Weaving Traditional Ecological Knowledge into Biological Education: A Call to Action

A scientists and educators, we train our students to thoroughly examine all the available evidence and to consider alternative explanations for biological phenomena. In peer review, we critically assess whether the author has carefully cited the appropriate primary sources. And yet, in our biology curricula, we are perhaps unknowingly ignoring an entire body of knowledge that has potential significance to contemporary science and policy: traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). Indigenous peoples are the stewards of fully 4 percent of the land area of the United States and represent some 700 distinct communities possessing detailed knowledge of the biota of their homelands. Native American land holdings in North America collectively contain more wildlands than all of the national parks and nature conservancy areas in North America (Nabhan 2000). Globally, indigenous peoples inhabit areas with some of the highest remaining biodiversity on the planet (Durning 1992) and are actively engaged as partners in biodiversity conservation (Weber et al. 2000). Issues of sustainable development, resource management, and ecological restoration all include Native American stakeholders. Federal agencies are required to consult with tribes on a government-to-government basis on a host of scientific and natural resource policies. Thus, college biology graduates have a high probability of encountering issues involving indigenous cultures and TEK. However, the majority of scientific professionals and educators have little understanding of the value of TEK or its cultural context. Traditional ecological knowledge is increasingly being sought by academics, agency scientists, and policymakers as a potential source of ideas for emerging models of ecosystem management, conservation biology, and ecological restoration. It has been recognized as complementary and equivalent to scientific knowledge (Colorado and Collins 1987, Corsiglia and Snively 1995, Salmon 1996, Richards 1997, UNEP 1998, Berkes et al. 2000). Indeed, the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity calls for recognition, protection, and utilization of TEK. Researchers in pharmaceutical laboratories and in agricultural experiment stations worldwide are beginning to recognize the knowledge of indigenous peoples in scientific research. New directions in applied biology that have direct parallels and precedents in traditional knowledge include ecosystem management, medicine, pharmacology, agroecology, wildlife, fisheries, and animal behavior. Biological research is moving to explore these approaches, yet acknowledgment or understanding of traditional ecological knowledge is rare in the scientific community. Most college ecology courses begin a history of the discipline with 19thcentury Europe, neglecting the highly sophisticated precedents in indigenous knowledge systems. My goal in this article is to present the case that exposure to TEK has a legitimate role in the education of the next generation of biologists, environmental scientists, and natural resource managers. Traditional ecological knowledge has value not only for the wealth of biological information it contains but for the cultural framework of respect, reciprocity, and responsibility in which it is embedded (Kimmerer 1998, Pierotti and Wildcat 2000).