Indigenous knowledge is entering into the mainstream of
sustainable development and biodiversity conservation discourse.
Article 8(j) of the Convention of Biological Diversity
(Rio, 1992) has contributed to this process by requiring
signatories to: “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge,
innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities
embodying traditional life-styles relevant for the
conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity”.
As the potential contribution of indigenous knowledge to
key items on the global agenda gains widening recognition,
an increasing number of scientists and policy-makers are
calling for the integration of indigenous and science-based
knowledge.
While indigenous peoples who have been lobbying for
such recognition have reason to be satisfied, there are also
reasons for concern. Are scientists serious enough about this
emerging issue to go so far as to question the construction
of their own knowledge? Or at the end of the day, will they
do little more than add a veneer of traditional ecological
knowledge (TEK) and then carry on business as usual? For
the time being, the scientific and the development communities
views indigenous knowledge first and foremost as a
resource to be appropriated and exploited. Integration with
(or more accurately into) science implies the application of
a validation process based on scientific criteria that purportedly
separates the useful from the useless, objective from
subjective, indigenous ‘science’ from indigenous ‘beliefs’.
Through this process, knowledge corresponding with the
paradigm of Western science is extracted, and the rest is
rejected. While this cognitive mining may be profitable to
science, it threatens indigenous knowledge systems with dismemberment
and dispossession.