Theory of Knowledge Resources: Indigenous Knowledge Systems

The author talks about the concept of indigenous knowledge and its role in educational philosophy ...

In their paper Ramos de Robles, Gariby-Chávez and Curiel-Ballesteros offer that indigenous traditional knowledge (IK) concerning edible wild plants in Mexico, part of the historic culture, is fading through successive generations. Furthermore, they argue that a return to this knowledge which proved valuable for many ancestors is desperately needed in modern times ...

In this paper, the paradoxes and difficulties attending the notion of indigenous knowledge in South Africa are reviewed and an alternative dialogue about intellectual heritage is proposed. Beginning with a survey of debates on 'indigenous knowledge' and sciences in India, Australia and Latin America, the discussion draws attention to differences in regional discussions on the subject of knowledge diversity. Turning to the South African context, the paper foregrounds contradictions in the debate on traditional medicines and the sciences in relation to HIV. The bifurcation of 'indigenous knowledge' and 'science' is argued against ...

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the limitations of scientific knowledge, the experiences among Native Americans of the Southern Plains, and the oral transmission of shamanic prophecies ...

Indigenous knowledge systems are integrated epistemological systems taught through Indigenous pedagogies that support an understanding of an interconnected world and our places within it. These systems integrate ideas that are commonly referred to as science knowledge. Stories from two studies examine Indigenous youths' perceptions of science on the land and at school alongside Indigenous Elders' understandings of Indigenous science knowledge and pedagogies ...

This book presents an interesting and insightful discourse on the state and role that indigenous knowledge can play in addressing a tapestry of problems of the world and the challenges connected with the application of indigenous knowledge in enlightenment science-dominated contexts ...

The purpose of this article is to differentially engage in the work of thinking with Indigenous theorists and theories with decolonizing science education research methodologies in mind. As a rejoinder to Tracey McMahon, Emily Griese, and DenYelle Baete Kenyon's "Cultivating Native American scientists: An application of an Indigenous model to an undergraduate research experience," we extend the notion of educationally centering Indigenous processes, pedagogies, and protocols by considering methodology a site in which (neo-)colonial logics often linger ...

Indigenous knowledges are understood as the commonsense ideas and cultural knowledges of local peoples concerning the everyday realities of living. This definition refers to the epistemic saliency of cultural traditions, values, belief systems and world views that, in any indigenous society, are imparted to the younger generation by community elders. It is also refers to world views that are products of a profoundly direct experience of nature and its relationship with the social world.Bringing new and complex readings to the term'indigenous', this collection of essays from Canadian and international contributors is an invitation to critically engage in the discussion of indigenous knowledges and their implication for academic decolonization ...

Indigenous people are people who have deep historical ties to a particular region and continue to practice unique cultural traditions that are distinct from those of the dominant culture around them ...

In the past, the European social sciences labelled and discredited knowledge that did not conform to their own definition of scientific knowledge as an alternative kind of knowledge, as'indigenous'knowledge. Perception has changed with time: not only has indigenous knowledge become an entrance ticket to the world of European social science, but the indigenization of European theories is seen by some as the contribution of peripheral social sciences to join the theories of the centers. This book offers contributions to the conversation on alternative concepts of knowledge, inviting the reader to decide if they are truly alternative, indigenous, or European types of knowledge ...

Expressions of Indigenous and Local Knowledge in Africa and its Diaspora provides critical discourses on Africa and the various configurations of its reflections in folklore, literature, music, languages, and philosophy. The collection, through its selected works, focuses on the African continent in terms of preserving the unique identity of African Indigenous and Local Knowledge. In reality, this preservation effort is confronted by a number of challenges within today's increasingly globalized and westernized world. This book documents ongoing scholarly discussion on the paradoxical dynamics of preserving this identity and consequently enhancing the relevance of African Indigenous and Local Knowledge ...

Magic, in the view of many anthropologists and other scholars of small-scale societies—those in which effective political control is restricted to a village or group of villages—is the manipulation of enigmatic forces for practical ends ...

The worldview within indigenous people's traditional knowledge and western science can be a world of difference. In order to help indigenous students cross the gap and develop a sense of cultural identification. Taking Bunun, one of the Taiwanese indigenous tribes, as our subject, this study aims to develop a teaching module through Bunun's Millet Festival and implement this module to analyze students' performance ...

