Abstracts
Western Redcedar: an endangered cultural
icon of northwestern North America
Nancy Turner
University of Victoria
Western redcedar (Thuja plicata) is an iconic tree for
Indigenous Peoples of the Northwest Coast of North America. It
is also critically important for the integrity of the coastal
temperate “old growth” rainforest ecosystem, and a
valuable economic species in the forest industry. Although young
cedars are still common, old-growth cedars have become rare, and
are further threatened by global climate change. This tree represents,
in a single species, the clash of values and approaches that have
characterized land and resource use since colonial times. I will
examine the rich legacy of traditional ecological knowledge relating
to western redcedar, and the differing values attributed to it.
For First Nations, such as the Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth,
Tsimshian and Haida, it is a “cultural keystone species,”
an integral part of peoples’ cultural identity, interwoven
with their lives in myriad ways. Yet, because of industrial scale
logging, the giant cedars that dominated the lowland forests just
a few decades ago are mostly gone today. Collaborative approaches
in ethnobotany and conservation biology, embracing ideas and concepts
embedded in Indigenous Knowledge systems, can help to reinstate
this magnificent tree and to enhance societal awareness of its
true and lasting value of to humanity.
Place-Based Traditional Knowledge, Endemism
And Environmental Change:
What TEK Can Offer Conservation Biologists
Gary Paul Nabhan
University of Arizona
Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), just like Western ecological
science, has unique insights, convergences, blind-spots and limitations;
it most often draws upon place-based "found experiments"
that offer longtiudinal data on endemic species, environmental
change and multi-factorial causal factors at the local or regional
level that visiting scientists can seldom be exposed to any oher
way. I will give examples from the new book from Island Press,
Where Our Food Comes From, to exemplify indigenous foragers
and farmers' knowledge of endemic species and varieties and the
effects of global and local environmental change upon them. The
process of cross-cultural exchange of such information; however,
is not merely about decoding TEK; it exists in a complex political
ecology that must be negotiated through time.
Indigenous Agriculture in North America:
Recognizing Complex Knowledge in a Traditional Cropping System
Jane Mt. Pleasant
Cornell University
Large areas of land in eastern North America were used for crop
production centuries before Europeans arrived. Although many contemporary
crop and soil scientists dismiss these indigenous agricultural
systems as mere "subsistence strategies", closer analysis
reveals a complex knowledge system based on principles remarkably
similar to western agronomic science. Using the traditional cropping
system of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois or Five/Six Nations), this
presentation will explore the multiple levels of knowledge embedded
in a polyculture of maize, beans, and squash planted on mounds
or hills. It will also evaluate traditional cropping systems as
a source of knowledge for implementing sustainable agricultural
systems today.
Integrating Western And Eastern Sciences
Darshan Shankar
Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions, Bangalore,
India
The eastern and western ways of knowing about nature are fundamentally
different. They both use the same six human instruments of knowing
that all scientists are endowed with namely the five senses and
the mental faculty, but they use them differently. The depth,
range and scope of knowledge they therefore discover is different.
Western Science has an incredibly detailed knowledge about parts
of nature, whereas the Eastern Sciences have an amazing and empowering
knowledge of the whole.
Western Science studies nature from the standpoint of an observer
with nature being the observed. The five senses are employed,
alongside an everincreasing range of sophisticated scientific
tools that dramatically extend the range and depth of the senses,
to gather sensory data about nature. The nature thus discovered
by Science is only that aspect of nature that is amenable to the
senses. It is a hugely diverse physical and biological world that
appears in terrestrial, subterranean, aquatic and extra-terrestrial
space This sensory data about the physical and biological world
is then analyzed with the aid of limited (from the perspective
of the eastern sciences) faculties of the mind, viz logic and
mathematics and intelligent conclusions are arrived at. In this
observer-observed frame one is bound to obtain partial views of
nature because a part of nature, (the observer scientist,) can
never view the whole. A part can only view another part. Epistemologically
Western Science is thus characterized as being reductionist.
