatalistically resigned” to accept climate variability as a reality but instead sought information useful for dealing with it.

Understanding how people who traditionally lived close to the land knew or still know weather is interesting in its own right as a way to preserve cultural tradition, but such understanding also may help present-day providers of scientific weather information better communicate their results to particular sectors of the public and may lead to complementary exchanges of ideas. Traditional, holistic knowledge of nature also may have a contemporary relevance in coping with and adapting to environmental extremes such as drought or climate change (e.g., Suzuki and Knudtson 1992). Some even believe that combining folk and scientific narratives may yield powerful insights into environmental history and human-environment relations (e.g., Cruikshank 2001; Ogilvie and Palsson 2003).