Indigenous Knowledge and Perspectives

Abstract

AbstractIndigenous knowledge, once dismissed as mere folklore, is now widely recognized as an essential dimension of global environmental knowledge. Indigenous people, once excluded, now participate across a range of environmental affairs. Understanding how and why this has occurred requires attention to a complex history of scientists and others constructing ideas about Indigenous knowledge. A variety of scholars, including historians of science, environmental historians, and political ecologists have examined this history, identifying the factors that have influenced expert, public, and institutional perceptions of Indigenous knowledge. These include various colonial and postcolonial contexts, ideas about development, changes in the natural environment, disciplinary perspectives (such as those of anthropology), and shifting views of human-environment relations. Indigenous peoples – as knowledge producers, brokers, and intermediaries – have been crucial to these evolving perceptions, by asserting that their knowledge can be a means of achieving change in both knowledge and politics. The Arctic provides a distinctive setting in which the historical construction of Indigenous knowledge can be examined in more detail.