The Eastern Sciences do not adopt the observer- observed frame
for the study of nature. The scientists immerse themselves into
nature and study it by becoming one with it. The immersion is
done with the aid of an advanced application of the mental faculty.
The Indian Science of Yoga specializes in such applications and
in other cultures there are likely to be other knowledge tools.
In this application an extraordinarily integrative but a perfectly
natural state of mind is achieved through a training of the mind.
This way of knowing therefore provides the eastern scientist access
not only to sensory data gathered by the senses but also to non-sensory
mental experiences gathered by the mind in its extraordinary state.
The sensory data integrated by the mind in this state, is organized
and interpreted very differently from the logical and mathematical
interpretation of the scientific mind. It results in a whole view
of nature. In addition, the mind in the immersed state, also achieves
a kind of impersonal subjectivity and can see itself as mind-matter
very different from physical and biological matter, which is all
that is available and evident to the senses. It thus gets exposed
to a new non-sensory existential reality which constitutes another
dimension of nature, a mental or spirit plane which is not accessible
to the western sciences because of their way of knowing. The Eastern
Sciences thus recognize three planes of natural existence, the
physical, biological and the mental or spirit plane.
The question can Western and Eastern Sciences be integrated,
is equivalent to asking the question can the whole and its parts
be integrated? It is obvious that the whole and part are related
but it should be equally obvious that the relationship is not
one to one because the whole is not equal to the part and nor
do the sum of parts add up to remake the whole. In addition there
are certain incredible details of parts that science uncovers
that can enrich the understanding of the whole and similarly there
are new dimensions that are revealed in a holistic view that can
fundamentally alter the partial outlook. Therefore in exploring
integration of western and eastern sciences there is promise of
an extremely exciting and mutually beneficial learning relationship
but it needs to be handled carefully as it is complex.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Education:
A South African Perspective
Lorna Holtman
University of the Western Cape, South Africa
The South African National Curriculum Statement for the Life
Sciences expects Grade 10–12 learners to be able to demonstrate
an understanding of the nature of science, the influence of ethics
and biases in the Life Sciences, and the interrelationship of
science, technology, indigenous knowledge, the environment and
society. In this way it is envisaged that learners can learn within
the context of their cultural knowledge. The core facilitators
and implementers of this curriculum, the teachers, are now in
a position where they have to teach and facilitate IKS with very
little material having been developed to support teachers. However,
teachers do not necessarily know the various indigenous knowledge
systems that exist.
This paper will focus on some aspects of an exciting collaborative
project, which focuses on Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS: which
could include ethnobotany, ethnomathematics etc.) and its introduction
in the South African science and mathematics curricula. We look
at ways in which different (community and school) stakeholders
view IKS and its introduction into the curriculum. We examine
suggestions coming from the stakeholders (Traditional African
Healers and teachers) regarding who teaches IKS, how do they teach
it and what conceptions are most appropriate to teach learners.
The roles that could be played by different stakeholders in the
implementation of IKS are also discussed. Finally we look at the
kinds of support needed by teaches (e.g., learning support materials)
to implement IKS effectively.
Heterogeneity in Local Ecological Knowledge
and Practices: Relevance
to Conservation and Management of Resources
Suresh Kumar Ghimire
Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal
Heterogeneity in local knowledge and practices within a given
area is an important consideration in designing sustainable management
practices; it may be desirable to set up mechanisms to facilitate
learning processes between different social groups, and for promoting
cooperation and dialogue among local users, scientists and conservation
managers. Exploring knowledge of the users with the highest level
of knowledge is most likely to yield substantial results on how
best to manage resources and is therefore of major importance
for developing conservation practices. This presentation will
focus on the heterogeneity and complexity of local ecological
knowledge in relation to its practical and institutional context
with respect to management of Himalayan medicinal plants.
