Why work with indigenous knowledge (IK)? In an article on sustainability and technology transfer, Richard Wilk (1995), an American anthropologist, mentioned a file folder of materials that he had accumulated over several years. The file contained 25 separate project proposals, feasibility studies, implementation plans, and project assessments. Submitted over a period of a century, all these studies considered commercializing the production of edible palm oil from a tree native to the Belizean rainforest. In each of these initiatives, imported cracking and rendering technologies developed for use in other tropical palm-oil industries were tried. Despite easy access to dense, high-yield tree stands, all these projects failed, even those with direct government subsidies. Throughout this period, household production of edible oil by indigenous people, using a variety of simple, local technologies, never stopped.
This story prompts several important questions: Did anyone bother to ask local people the who, how, where, when, and why of their local palm-oil production system? By learning about the local production system, could the proponents have avoided any of these costly failures? If the entrepreneurs had established joint ventures with the communities, could development objectives and sustainable-development goals have been served? If participatory technology-development techniques had been tried, could hybrid technologies (a combination of indigenous and foreign inputs) have yielded successful ventures? What would have been the outcome had any of these proponents worked with IK?
The experiences of an agroforestry project in the Philippines, initiated by the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, suggests that outcomes can be quite different. After a nursery operation that relied on exotic species failed to live up to expectations, village farmers and scientists worked together to identify locally growing (indigenous and introduced) tree species. Local informants identified the most important species, listed the criteria used for classifying a species as ?important? ? hardiness, fire resistance, general utility, and seed availability ? and then ranked the species according to the criteria. Six indigenous and four exotic species were identified as having significant potential as new nursery stock, according to these criteria. The results of this exercise were presented to the whole community, and the community now has its own action plan for reforestation. Scientists and farmers learned from each other, and local people were empowered (IIRR 1996).
Since the early 1990s, IK has been fertile ground for research. There is now a wealth of information on the topic. As IK research is still relatively new, comprehensive source materials are rare. This guidebook specifically addresses that need: it gathers and integrates information on the topic, making a whole package of information accessible, comprehensible, and hence, useful. Through extensive use of field examples and a review of current theory and practice, it provides a succinct and comprehensive overview of IK research and assessment.
By summarizing an extensive literature (including the research results from foreign and local researchers) and presenting some key positions brought forward by indigenous peoples, this guide contributes to the improved design, delivery, monitoring, and evaluation of research programs in indigenous peoples? territories. Two audiences are anticipated: seasoned development-intervention professionals, project managers, research coordinators, and extensionists seeking to add some insights and options to their development approaches; and the novice or student needing an informative sourcebook on IK or a framework for further study.
Methods of incorporating IK systems in development work are discussed. Section 1 serves as general introduction to the topic. Section 2 addresses some of the ethical issues in IK research. Intellectual property rights and the emerging ethical, legal, and commercial contexts affecting IK research are discussed. Section 3 looks at research paradigms, briefly mapping out insights generated from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources framework for assessing progress toward sustainability, the social sciences, and gender-sensitive and participatory rural research. This section concludes by tabulating all inputs as one framework (see Table 3). Section 4 expands on the topic of IK methodology by offering details on field techniques. Section 5 presents four case studies demonstrating different approaches to IK research in terms of research objectives and collection techniques. Section 6 deals with assessing the product of IK research in terms of sustainability and looks at developing IK through validation and experimentation. Three sets of formal procedural guidelines for conducting IK research are presented in Appendix 1. The guidelines can be adapted to other situations. A glossary of the terms that are in bold italics and a list of acronyms and abbreviations are included as Appendix 2 and Appendix 3, respectively.
