The Fortress, the River and the Garden: Becoming indigenous to place

Background/Question/Methods

The institutions of science are often perceived by those outside its walls as an intellectual monolith, a metaphorical fortress which places scientific knowledge behind high walls and erects perhaps unintentional barriers of language and protocol to its widespread fluency. The fortress is seen as the defender of   the primacy of the scientific worldview as the sole mode of accurately understanding the world. The outcome of this “knowledge privileging” is to effectively marginalize other ways of knowing. We are all the poorer when we suppresses the potential synergies to be found in  engaging worldviews which pose an alternative to the strictly materialist paradigm, especially when we are faced with complex issues of human/nature relationships.  Traditional ecological knowledge, embedded in an indigenous worldview is rich with prescriptions for sustainability derived from millennia of living in place. Simultaneously philosophical and pragmatic, material and spiritual, traditional ecological knowledge seamlessly encompasses those perspectives which academics label arts, humanities and science and may offer a model for a holistic approach to cultivating mutually sustaining relationships to place.  In order to break out of the metaphorical fortress, to create a productive synergy between worldviews, the central question arises: “what should be the appropriate relationship between scientific and indigenous knowledge systems”?  

Results/Conclusions

Some indigenous philosophies offer the metaphor of the river in which two different vessels share the river of life and the two knowledge systems remain autonomous. This paper assesses that model and its implications for knowledge sharing in a time of unparalleled rates of environmental change. An alternative metaphor and model of the “garden” is proposed in which a creative symbiosis between scientific and traditional ecological knowledge is conceived, which provides a conceptual framework for guiding the process of becoming “indigenous to place”. This synergy inherent in traditional knowledge is closely related to the emerging collaborations between art, humanities and sciences that are generating and celebrating deep, multi-faceted connection to place that contribute significantly to both ecosystem and cultural well-being.