Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, March 1999

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Role and significance of 'tradition' in indigenous knowledge
Focus on: Traditional ecological knowledge
by Fikret Berkes

I work in the area that I prefer to call 'traditional ecological knowledge, ' and would like to challenge the view that sees 'tradition' in a negative light. This contribution is prompted by the contribution by Jan Brouwer about definitions in the December 1998 issue of the Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor. I thank Dr Brouwer for bringing up the point. I depart from his argument in order to elaborate the point that for many groups, such as indigenous peoples of North America, 'tradition' is something important, dear and essential for indigenous knowledge.

In a thoughtful piece in the Monitor, April 1996, Mike Warren wrote about the efforts two decades ago to find a term that could replace 'traditional'--because to many in the development field, 'traditional' denoted the '19th-century attitudes of simple, savage and static,' said Warren (see IK&DM 4(1)). Such a view of tradition seems to continue to date, judging by Dr Brouwer's contribution (see IK&DM 6(3)). But also in the 1980s, the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Working Group of the International Conservation Union (IUCN) was born, and its members produced books with such titles as Traditional knowledge and renewable resource management in Northern Regions (M.M.R. Freeman & L. Carbyn (eds), University of Alberta, Canada, 1988) and Traditional ecological knowledge: Wisdom for sustainable development (N.M. Williams & G. Baines (eds), Australian National University, 1993).
These scholars were obviously not writing about the 'simple, savage and static,' and it is clear that the community of IK researchers was not unanimous about the appropriateness of word 'traditional.' In the dictionary sense, 'traditional' refers to cultural continuity transmitted in the form of social attitudes, beliefs, principles and conventions of behaviour and practice derived from historical experience. In the 1993 volume cited above, Eugene Hunn explains: 'New ideas and techniques may be incorporated into a given tradition, but only if they fit into the complex fabric of existing traditional practices and understandings. Thus traditions are enduring adaptations to specific places. . . Traditions are the products of generations of intelligent reflection tested in the rigorous laboratory of survival. That they have endured is proof to their power.' Henry Lewis points out in the same volume that the traditional 'may be dismissed or denigrated because the custodians of such knowledge are no longer considered 'traditional' by outsiders, particularly those in positions of power and authority.' In this regard, it is particularly risky to refer to 'true tradition' or to level charges of 'reinventing of tradition' to a group of people. No wonder that the control of indigenous knowledge has become such a contentious political issue.
Recently in the process of researching and writing a book, I came to the conclusion that 'traditional' does not mean an inflexible adherence to the past; it simply means time-tested and wise. I was particularly struck by the positive connotations of 'tradition' for many groups of indigenous peoples, including native Americans and Canadians, Australian aborigines, and New Zealand Maori. For example, when the Inuit (Eskimo) participants in a 1995 conference were asked to describe traditional knowledge, there was consensus on the following meanings: 'practical common sense; teachings and experience passed through generations; knowing the country; rooted in spiritual health; a way of life; an authority system of rules for resource use; respect; obligation to share; wisdom in using knowledge; using heart and head together.'
The terms 'traditional ecological knowledge' (TEK) and 'indigenous knowledge' (IK) are sometimes used interchangeably. What is the relationship between the two? In my view, the study of TEK begins with the study of species identifications and classification (ethnobiology), and proceeds to considerations of peoples' understandings of ecological processes and their relationships with the environment (human ecology). Implied in TEK is a component of local knowledge of species and land. There is also a component of practice in the way people carry out their agriculture, hunting, fishing and other livelihood activities. Further, there is a component of belief in peoples' perceptions of their role within ecosystems and how they interact with natural processes.
Putting these together, I defined TEK as a cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment. Evolving from our earlier work with Madhav Gadgil in India, Carl Folke in Sweden and others, this became the operational definition of TEK used in my Sacred ecology: Traditional ecological knowledge and resource management (Philadelphia and London: Taylor & Francis 1999).
I prefer to use the term 'IK' more broadly as the local knowledge held by indigenous peoples, or local knowledge unique to a given culture or society. Of course, much of the IK literature is not about ecological relationships but about many other fields of ethnoscience including agriculture, ethnobiology, and ethnomedicine. Some of these other areas of ethnoscience--for example, ancient erosion control techniques and water conservationare--are directly related to ecological knowledge, but others (e.g., ethnoastronomy) less so. For these reasons, I limit the use of 'TEK' to explicitly ecological knowledge, and consider it a subset of IK.

Dr Fikret Berkes
Natural Resources Institute
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2
Canada

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