Indigenous knowledge,emancipation and Alienation

Recently indigenous knowledge has received increasing academic (see, e.g., Warren et al., 1993; Brokensha et al., 1980; Gómez-Pompa and Kaus, 1992) and institutional (see World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987;Agenda 21, 1992) attention. The study, application, and recording of indigenous knowledge, viewed as indigenous technologies for living with natural environments, has become a field of great interest and promise to nonindigenous and indigenous people; the ways in which the present interest is expressed, however, could also become a source of disappointment for the latter. I begin by considering the meaning of the expression “indigenous knowledge.” Next, I examine whether indigenous knowledge is fundamentally different from scientific knowledge. Finally I discuss the potential for emancipation, but also for alienation, resulting from the current ways of focussing on indigenous knowledge. He has published on the conception “sustainable development,” on technological rationality andAgenda 21, and on the significance of aboriginal boulder structures, as well as on issues in the history of modern philosophy and philosophy of art. He is the Chair of the Canadian Society for the Study of European Ideas for which he is coordinating workshops on “Ideas of Nature and Land” and “Constructed Space” at its June 1995 Conference in Montreal.