Investigations in cultural anthropology and the comparative study of RELIGION have led scholars to advance numerous and varied theories to account for the origins and universality of religious phenomena in human societies. This article presents a brief review of the main trends in the development of these theories and a consideration of some of the principal religious ideas and practices found in primitive societies ...

The worldview system in northern cultures, particularly those in which a religious leader, a shaman, plays a central role as the mediator between this world and the upper and nether realms of the universe, the leader's main role being that of a healer, an officiant at sacrifices, or a divine prophet ...

Indigenous rights are those legal and moral rights claimed by indigenous peoples, but what is meant by “indigenous peoples,” and in what sense are their rights peculiar to them?

The vast possibilities for the study of law and religion in indigenous cultures are a source of both promise and potential confusion ...

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE OF NAMIBIA is a fascinating compendium aimed at a wide readership of academics and students, government officials, policy makers, and development partners ...

TAmong the rural Embu people of Eastern Kenya, teaching and learning are not purely institutional activities. Instead, knowledge is passed from generation to generation alongside the most mundane activities. In Indigenous African Knowledge Production, Njoki Nathani Wane uses food-processing practices – preparing, preserving, cooking, and serving – as an entry point into the indigenous knowledge of the Embu and the role that rural Embu women play in creating and transmitting it.Using personal narratives collected during several years of field research in Kenya, Wane demonstrates how Embu women use proverbs, fables, and folktales to preserve and communicate their world-view, knowledge, and cultural norms. She shows how this process preserves Indigenous knowledge devalued by the colonial and post-colonial educational systems, as well as the gendered dimension of the transmission process ...

Each society has its own cosmological understanding of nature and its own regional, cultural, and historical issues with which to contend as it struggles to survive the challenges of a global economy ...

By drawing heavily from conceptual and analytical review of scholarship on the utility of indigenous knowledge (IK) in climate science, these authors argue that IK can be deployed in the practice of climate governance. It reveals that the merits of such a deployment lie in the understanding that the tenets of IK and climate governance overlap and are complementary. This is exhibited by examining the conceptual, empirical and sustainability strands of the climate governance-IK nexus. In the milieu of climate change problems, it is argued that the basic elements of climate governance, where actions are informed by the principles of decentralisation and autonomy; accountability and transparency; responsiveness and flexibility; and participation and inclusion, can be pragmatic particularly to communities who have been religiously observing changes in their environment ...

Indigenous knowledge has become a catchphrase in global struggles for environmental justice. Yet indigenous knowledges are often viewed, incorrectly, as pure and primordial cultural artifacts. This collection draws from African and North American cases to argue that the forms of knowledge identified as “indigenous” resulted from strategies to control environmental resources during and after colonial encounters. At times indigenous knowledges represented a “middle ground” of intellectual exchanges between colonizers and colonized; elsewhere, indigenous knowledges were defined through conflict and struggle. The authors demonstrate how people claimed that their hybrid forms of knowledge were communal, religious, and traditional, as opposed to individualist, secular, and scientific, which they associated with European colonialism.Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment offers comparative and transnational insights that disturb romantic views of unchanging indigenous knowledges in harmony with the environment ...

The continent of Africa is richly endowed with diverse cultures, a body of indigenous knowledge and technologies. These bodies of knowledge and technologies that are indeed embodied in the diverse African cultures are as old as humankind. From time immemorial, they have been used to solve socio-economic, political, health, and environmental problems, and to respond to the development needs of Africans. Yet with the advent of colonialism and Western scientism, these African cultures, knowledges, and technologies have been despised and relegated to the periphery, to the detriment of the self-reliant development of Africans. It is out of this observation and realisation that this book was born. The book is an exploration of the practical problems resulting from Africaís encounter with Euro-colonialism, a reflection of the nexus between indigenous knowledge, culture, and development, and indeed a call for the revival and reinstitution of indigenous knowledge, not as a challenge to Western science, but a complementary form of knowledge necessary to steer and promote sustainable development in Africa and beyond ...

Indigenous knowledge has been contrasted and compared with scientific knowledge as traditional versus modern. This becomes the main problem for the native learners who feel separated from their environment. They face the challenge of existing in a couple of worlds indigenous and non-indigenous. The research presents the theoretical viewpoints of science education and indigenous knowledge to provide a new perspective on science learning ...

