OOS 31-1 - Indigenous-academic collaborations: Integrating knowledge and wisdom to support community-grounded environmental action.

A key challenge for today’s science is to provide knowledge that is embraced by society and provides a foundation for wise stewardship. Both western academic science and indigenous peoples have generated important but different bodies of knowledge and understanding. In pursuit of objectivity, academic science has shied away from the cultural dimensions of the linkage between knowledge and action. In contrast, indigenous science has embraced the cultural, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of the reciprocal interactions between people and nature. The goal of this presentation is to explore the links between knowledge and wisdom-for-action in western and indigenous science based on collaborations between research scientists and indigenous communities in California, Alaska, and New Zealand.
In fire-prone ecosystems of the western United States, indigenous cultures evolved with and rely on fire-dependent species and fire-affected ecological processes. Fire is viewed as a spirit, and wise use of fire is a spiritual obligation embedded in cultural burning practices that reduce risks of large catastrophic wildfires and moderate localized climate stressors. Western fire science has focused largely on the management of the large fires that result from climate warming and suppression of cultural burning practices. Collaborative application of these two knowledge systems can identify triggers, thresholds, and appropriate interventions to meet the goals of communities and forest managers, where the public and indigenous communities are co-beneficiaries.
In Alaska, researcher-community collaborations are increasingly codesigned to address community-prioritized issues, such as measurements of ice thickness (a hunter safety issue) and changes in whale movements. This collaboration showed that whale populations are still recovering from 19th century industrial harvest and are relatively unaffected by current indigenous harvest. Indigenous leaders now have a stronger voice in the international management the whales and can speak for whales as a cultural foundation of their communities.
In New Zealand, the national government has only recently taken steps to restore the rights of Iwi/Hapū (Tribes/subtribes) to manage culturally critical natural resources. A combination of sediment delivery from forestry and farming and the overharvest of the pāua (abalone) and other coastal species threatens the cultural connections between tangata whenua (local Māori people) and the sea. Recent collaborations between Māori communities and marine ecologists are informing both ecological recovery programs and the rights of coastal communities to manage their local marine resources.
We conclude that both academic and indigenous approaches to science are critical to wise stewardship of Earth’s future.