Strong roots for sustainable development

‘Local and indigenous knowledge’ refers to the understandings, skills and philosophies developed by societies with long histories of interaction with their natural surroundings. For rural and indigenous peoples, local knowledge informs decision-making about fundamental aspects of day-to-day life.

This knowledge is integral to a cultural complex that also encompasses language, systems of classification, resource use practices, social interactions, rituals and spirituality.

These unique ways of knowing are important components of the world’s cultural diversity, and provide a foundation for locally-appropriate sustainable development.

Within the confines of a national marine park in the Surin Islands, Thailand, the Moken people (sea nomads) are exploring options for sustainable livelihoods. Women are the primary gatherers of the intertidal zone, using their in-depth knowledge of this environment to collect vital sources of food, such as sea urchins, molluscs, crabs and fish.

A sailing canoe of the Maskelyne Islands, southern

Malekula, Vanuatu, returns from food gardens on

the mainland. Traditional navigational skills, based upon

knowledge of stars, swells, winds and animals, continue

to underpin the sea journeys made by Pacific Islanders.

A Yanomamï boy of the Upper Orinoco, Venezuela, looks for honey in a hollow tree trunk. The Yanomamï

have names for more than fifty bee species that provide a great variety of nutritious and medicinal honey. They know the specifics of different types

of hives (found at the top or the base of trees, or inside tree trunks or fallen

logs) for which they use different honey gathering techniques.

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Women and men possess extensive bodies of knowledge and skills. However, women have their own areas of expertise and their own modes of knowledge transmission. Their knowledge is vital for sustaining community livelihoods, values and well-being.

Indigenous knowledge research has mainly focused on knowledge held by men. Today, it is recognised that the two ways of knowing complement each other and that they are both essential to the continuing vitality and dynamism of indigenous knowledge systems.

complementary ways of knowing

Gender & knowledge

‘We paint the stories on our bodies…. It’s not just a design to look pretty. Women, like men, have to dance, sing and paint for all those connections to be maintained with the

land and with water. If you don’t go to the country, and you don’t sing and dance, then those soaks and wells become

dry.’ Tjama Napanangka, a Wirrimanu Law woman, Australia.

Fishing provides the main source of protein for the Mayangna of the BOSAWAS Biosphere Reserve in Nicaragua. Women do much of the fishing in summer, primarily using hand-held lines and fish hooks. Men fish primarily in the winter, using other techniques, such as bow and arrow or mask and spear fishing.

An Inuit woman takes part in a successful seal hunt at the mouth of the Kuujjuaq River, Ungava Bay, Canada. Seal hunting is almost exclusively a male activity in Inuit society. Women assume the important role of processing meat and skins, including the making of waterproof sealskin clothing.

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Challengingthe assumptions of western science

For the Moken of the Andaman Sea of Thailand and Myanmar, boats are of both practical and symbolic

significance. On the one hand, they serve as a floating home for the entire family for a good part of the year. But

the boat is also envisaged as a living organism, each of its elements associated with a part of the human body.

A tabu leaf indicator at Lamen Bay, north Epi, Vanuatu, signifies that an area is closed to fishing due to the death of a clan member. Across the Pacific, a wide range of cultural practices are instrumental in regulating renewable resource use and access.

Connecting land and sea, nature and culture: a man from Vanuatu performs the stylized sand drawing of a natamana’ai (slit drum). When played, the natamana’ai is said to cause fish on the nearby reef to flip about in the water, dancing to its beat.

Western conservation philosophies separate humans from nature. This leads to the notion that people must be excluded if environments are to be preserved. In indigenous worldviews, however, such a division is unacceptable, as ecosystems and social systems are intertwined. Landscapes are rendered meaningless when one excludes the human relationships and attachments that create them and that are in turn created by them. Unlike science, indigenous thought does not oppose the rational and the spiritual, nor value one above the other. Instead, they flow together and intermingle. For this reason, efforts to extract indigenous knowledge from its moral and spiritual foundations often result in its misinterpretation and fragmentation.

The spring goose hunt is an event of paramount importance to the Cree First Nations of James Bay, Canada. The entire community abandons the permanent village for hunting territories in the bush. The Canada Goose plays a central role in the walking out ceremony that celebrates a child’s first steps outdoors.

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Continuity & changethe dynamism of ‘traditional’ knowledge

A group of men from the Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands, prepare to

return home after a day’s fishing on the barrier reef. The canoe is a large

dugout carved from a huge golothi tree, and is powered by a community-owned outboard motor. Such motors,

supporting subsistence fishing activities, are now ubiquitous in the

Western Solomons.

Local and indigenous knowledge is frequently represented as a fixed body of ancient wisdom that is passed down intact from generation to generation. Terms such as ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ evoke constancy, immutability and inflexibility. In reality, local knowledge has always been reassessed, renewed and expanded. Each generation reinterprets the knowledge of their forebears to confront the emerging challenges and opportunities of a changing world.