Reflecting upon his own prior experiences as Writer, PhD Student embarks on an ethnographic research project which seeks to explain the relationship between Boys'creative writing and identity ...

The following conceptual study aimed to highlight the value of George Ayittey's seminal text, "Indigenous African Institutions" of 2006, towards implementing curricula in South African universities that are epistemically diverse ...

This article forms part of a major study being conducted in Zimbabwe to explore the possibilities of integrating indigenous knowledge of plant healing (Ikoph) into western-oriented classroom science. The article reports on an aspect of research methodology. This study explored appropriate strategies for gaining access to indigenous knowledge holders, and for generating indigenous knowledge data from these knowledge holders. It is a descriptive study rooted in an African indigenous research methodology ...

This volume proposes a wholesale adoption of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS) as a paradigm for Africa's renewal and freedom from the whims of foreign interests. These systems, as argued here, involve balancing short-term thinking and immediate gratification with longer-term planning for future generations of Africans and the continent's diaspora ...

This is a comprehensive study and erudite description of the struggle of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in an Age of Globalization, using in particular eighty-four children�s traditional games in south-eastern Zimbabwe. The book is an informative and interesting anthropological account of rare African children�s games at the risk of disappearing under globalization ...

This article synthesises the importance of understanding the Indigenous wisdom in engaging with Aboriginal people while emphasising the reciprocated relationship as opposed to a partnership approach. The authors drew on the value of Elders stories and shared learning practices expressed in the findings. Video dialogue process of unstructured interview was employed using visual ethnographic approach within the Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) paradigm

Universalists believe that indigenous knowledge should not be studied since it excludes non-indigenous people. A qualitative method was used to explore the impact of lesson study on a science teacher at a secondary school. The research indicated that lesson study has positive impacts on teachers professionally by improving their science content knowledge, developing their teaching strategy and skill, enhancing their interest in working collaboratively, and creating a sense of an indigenous paradigm ...

This paper considers two interdisciplinary fields in which distinct approaches have sought a solution to the "imagination gap" and have resulted in new research questions, methods, outcomes, and even philosophies. These are science, technology, engineering, arts, math, medicine, and design (STEAMM+D) and Indigenous research that establishes questions and methods from an integrated interdisciplinary worldview and the individual's responsibilities toward community and land. By intertwining these approaches, it is possible for science and society to apply creative problem solving in addressing complex challenges, thereby fostering sustainable innovation ...

Indigenous scholars have been gathering, speaking, and writing about Indigenous knowledge for decades. These knowledges are grounded in ancient traditions and very old pedagogies that have been woven with the tangled strings and chipped beads of colonial relations. Pathways for Remembering and Recognizing Indigenous Thought in Education is an exploration into some of the shared cross-cultural themes that inform and shape Indigenous thought and Indigenous educational philosophy. These philosophies generate tensions, challenges, and contradictions that can become very tangled and messy when considered within the context of current educational systems that reinforce colonial power relations ...

Indigenous Conflict Management Strategies in West Africa:Beyond Right and Wrong expands the discourse on indigenous knowledge. With several examples and case histories, the work defines, characterizes, and explains indigenous conflict management strategies in West Africa, particularly in Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon. The book critically evaluates indigenous conflict management strategies with a view to determining their effectiveness in the context of the societies'history and culture, and the relevance and adaptability of these strategies in contemporary contexts ...

NSC rhetoric and practice through 2013 moved to marginalize participation by Māori researchers, in part through constructing "Māori" and "science" as essentially separate arenas-yet at the same time appeared to recognize and value culturally distinctive forms of Māori knowledge. To contest this "neoliberal multiculturalism," Māori health researchers reasserted the validity of culturally distinctive knowledge, strategically appropriated NSC rhetoric, and marshalled political resources to protect Māori research infrastructure. By foregrounding scientific knowledge production as an arena of contestation over neoliberal values and priorities, and attending closely to how neoliberalizing tactics can include moves to acknowledge cultural diversity, this analysis poses new questions for social scientific study of global trends toward reconfiguring the production of knowledge about health ...

The Declaration establishes a universal framework of minimum standards for the survival, dignity, well-being and rights of the world's indigenous peoples ...

Although they have different customs and cultures, they face the same harsh realities: eviction from their ancestral lands, being denied the opportunity to express their culture, physical attacks and treatment as second-class citizens ...

Indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to others, and to the environment ...

Traditional Indigenous knowledge can be defined as a network of knowledges, beliefs, and traditions intended to preserve,
communicate, and contextualize Indigenous relationships with culture and landscape over time ...

While there is much diversity among Indigenous Peoples, and therefore among Indigenous way of knowing, teaching, or learning, many Indigenous education scholars have argued there are also some notable commonalities among Indigenous societies worldwide ...

Suffice it to say that in my view our anxiety about the relation between faith and reason here in Europe today is the legacy of a particular intellectual family ...

In this paper I shall try to illustrate the elementary principles by which a conceptual framework retains its hold on the mind of a person believing in it ...

Can we talk more generally of an Indigenous philosophy?

Newsletter on Native American and Indigenous Philosophies, suggesting the range of ways Native American and Indigenous philosophy can contribute across both traditional and emerging branches of philosophical inquiry, from logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind, to ethics and politics, to philosophies of art and culture ...

Book chapter from "Aboriginal Education in Canada" ...

“African Sage Philosophy” is the name now commonly given to the body of thought produced by persons considered wise in African communities, and more specifically refers to those who seek a rational foundation for ideas and concepts used to describe and view the world by critically examining the justification of those ideas and concepts ...

In line with Namibia’s National Programme on Research, Science, Technology and Innovation (NPRSTI), the aim of this book is to ‘ensure that indigenous knowledge is properly documented’ (NCRST, 2014, p.14) ...

Indigenous peoples continue to exercise cultural and political self-determination across diverse places, including metropolitan areas and treaty lands, though they must reckon with legacies and ongoing practices of capitalist exploitation, colonialism, settlement, and imperialism ...

As institutions explore the introduction of Indigenous content, we have to question what is defined as Indigenous content, who this content serves, and how the pursuit of “indigenizing the academy” can easily become exploitative ...

By gaining greater knowledge of how others think, we can become less certain of the knowledge we think we have, which is always the first step to greater understanding ...

The purpose of this essay is to re-introduce a conception which, having served for two millennia as a guide to the understanding of nature, has been repudiated by the modern interpretation of science ...

New Ideas in Education speaker series to contrast understandings of the natural world ...

Historically, indigenous knowledge around protecting biodiversity has largely been ignored by Western science, but that’s starting to change ...

Table provided by ecologyandsociety.org ...

The mission of the SUNY-ESF Center for Native Peoples and the Environment is to create programs that draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge in support of our shared goals of environmental sustainability ...

This site is for anyone interested in working with Indigenous peoples for on-the-ground ecosystem stewardship ...

Traditional Ecological Knowledge, also called by other names including Indigenous Knowledge or Native Science, (hereafter, TEK) refers to the evolving knowledge acquired by indigenous and local peoples over hundreds or thousands of years
through direct contact with the environment ...

From Alaska to Australia, scientists are turning to the knowledge of traditional people for a deeper understanding of the natural world, and what they are learning is helping them discover more about everything from melting Arctic ice, to protecting fish stocks, to controlling wildfires ...

“They engage with an audience from a place of feeling: feeling a different point of view, feeling a way of dealing with this information, rather than understanding it in the way Western theatre operates where information is much more spoon-fed: ‘you will think this now’, ‘you will feel this now’" ...

Despite the threat presented by assimilation however, in recent years the Māori culture and language has regained its significance and there is a growing acknowledgement of the validity of a Māori worldview – Te Ao Māori – as an asset to New Zealand ...

The purpose of this dissertation is to acknowledge, add to, and further foster the
contributions of Indigenous American cultures and civilizations to the emerging fields of Comparative Political Theory and Inter Civilizational Relations ...

Why some of the world’s major challenges may require advice from some of its most ancient peoples ...

Beginning with our own embodiment our theory of knowledge must endorse the ways we manifestly transcend our embodiment by acts of indwelling and extension into more subtle and intangible realms of being, where we meet our ultimate ends ...

I shall try here to restore our acceptance of higher forms of being and to show how we can know and do know these less tangible levels of existence. I will then try to bring into view the second master idea of our age and show how this idea of unlimited progress, intensified to perfectionism, has combined with our sharpened skepticism to produce the perilous state of the: modern mind. I shall speak of the disasters of our age and finally tell of signs pointing towards a recovery of the grounds for our basic ideals ...