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| HANDBOOK OF CIDA PROJECT PLANNING AND INDIGENOUS TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE
APPENDIX 2. COMPARING INDIGENOUS TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE Traditional knowledge has value and validity. It provides the basis for much of modern medicine and centuries of herbalist knowledge accumulated in the early writings of travellers, clerics, and natural historians. That ecological knowledge exists in traditional knowledge for thousands of years was first pointed out publicly in the Brundtland Commission in 1987. Very recently, the Biodiversity Convention, Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration and Forest Principles provided a contemporary context for traditional knowledge. It is not appropriate to compare scientific and traditional knowledge as simple equivalents. Too often, traditional knowledge is incorrectly made parallel only to "science". Science is but a small part of non-indigenous knowledge. Similarly, to suggest that indigenous traditional knowledge is only the equivalent of science is to diminish incorrectly the strength and breadth of indigenous traditional knowledge. Whereas scientific practice generally excludes the humanistic perspective, traditional knowledge makes no distinction between secular and sacred knowledge. Thus, the suggestion that traditional knowledge should be characterized as "traditional science" diminishes its breadth and value. The temptation to compare scientific and traditional knowledge comes from non-indigenous peoples collecting traditional knowledge as if it were an artifact, and without the contextual elements. For example, the Inuit have a far richer and more subtle understanding of the characteristics of ice and snow than do non-indigenous peoples. In fact, some Inuit classification is accessible only by virtue of its relationship to human activities and feelings. In South America, some indigenous tribes have a classification system for trees that identifies many species that science does not, and appears to miss obvious species that science recognizes. Once again the classification systems have a different set of assumptions, so are not directly comparable. The species that appear to have been missed by indigenous peoples, turn up as recognizable in other contexts for the native people. The "extras" from a scientific perspective are identified by native people either because science simply missed them, or because ecological variants have equal importance to genetic species from a traditional standpoint. These comparisons sometimes incorrectly lead science practitioners to trivialize traditional understanding. In many projects, the course of the activities and the critical decisions about what happens next is significantly influenced by the information that is collected, how that information is made available to others, how it is interpreted and finally how it is communicated to both the decision-makers and the stakeholders. Most participants will approach this question with an open and honest mind, but there are often great differences in experience and background that can markedly affect the way information is handled. Fitting science and traditional knowledge together requires an appreciation of their differences. Experience demonstrates that many non-indigenous people equate science and other western methods, such as in management of resources. This is not correct. Management in a non-indigenous style is often based on scientific findings, but it is not science. Indigenous and non-indigenous management styles are much more similar. To illustrate the distinct differences between science (as a research method to acquire knowledge and understanding) and traditional knowledge (as a method to acquire knowledge and understanding), the following tabulation describes some of these differences. Table 1. Differences in Style
Table 2. Differences in Use
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