Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World

Thomas S. Abler is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo and the author of A Canadian Indian Bibliography, 1960-1970.

The authors of the diverse chapters in this volume share the view that
the relegation of Indigenous peoples to a powerless position has been to
their detriment and to the detriment of humanity as a whole. The
privileged position given to the science of industrial-capitalist
societies has imposed on large areas of the world solutions to problems
that have maximized returns to industrial capitalists while ignoring or
trivializing perhaps more successful—judged by the returns to the
local community—Indigenous solutions to the same problems. Conversely,
the authors see a threat of the same industrial-capitalist system
exploiting and marketing local knowledge to enhance profits of large
corporations.

Most contributions have a geographic focus, although the coverage of
the world’s Indigenous populations is uneven. Six chapters by Njoki
Nathani Wane, George Dei, Patience Elabor-Idemudia, Handel Kashope
Wright, Thomas Turay, and Paul Wangoola deal with Africa; Indigenous
Canadian issues are considered in essays by Marlene Brant Castellano,
Elizabeth McIsaac, Joseph Couture, Budd L. Hall, and Suzanne Dudziak.
Issues of health and Indigenous knowledge in China and India are
explored in chapters by Roxana Ng and Farah M. Shroff. Native peoples of
the continental United States are not represented, although Hawaiian
Elders informed the contribution of Leilani Holmes. Scant attention is
paid to Indigenous populations elsewhere in the world, though some
receive mention in a chapter by Sandra S. Awang that is critical of the
Human Genome Diversity Project. The rise of patriarchy is blamed for the
dominance of conventional Western medicine in an essay by Dorothy Goldin
Rosenberg.

Some presentations are case studies, dealing with the knowledge found
among members (often a small number of Elders) of particular
communities, while others attempt to characterize the strengths of
Indigenous knowledge over the breadth of entire modern states or even
continents. Individual readers may be attracted to one or the other of
these approaches. Important influences on the contributions dealing with
Native Canada were the hearings held in the 1990s and the report of the
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples published in 1996.