Integrating Western and Indigenous Knowledge
in Policy and International Fora
Joji Carino, Tebtebba Foundation
Critical collaboration between western scientists and indigenous
peoples is urgently needed to address contemporary social and
ecological problems - climate change, loss of biological and cultural
diversity, genomics, strategic and multi-criteria social and environmental
assessments, precautionary principle and risk assessments, intellectual
property, and values and ethics, among others.
The 1992 UN Summit on Environment and Development, in its global
framework for Sustainable Development for the 21st century - Agenda
21 - recognized both the scientific and technological community,
and indigenous peoples, as among the major groups or critical
partners for sustainable development. The Multilateral Environmental
Agreements (MEAs), agreed at Rio, including the Convention on
Biological Diversity, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification
(UNCCD), the global dialogue on forests (IPF, IFF, UNFF), through
their recognition of the importance of traditional knowledge have
built some bridges between western scientists and indigenous peoples.
The ongoing negotiations of an International Regime on
Access and Benefit-sharing under the Convention on Biological
Diversity, deliberations on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation
and Degradation (REDD) under the UNFCCC, and Guidelines
for the Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural
Expressions under the World Intellectual Property Organisation
(WIPO), are just a few of the policy arenas where dialogue is
urgently needed.
Ethnobotany's First Attempts to Address
the Issues
Gary Martin, Global Diversity Foundation
If we take the late 19th century as ethnobotany's starting point,
we can trace a historical timeline of more than a century of attempts
to grapple with the integration of indigenous knowledge and science.
Early efforts took a natural history approach to documenting the
extensive knowledge systems of local people, raising awareness
of not only the richness of local plant lore but also its usefulness
for scientific research and development.
Ethnobotany took a great triple leap forward in the 1960s: academics
presented theoretical frameworks, field researchers introduced
rigorous methods and activists explored political implications.
These developments—which continue to evolve today—have
intensified the debate on integration of science and local knowledge.
Elements of polarization are found in the continued difficulty
of international scientific organizations to acknowledge the role
of indigenous knowledge, and in popular resistance to participating
in science when property rights and benefit sharing are unclear.
Progress is found in areas of 'entente' where there is respect
for the integrity of both scientific and local knowledge systems,
resulting in efforts to understand correspondence and hybridity
between the two. By briefly exploring case studies that span the
marketplaces of Morocco, community forests of Mexico and protected
areas of Borneo, I will explore how the subfield of ethnobiological
classification provides just one example of this co-evolution.
Outside the walls of academia, integration on indigenous knowledge
and science is becoming a spontaneous mainstream practice. A return
to locavore habits and diverse traditional foodways is advocated
as the inspired response to the "nutritional transition"
towards diets rich in animal fats, sugar and processed foods.
Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS)—including
the cultivation of heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables—are
offered as an alternative to industrialized agriculture and bioengineering.
New approaches to biodiversity and protected area conservation
draw heavily on local governance and management models, such as
Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas. Alternative therapies
and herbal remedies grow in popularity as people become unwilling
or unable to access global medicine. This popular movement—often
driven by Civil Society—is promoting integration characterized
by intelligence and wisdom, and is yielding important advances
in policy, practice and knowledge. In recognition of the immense
conceptual territory that we have yet to traverse, I refer to
the ensemble of these developments as "early attempts."
Traditional Knowledge and Agricultural
Biodiversity: Revitalising Our Food Security
Pablo B. Eyzaguirre, Bioversity International
Ethnobiology over the last ten years has moved beyond using traditional
knowledge as an aid in scientific discoveries of species new to
science, of known species with new uses and new properties, and
in new ways of describing the relationship between people and
the plants and animals in their environment. Heeding the call
of R.E. Schultes, J.Alcorn, G. Prance, V. Toledo, J. Salick, M.
