Once lost, orallybased knowledge cannot be retrieved. The two profoundly different world views of scientists and indigenous communities, based on radically diverging assumptions about the nature of the world, stand in the way of real communication and understanding. An attitude problem derived from cultural barriers and political realities prevents both groups from acknowledging the value of each other's system of knowledge. Perceptual and language barriers obscure meanings. And because scientists represent the existing system of political domination over indigenous groups, their indigenous knowledge is viewed as subordinate to that of western science, giving rise to an arrogance on the part of scientists.
Integration requires that the two groups have a common ground, enabling communication.
This does not mean that indigenous knowledge should be forced into formal science paradigms, as is currently being widely done. In fact, communication and collaboration rest on the sharing of a common culture, a common vision. Finally, any examination of indigenous knowledge systems must not be purely extractive, as it often is, for the generation of profits, scientific knowledge, or even dissertations and journal publications for scientists, anthropologists, and entrepreneurs who do little to compensate the indigenous originators of the knowledge. Knowledge gained through such examination must be analysed and returned to the communities in linguistic and symbolic forms meaningful to them, so that it is knowledge from the people and for the people. The Mewahang Rai belong to an ethnic subgroup of the Rai.