Culture and Environment

A biological and evolutionary explanation of existence would suggest that the purpose of human knowledge like all other human endeavour is to enable ‘survival and meaning’ of the species (Watson and Chambers, 1989). Such fundamental purpose is then elaborated by philosophical and political analysis and action. In pursuit of these outcomes and during the modern era, non-Indigenous life has sought to exercise domination over the natural environment while, at the same time, Indigenous life resonates and harmonises with the surrounding landscape. After many thousands of years of treading lightly, the impact of Indigenous peoples on the environment is impossible to observe. The essential nature of the underpinning economic system for each will determine this relationship.

It is important for those wanting to bring Indigenous Knowledge into teaching and learning contexts to understand what happens when Indigenous Knowledge is conceptualised simplistically and oppositionally from the standpoint of scientific paradigms as everything that is ‘not science’ (Martin Nakata, 2007, p. 191).