Indigenous
This note is about aspects of indigenous and traditional knowledge.
Cf.
Definitions
"Traditional knowledge refers to the knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities around the world. Developed from experience gained over the centuries and adapted to the local culture and environment, traditional knowledge is transmitted orally from generation to generation. It tends to be collectively owned and takes the form of stories, songs, folklore, proverbs, cultural values, beliefs, rituals, community laws, local language, and agricultural practices, including the development of plant species and animal breeds. Sometimes it is referred to as an oral tradition for it is practiced, sung, danced, painted, carved, chanted and performed down through millennia. Traditional knowledge is mainly of a practical nature, particularly in such fields as agriculture, fisheries, health, horticulture, forestry and environmental management in general."
The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. ‘Traditional Knowledge and the Convention on Biological Diversity’. Brochure for Article 8(J) of The Convention on Biological Diversity. Montreal: United Nations Environment Programme, 2021.
Introduction to Article 8(J) of The Convention on Biological Diversity
“knowledge resulting from intellectual activity in a traditional context, and includes know-how, practices, skills, and innovations. Traditional knowledge can be found in a wide variety of contexts, including: agricultural knowledge; scientific knowledge; technical knowledge; ecological knowledge; medicinal knowledge, including related medicines and remedies; and biodiversity-related knowledge”
“developed, sustained and passed on from generation to generation within a community, often forming part of its cultural and spiritual identity”
World Intellectual Property Organisation. ‘Glossary of Key Terms Related to Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions’. Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore, 2018.
Traditional Knowledge, World Intellectual Property Organization
Key issues
- Indigenous and traditional knowledge can be very useful.
- The beneficence of Indigenous people's can be exaggerated.
- This knowledge is hard to replicate on the Earth as it is.
- Nonhuman communities are excluded from the notions of indigenous and traditional knowledge or included as integrated into human communities.
Limitations in the romantic portrayals of Indigenous human knowledge. Love and respect in application to killing, especially of animals require justifications.
Often recent human colonial migrations (10,000 years) are often ignored.
Justice and Ethics of Indigenous Practices
Is it OK for Indigenous peoples to continue killing animals?
Rejection of this in law using feminist theory
Deckha, Maneesha. “Unsettling Anthropocentric Legal Systems: Reconciliation, Indigenous Laws, and Animal Personhood.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 41, no. 1 (2020): 77–97. https://doi.org/10/gkdcms.
Also, “Postcolonial” in Critical Terms, ed. Gruen
Indigenous feminist account that questions these practices
Robinson, Margaret. “Animal Personhood in Mi’kmaq Perspective.” Societies 4, no. 4 (2014): 672–88. https://doi.org/10/gcfm5v.
Ecologically Noble Savage
On the ecologically noble Indian debate:
Have to question both indigeneity and the concepts such as environmentalism or conservation.
Nadasdy, Paul. “Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism.” Ethnohistory 52, no. 2 (2005): 291–331. https://doi.org/10/cxzmtg.
This argues that the hunter-hunted exchange is not purely metaphorical. Cf. Killing
Nadasdy, Paul. “The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and Human–Animal Sociality.” American Ethnologist 34, no. 1 (2007): 25–43. https://doi.org/10/bvvt4z.
Raymond, Hames. “The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate.” Annual Review of Anthropology 36, no. 1 (2007): 177–90. https://doi.org/10/dz37ps.
Relationship with old ecosystems:
Roberts, Patrick, Alice Buhrich, Victor Caetano-Andrade, Richard Cosgrove, Andrew Fairbairn, S. Anna Florin, Nils Vanwezer, et al. ‘Reimagining the Relationship Between Gondwanan Forests and Aboriginal Land Management in Australia’s “Wet Tropics”’. IScience 24, no. 3 (2021): 102190. https://doi.org/10/grctqm.
Place
Graham, Mary. ‘Understanding Human Agency in Terms of Place: A Proposed Aboriginal Research Methodology’. PAN: Philosophy Activism Nature, no. 6 (2009): 71–78.
This article insists on the importance of place and its core tenets are acceptable, especially because it does acknowledge that Indigenous knowledge systems are not infallible. However, it does not provide definitions, claim the importance of this and that without evidence or demonstrations and provides a caricature of 'science'. As typical, it focuses on human systems and fails to consider knowledges of nonhuman beings or limitations of all human knowledge and action.
Graham, Mary. ‘Aboriginal Notions of Relationality and Positionalism: A Reply to Weber’. Global Discourse 4, no. 1 (2014): 17–22. https://doi.org/10/grcpm6.
Further argues that coherence understood and predictability of the behaviour of the Land is the core attitude of the Aboriginal peoples. the author simply claims this without justification or evidence. Acknowledges that some voice have linked this desire for predictability with conservatism.
What does this mean for the longer term world of gradual and sometime rapid and large-scale change? Is it not another way for humans to hold illusions?
Interesting is that like us this article emphasises process rather than goal orientation.
In Relation to Nonhumans
Watts, Vanessa. “Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go on a European World Tour!).” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2, no. 1 (2013): 20–34.
Salmón, Enrique. ‘Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous Perceptions of the Human–Nature Relationship’. Ecological Applications 10, no. 5 (2000): 1327–32. https://doi.org/10/cprb5h.
Examples
In the podcast about Canada. The majesty of its North is in the eyes of the newcomers as well as its catastrophes that they exaggerate.
Perceptions of the North at the end of the 19th century that still persist were coloured by the little ice age that was just ending. Liza Piper
Role of Cole fire in open hearths seen as the heart of the home in Britain generating major smoke pollution problem Stephen Moseley Leeds Metropolitan University Conan Doyle.
In NZ Maris arrived about 1300 and removed half the forests that were covering 3/4 of New Zealand. Tom Brookings of Otago University They had gardens, used fire but there were maybe 100000 of them which limited the impact. Same for all indigenous people? Small numerous limit the impact.
In Application to Design
Reconciliation Action Plan at UOM. Emphasize holistic or integrated design solutions
Limitations of Local Ecological Knowledge
Ruddle, Kenneth, and Anthony Davis. “What Is ‘Ecological’ in Local Ecological Knowledge? Lessons from Canada and Vietnam.” Society & Natural Resources 24, no. 9 (2011): 887–901. https://doi.org/10/fb6sgr.
Ecological Indian
It is a dream in the US and other places that Indians or Indigenous peoples are ecological. List the facts and literature for and against. the original book that introduced this term is:
Krech, Shepard. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.
Chapter 7, Makah Whaling and the (Non) Ecological Indian in Kim, Claire Jean. Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
There is subsequent discussion that aims to analyse and critique this interpretation, often framing it as another form of oppression.
Harkin, Michael Eugene, and David Rich Lewis, eds. Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
References
Whyte, Kyle P. "Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises." Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1.1-2 (2018): 224-242.
Roothaan, Angela. Indigenous, Modern and Postcolonial Relations to Nature: Negotiating the Environment. London: Routledge, 2020.
For the background history,
Demuth, Bathsheba. Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait. New York: W.W. Norton, 2019.
Subnotes
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