The Importance of Traditional Knowledge
Previously held assumptions about scientific and “credible” knowledge are breaking down in recent times. Western civilization is starting to come to the realization that knowledge gained through traditional European scientific methods should be balanced and supported by knowledge that has existed, and been passed, for generations by local inhabitants.
Not only does this knowledge come from years of longitudinal study, but the people that hold the knowledge have staked their existence on the reliability and accuracy of this information. Smith (1999 p. 13) lauds the importance of Traditional Knowledge; “I believe that our survival as peoples has come from our knowledge of our contexts, our environment, not from some active beneficence of our Mother Earth. We had to know to survive. We had to work our ways of knowing, we had to predict, to learn to reflect, we had to preserve and protect, we ad to have social systems which enabled us to do things.”
Aside from the benefits of great acceptance of TK in the scientific community, there is a great deal to be gained by young people that are interested in a more sustainable and holistic approach to understanding.
Marker (2011) explains how “indigenous historical narratives that combine oral traditions with ecological knowledge have informed environmental scientists about ways of seeing reciprocity among animals, humans, and changing landscapes.” (p.104) This approach is “vital in helping youth understand their responsibility for maintaining the place-base traditions that have sustained their communities.”
Collective sharing of knowledge, and the underlying values that are associated with it, provide a centering effect for young people that may be facing uncertainty (Bowers, Vasquez, and Roaf, 2000, p. 194). As was demonstrated in the video Fraser River Journey, youth from various First Nations came together in an ecological, cultural and place-based framework to learn about their culture, share their strengths, and heal their wounds, in a way that could not have been re-created in a classroom.
Why has traditional knowledge been marginalized in the past?
Many obstacles have prevented full acknowledgement of the credibility of traditional knowledge, especially in circles of the scientific community and Western educational institutions. I only hope to touch on a few obstacles that traditional knowledge faces below.
Obstacles
Notions of Time
One of the obstacles preventing unequivocal acceptance of traditional knowledge in western societies, may be due to contrasts between indigenous and Western understandings of time and reality. As Marker (2011) discusses, indigenous people see time in a circular manner reflecting a recurring moral universe where narratives do not differentiate between “history” and “story”, whereas Western society sees time as a linear concept, in which newer and faster notions are valued. Julie Cruikshank’s study of aboriginal Yukon women (as cited in Marker, M. 2011) describing the past, made little distinction between historical, moral or cultural truth (p. 103).
Connection to Animals and Place
Marker (2011) describes how indigenous perspectives on animals and the landscape, when viewed through Western perspective, tend to be marginalized as myths, legends, or as “sub alternate” ways of seeing the world (p. 104). As most schools hold culturally neutral knowledge with higher esteem, Marker (2006) maintains “indigenous ecological understandings are dismissed as an exotic, but irrelevant, distraction” (p. 483). Historically, Western society has viewed animals and land as merely a resource to be exploited.
Objective Knowledge versus Moral Interdependence
Perceptions of scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge have been at odds. Bowers, Vasquez, and Roaf (2000, p. 192) describe how knowledge of nature that is passed from generation to generation grounds First Nations sense of moral reciprocity and interdependence, whereas scientific understanding is based on an objective observer, in which moral values are viewed as a prescientific way of understanding. The perception is that science is supposed to be free of cultural bias, and moral tradition based in human/natural relationships. Western culture views science as free from culture and objective in observation.
Oral versus Written Word
Western society has always valued print-based knowledge over oral. Bowers, Vasquez, and Roaf (2000, p. 186) might describe best the perspective of the printed word as opposed to the spoken word:
In effect the printed word (which is always separated from context) has been represented by Western thinkers as a more accurate representation of reality than the spoken word – which is dependent upon context and interpersonal accountability. This privileging of print over the living reality of the spoken word has been an important source of Euroamerican oppression of Native peoples in the past.
Colonialism and Perspective of Knowledge
Prins (2002) discusses a hegemonic configuration that he describes as the “primitivist perplex” in which white dominant society effectively subverted indigenous understandings of themselves and the world around them, further marginalizing their traditional knowledge system. This led to further difficulty, in terms of determining what is culturally authentic, even amongst the indigenous peoples themselves.
As cited by Agrawal (1995) “Some indigenous knowledge theorists have argued that science is open, systematic, objective and analytical. It advances by building rigorously on prior achievements. Indigenous knowledge, however, is closed, non-systematic, holistic rather than analytical, advances on the basis of new experiences, not on the basis of a deductive logic” (Banuri and Apffel-Marglin 1993; Howes and Chamber 1980).
In her interview, Bennett describes how the Western colonialist’s perspective devalued First Nations knowledge as something of the past and of having little merit.
Agrawal, A. (1995). Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge: Some Critical Comments. IK Monitor 3(3)
Bennett, M. (2012). Traditional Knowledge Interview. From: http://youtu.be/kL8puPG8mrk
Bowers, C.A., Vasquez, M., & Roaf, M. (2000). Native People and the Challenge of Computers: Reservation Schools, Individualism, and Consumerism. American Indian Quarterly, 24(2),182-199.
Fraser River Journey. Elearning UBC. Retrieved October 23, 2012 from: http://media.elearning.ubc.ca/det/ETEC521/FraserRiver-H.264-300Kbps-Streaming-16×9.mov
Marker, M. (2006). After the Makah Whale Hunt: Indigenous Knowledge and Limits to Multicultural Discourse. Urban Education 41 (5), 482-505.
Marker, M. (2011). Teaching History from an Indigenous Perspective: Four Winding Paths up the Mountain. In P. Clark, New Possibilities for the Past, Shaping History Education in Canada. University of British Columbia Press
Prins, H. (2002). Visual Media and the Primitivist Perplex: Colonial Fantasies, Indigenous Imagination, and Advocacy in North America. In F. Ginsburg, Media Worlds: Anthropology on a New Terrain (p.p. 60 & 63). University of California Press Books
Smith, L. (1999). Introduction to Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books Ltd, (p.13)