Plotkin, among others, ethnobiology is now focused on long term
processes that govern the co-evolution of people and plants. As
a result of this shift in focus, ethnobiology/ethnobotany has
now become a core discipline for biodiversity conservation, agricultural
development, and the adaptation and resilience of humans and their
ecosystems to changes in the global environment.
The key driver in this shift was the focus on crop domestication
and the management of agroecosystems and agrarian landscapes.
As early as the 1950s H. Conklin and De Schlippe were using ethnobiological
approaches to provide a richer and more complete understanding
of agriculture in Southeast Asia and Central Africa. Prance (1995)
urged ethnobotany to focus on peasant agriculture; small-scale,
traditional agriculture was a neglected area of research that
was ideally suited to the interdisciplinary, problem solving approach
that ethnobiologists brought to biological science. Recent crises
in the global food system, the narrowing bases of plant species,
varieties, and animals used as food, the rise of diet related
chronic diseases and the persistent problems of hunger and malnutrition
in the developing world, have placed new urgency and demands on
ethnobiology to apply its unique approaches to these problems.
A new body of ethnobiological research is documenting the processes
of crop domestication and generation of new diversity in edible
species using anthropological, biological (including molecular
and ecological research) and nutritional methods. Research is
focusing on some of the world’s oldest crops, gourds and
squash, tropical root crops and vines and leafy vegetables that
are under a continuous process of domestication and evolution.
Diversity in uses of these species across cultures in Africa,
Asian and Latin America maintains the rich genetic diversity in
these crops and the co-evolutionary processes between people,
and play a role in attenuating or reversing the simplification
of diets, ecosystems and cultural knowledge that threatens our
health and food security.
Integrating Traditional Knowledge and
the Medical Sciences: Challenges and Opportunities
Quinton Johnson, SA Herbal Science and Medicine
Institute,
University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Reverse Pharmacology is defined as the science of integrating
and understanding documented traditional knowledge of standardized
phytotherapy with experiential value and optimized phytopharmaceuticals
with therapeutic potential, through exploratory and experimental
transdisciplinary research and development. This innovation model
is emerging as an essential portal for integrating traditional
knowledge and medical science, which is predicated upon respect
for ancient cultural wisdom and the rigor of modern research and
development. India, China, America and South Africa are using
this approach and discovering along the way that many exciting
opportunities and several complex challenges exists at its nexus.
Ownership, intellectual property and benefit sharing, conservation
and management of natural resources, the critical need for life-saving
therapeutics, the socio-economic development of custodians with
traditional knowledge and the transformation of higher learning
centres, are all matters that require much better illumination.
We will need to successfully traverse this unique context if we
are to forever change our understanding of traditional knowledge
about medicine, healing and health, which has an impact on nations
across the world.
Traditional Knowledge, Institutions, and
Global Change
K.S. Bawa1,2 Pashupati Chaudhary,1
and Nitin Rai2
1Department of Biology, University
of Massachusetts, Boston
2Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment,
Bangalore, India
Traditional knowledge has played an important role in sustainable
management of natural resources for millennia. Current systems
of biodiversity management do not accommodate local knowledge.
Marginalization of local knowledge has occurred due to the replacement
of local institutions with modern structures. In many developing
countries, centralized management systems have replaced, traditional
forms of management. More recently however some states such as
India have privileged local self government through constitutional
amendments. Their role in biodiversity management has not however
been explored. The integration of traditional knowledge with local
and state institutions is necessary to manage natural resources
and conserve biodiversity Only through such efforts will communities
be able to assert their rights, access resources, and evolve frameworks
for collaborative management. We provide examples from the Eastern
Himalayas and the Western Ghats, two global hotspots of biodiversity
in south Asia, about the potential of traditional knowledge to
advance conservation of biological diversity, through decentralization
of protected area management. We argue that due to the greater
impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities, decentralized
systems of governance are better suited to evolve mitigation strategies
than centralized governance. We then draw general lessons for
other areas in the world about the use of traditional knowledge
and local self governance institutions in responding to global
change.