The adoption of modern technologies by indigenous peoples is often misinterpreted as the abandonment of their distinct values and ways of life. In reality, the capacity to incorporate new tools and skills has always been fundamental to the dynamism of indigenous cultures. Indeed, it is by blending new ways with old that many indigenous communities are able to uphold their unique lifestyles and worldviews.

Inuit in Arctic Canada are quick to adopt modern technologies to strengthen

their hunting, fishing and trapping way of life. Motorised transport allowed

them to regain access to distant hunting territories, abandoned when Inuit settled

into permanent villages in the 1960s.

A fisherman throwing a nylon cast net in the sandy shallows in Vanuatu. Resource depletion is often falsely attributed to technological change. Entry into a market economy may be the more decisive factor, inciting individuals to forsake community values for individual profit.

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Synergiesbetween scientific & indigenous knowledge

Beluga whale hunting is a traditional pursuit of central importance for the subsistence and cultural identity of the Inuit of Arctic Quebec, Canada. The Inuit participate actively in joint State-indigenous management boards for numerous wildlife species, including beluga, where indigenous and scientific knowledge are confronted and exchanged.

Slash and burn agriculture is widespread in the BOSAWAS Biosphere Reserve, Nicaragua.

While previously this land management practice was widely condemned, it is now

acknowledged that many systems of shifting agriculture are environmentally sustainable,

and are compatible with the maintenance of high biological diversity.

Indigenous knowledge may advance scientific understandings, providing new information and perspectives that supersede those currently held by scientists. This is particularly evident in remote areas that have not been at the heart of mainstream scientific research.

The recognition that local and indigenous peoples have their own ecological understandings, conservation practices and resource management goals has important implications. It transforms the relationship between biodiversity managers and local communities. While previously they were perceived simply as resource users, indigenous peoples are now recognised as essential partners in environmental management.

However, differences between scientific and indigenous worldviews continue to create barriers to meaningful collaboration, as does the widespread assumption that science is superior to other knowledge systems.

The use of fire to create and manage landscapes is an age-old tradition mastered by Aboriginal peoples in Australia. Scientific recognition has been slow in coming, but today traditional fire stick management has been officially adopted as a tool for managing protected areas, such as the Uluru-Kata Tjuta and Kakadu World Heritage Sites.

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Protectingindigenous knowledge from inappropriate use

Plants form an important part of traditional medicines, reflected in the leaf materials gathered by a herbalist from southwestern Uganda. Traditional knowledge of medicinal plants is actively sought after by scientists working for the pharmaceutical industry.

Indigenous knowledge is vulnerable to exploitation by outsiders for commercial profit. In many cases, it is obtained without consultation with indigenous communities or any effort to explain how it may be used.

Today, many communities are calling for the protection of their knowledge from inappropriate use, emphasising the need for prior informed consent and the sharing of benefits.

However, existing regimes for protecting intellectual property are ill-adapted to indigenous knowledge and the needs of indigenous societies. Efforts are being made to develop more appropriate methods, such as sui generis systems based upon customary law.

For millennia, Inuit have marked significant routes and sites with prominent piles of stones called inukshuk, which often assume a human-like form. These images of the Arctic have been misappropriated and commercially exploited by non-Inuit. Consequently, many Inuit want the inukshuk to be recognised as their collective intellectual property. However, existing legal frameworks make this difficult.

The sacred q’ipis (textile bundles) of the Coroma people of the Bolivian Altiplano guide local leaders

in managing their relations with nature, including the prevention of crop failure, illness and natural disasters.

Through the UNESCO Cultural Property Convention, stolen bundles were returned to the Coroma people.

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Revitalisingknowledge transmission within indigenous communities

Elders and youth of the Bakoya people reflect on the importance of intergenerational cooperation. The Bakoya people live in small villages around Mekambo, Gabon, which is the home of the first Pygmy association in the country, Pygmy Indigenous Minorities of Gabon (MINAPYGA).

A Mayangna boy attends school in the BOSAWAS Biosphere Reserve, Nicaragua, where few if any teaching materials are available in the indigenous language. Efforts are now being made to introduce indigenous knowledge into classroom teachings, using the mother tongue as the medium of instruction.

While education programmes provide important tools for human development, they may also compromise the transmission of indigenous knowledge.

With formal education, children spend much time learning passively in classroom settings, rather than engaged in hands-on learning on the land. Teachers replace parents and elders as the holders of knowledge and authority. National languages become the medium of instruction, while vernacular languages are sidelined. Formal education may therefore contribute to an erosion of cultural diversity, a loss of social cohesion and the alienation and disorientation of indigenous youth.

There is an urgent need to enhance the intergenerational transmission of indigenous knowledge, as a complement to mainstream education. Efforts are now being made to bring indigenous language and knowledge into school curricula, and to move learning back into the community, thus reaffirming the status of elders as knowledge holders.

On the Kuujjuaq River, Arctic Quebec, Canada, a young Inuk boy learns to skin and butcher a caribou by helping his father and carefully observing the methodical sequence of actions.

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