Indigenous Science — Traditional Ecological Knowledge as Science
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) — the systematic body of knowledge Indigenous peoples have accumulated about specific ecosystems through thousands of years of observation and practice — is now recognized by ecologists as a form of science that complements and often surpasses Western ecology.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) formally recognized in 2019 that Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) provides a body of ecological information that is irreplaceable and cannot be fully captured by Western scientific methods. Specific examples: Anishinaabe wild rice managers detected changes in rice populations decades before scientific monitoring detected them. Inuit hunters described changes in sea ice behavior — including new, dangerous ice formation patterns — twenty years before climate scientists documented them. Cherokee plant medicines for specific conditions have been found to contain compounds with demonstrated efficacy for those conditions in clinical trials. The most productive research frontier in ecology, conservation biology, and medicine is now the collaboration between Indigenous knowledge holders and Western scientists — recognizing both as legitimate and complementary ways of knowing.
We have been watching this land longer than your science has existed. Listen to us.
Ecologist Fikret Berkes's Sacred Ecology documents dozens of cases where Traditional Ecological Knowledge identified ecological changes, identified effective management interventions, and preserved species that Western science missed — concluding that TEK represents an irreplaceable component of a complete ecological science.
Anishinaabe oral tradition