“Native science” in food systems: A wide range of tribal processes of perceiving, thinking, acting, and coming to know

Books: India’s tribal cultural heritage & education >>

Read the full paper by Sam Grey & Raj Patel with References here >>

[…] An intimate, long-term relationship with traditional territories also gives rise to Indigenous systems of governance, social organization, and science. Philosopher Gregory Cajete refers to this as ‘Native science,’ the practice and product of a “lived and storied participation” with the totality of creation, entailing “a wide range of tribal processes of perceiving, thinking, acting, and ‘coming to know’‘” (2004, p. 46). Examples of ‘Native science’ at work in food systems are among the best documented, having commanded the attention of natural and social scientists for at least the past century and a half.

The process is both simple and complex. Engaging with the land—or rather, with the enspirited and sensate gestalt of plants, animals, weather, and geography that is ‘the land’—yields a formidable pool of knowledge. This initial pool is augmented by inspiration, enriched via communication with outsiders, refined through continual trial-and-error, and passed down by cultural transmission (see among others, Berkes 2008). Even traditional Indigenous food storage techniques can be traced to a discourse between humans, spirits, plants, and animals, as Shuswap Elder Mary Thomas points out:

See these scattered pine cone pieces? […] If you look carefully, you will find a pile of pieces nearby. Underneath the pile will be a cache of pine cones belonging to a squirrel. The little cones will be arranged in rows with the tops pointed downward. This is what my Grandmother taught me. When I was a little girl, I asked my Grandmother why the cones were all pointed downward. “Because,” she told me, “when the winter snows begin to melt, and water drips into the cache, it will run downward off the cones and not wreck the nutmeats inside them.” I asked, “How do the little squirrels know to do that?” Granny said, “They learn like we do, and then they pass their knowledge on to us.” (Greenwood and de Leew 2007, p. 49)

There is, as one might expect, a linguistic component to this scientific endeavour. Okanagan Elders understand that language is place-specific because it is given to the people by the land. Since the knowledge housed in each territory is unique, a shift in location catalyzes new vocabularies to voice new understandings (Armstrong 1998). Socio-political formations are similarly rooted, as in general, the Indigenous perception of clan and kinship systems amongst other actors in the natural world correlates with human political organization along these same lines (Deloria 2000). Because of this conceptualization of ‘land’ and ‘place,’ removal from, commodification of, or destruction in traditional territories is a simultaneously physical, economic, social, and metaphysical rupture, as well as an emotional and intellectual blow. […]

Sam Grey is a doctoral student in Political Science and a graduate research fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria. She holds prior degrees from Trent University (BAs, International Development Studies, Philosophy, and Indige- nous Studies) and the University of Victoria (MA, Human and Social Development). Sam has published on Indigenous women’s human rights, decolonization praxis, and historical injustice; and is the editor of three books on Indigenous knowledge and rights-based advocacy. Her current work explores the intersection of politics, emotion, and virtue.

Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a Senior Research Associate at the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes University (UHURU), South Africa. Learn more >>

Source: Food sovereignty as decolonization: some contributions from Indigenous movements to food system and development politics by Sam Grey & Raj Patel © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

URL: http://rajpatel.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Grey-Patel-2015-Food-Sovereignty-as-Decolonization.pdf
Date visited: 20 March 2024

Watch “The Good Ancestor – The Legacies We Leave” (3 min.): An animation that explores the legacies we might leave for future generations >>

Links to some of the most important organisations, thinkers and doers that are leading the way and that have inspired the book The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric >>

For strategic planners, forests are ‘an administrative category implying a desired land use’ whether or not trees are included, but it is useful in making claims to ‘extend the control of the forest service’. […]

To tribal people, forests involve habitat and identity and are thus inseparably linked to their lives and livelihoods. Because of this reality, several inter-disciplinarians see forests as something linked to human rights for indigenous communities.

Source: “An analysis of the impact of the Forest Rights Act (2006) in three states of India” by Rebecca S . David (Edited version of the author’s MPhil Dissertation at the University of Cambridge, UK completed in the year 2014, pp. 1 & 10
URL: https://www.academia.edu/30648733/
Date visited: 20 March 2024

“Cover Your Country” by PARI: Rural people speak about their lives through photos, narratives, film, and audio materials >>

Video | “I saw women working 90 per cent of the time. They did backbreaking jobs for which you need an erect spine,” says P. Sainath in Visible Work, Invisible Women: Bricks, coal and stone | RuralIndiaOnline.org >>

In Marginalised but not Defeated, Tarun Kanti Bose (a seasoned public interest journalist) asserts that “the mainstream development paradigm is being questioned and new rainbows of collective, community reassertions are happening across the tribal belt in India. More so, in most cases, led by brave, empowered and resilient women.” | Learn more: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/book-review-marginalised-but-not-defeated >>

“In less than 200 years, photography has gone from an expensive, complex process to an ordinary part of everyday life. From selfies to satellites, most of the technology we use and spaces we inhabit rely on cameras. […] While photographic documentation can aid in shaping history, it can also be a window into the horrors of the past.” – Read more or listen to Butterfly Effect 9 – The Camera on CBC Radio Spark 26 May 2023 >>

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