Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
BOX 18.2
Continued
significantly from SEK (Pierotti and Wildcat 2000) because TEK is much more
than collecting and analyzing the empirical information concerning ecological re-
lationships. Indeed, TEK is woven into and inseparable from the social and spiritual
context of the culture. Traditional ecological knowledge includes the ethic of recip-
rocal respect and obligations between humans and the nonhuman world that I dis-
cuss throughout this chapter. In TEK science, nature is subject, not object. Such
holistic ways of understanding the environment offer alternatives to the dominant
consumptive values of Western societies (Hunn 1999; Berkes 2008). Embraced as
an equal partner to the power of SEK, TEK offers not only important biological in-
sights but a cultural framework for environmental problem solving that incorporates
human values.
As Gadgil and colleagues (1993) write, “Modern scientific knowledge, with its
accompanying worldview of human beings apart from and above the natural world,
has been extraordinarily successful in furthering human understanding and manip-
ulation of simpler systems. However, neither this worldview nor scientific knowl-
edge has been particularly successful when confronted with complex ecological sys-
tems. . . . It is in this context that traditional ecological knowledge is of significance.”
In terms of ecological restoration, TEK is useful when defining reference eco-
systems because Native languages and artifacts of material culture are a living library
of species composition (Alcoze and Hurteau 2001). Ethnographic data including
linguistic analysis, material culture, and the oral tradition can provide detailed com-
positional data for the reference state. Unfortunately, few ecological scientists are
trained to access these valuable data sources.
Traditional ecological knowledge can also provide an alternative way of ap-
proaching the restoration process. The dominant metaphor in this approach is not
nature as machine with humans in control, but nature as a living community, popu-
lated with nonhuman persons, all contributing to the integrity of the system. Just as
healing an individual relies on the resilience and vitality of the patient, who is an ac-
tive participant in his or her own recovery, healing of the land is understood as offer-
ing support to its return to health in which humans play a subsidiary role. Because the
process is understood as directed by nature, the practitioners adaptively change the
plan as the land responds to treatments. The stated goal of the restoration is to help a
site evolve through cyclical changes, rather than establishing a linear trajectory
(Long, Tecle, and Burnette 2003). A similar framework formed the basis of the Karuk
tribal forest restoration model (Martinez 1992b, 1995), which also conceived of res-
toration as a partnership with natural processes rather than an imposed formula.
Consistent with a call to incorporate TEK into ecological restoration is the recog-
nition that this integration should be inseparable from a serious discussion about pro-
tection of traditional knowledge from exploitation. Traditional ecological knowledge
represents the collective intellectual contributions of indigenous people, accumu-
lated and systematized over millennia. The identity of the practitioners, informants,
and the community should always be fully referenced and acknowledged with the
same diligence that scientists apply to the contributions of their academic colleagues.
