by
Ray Barnhardt
Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley
University of Alaska Fairbanks
[updated & posted online 4/29/2005]

Barnhardt, R., & Kawagley, A. O. (2005). Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Alaska Native Ways of Knowing. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 36(1), pp. 8-23.

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to extend our understanding of the processes of learning that occur within and at the intersection of diverse world views and knowledge systems, drawing on experiences derived from across Fourth World contexts, with an emphasis on the Alaska context in particular. The article outlines the rationale behind a comprehensive program of educational initiatives that are closely articulated with the emergence of a new generation of indigenous scholars who are seeking to move the role of indigenous knowledge and learning from the margins to the center of the educational research arena and thus take on some of the most intractable and salient issues of our times.

A few years ago, a group of Alaska Native elders and educators was assembled to identify ways to more effectively utilize the traditional knowledge systems and ways of knowing that are embedded in the Native communities to enrich the school curriculum and enliven the learning experiences of the students. After listening for two days to lengthy discussions of topics such as indigenous world views, Native ways of knowing, cultural and intellectual property rights and traditional ecological knowledge, an Inupiaq elder stood up and explained through an interpreter that he was going to describe how he and his brother were taught to hunt caribou by their father, before guns were commonplace in the upper Kobuk River area of northern Alaska.

The elder described how his father had been a highly respected hunter who always brought food home when he went out on hunting trips and shared it with others in the village. One day when he and his brother were coming of age, their father told them to prepare to go with him to check out a herd of caribou that was migrating through a valley a few miles away. They eagerly assembled their clothing and equipment and joined their father for their first caribou hunt. When they reached a ridge overlooking the nearby valley, they could see a large herd grazing and moving slowly across a grassy plain below. Their father told his sons to lay quietly up on the ridge and watch as he went down with his bow and arrows to intercept the caribou.

The boys watched as their father proceeded to walk directly toward the caribou herd, which as he approached began to move away from him in a file behind the lead bulls, yet he just kept walking openly toward them. This had the two brothers scratching their heads wondering why their father was chasing the caribou away from him. Once the father reached the area where the caribou had been grazing, he stopped and put his bow and arrows down on the ground. As the (now) elder told the story, he demonstrated how his father then got into a crouching position and slowly began to move his arms up and down, slapping them against his legs as though he were mimicking a giant bird about to take off. The two brothers watched intently as the lead bulls in the caribou heard stopped and looked back curiously at their father’s movements. Slowly at first, the caribou began to circle back in a wide arc watching the figure flapping its wings out on the tundra, and then they began running, encircling their father in a closing spiral until eventually they were close enough that he reached down, picked up his bow and arrows and methodically culled out the choice caribou one at a time until he had what he needed. He then motioned for his sons to come down and help prepare the meat to be taken back to the village.

As the elder completed the story of how he and his brother were taught the accrued knowledge associated with hunting caribou, he explained that in those days the relationship between the hunter and the hunted was much more intimate than it is now. With the intervention of modern forms of technology, the knowledge associated with that symbiotic relationship is slowly being eroded. But for the elder, the lessons he and his brother had learned from their father out on the tundra that day where just as vivid when he shared them with us as they had been the day he learned them, and he would have little difficulty passing a graduation qualifying exam on the subject 70 years later. The knowledge, skills and standards of attainment required to be a successful hunter were self-evident, and what a young hunter needed to know and be able to do was both implicit and explicit in the lesson the father provided. The insights conveyed to us by the Inupiaq elder drawing on his childhood experience also have relevance to educators today as we seek ways to make education meaningful in the 21st century. It is to explicating such relevance that the remainder of this article will be directed through a close examination of common features that indigenous knowledge systems share around the world, followed by a closer look at some of the initiatives that are contributing to the resurgence of Alaska Native knowledge systems and ways of knowing as a catalyst for educational renewal.

Indigenous peoples throughout the world have sustained their unique worldviews and associated knowledge systems for millennia, even while undergoing major social upheavals as a result of transformative forces beyond their control. Many of the core values, beliefs and practices associated with those worldviews have survived and are beginning to be recognized as having an adaptive integrity that is as valid for today’s generations as it was for generations past. The depth of indigenous knowledge rooted in the long inhabitation of a particular place offers lessons that can benefit everyone, from educator to scientist, as we search for a more satisfying and sustainable way to live on this planet.

Actions currently being taken by indigenous people in communities throughout the world clearly demonstrate that a significant “paradigm shift” is under way in which indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing are beginning to be recognized as consisting of complex knowledge systems with an adaptive integrity of their own (cf. Winter, 2004 special issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly on indigenous education). As this shift evolves, it is not only indigenous people who are the beneficiaries, since the issues that are being addressed are of equal significance in non-indigenous contexts (Nader 1996). Many of the problems that are manifested under conditions of marginalization have gravitated from the periphery to the center of industrial societies, so the new (but old) insights that are emerging from indigenous societies may be of equal benefit to the broader educational community.

The tendency in the earlier literature on indigenous education, most of which was written from a non-indigenous perspective, was to focus on how to get Native people to acquire the appurtenances of the Western/scientific view of the world (Darnell 1972; Orvik and Barnhardt 1974). Until recently there was very little literature that addressed how to get Western scientists and educators to understand Native worldviews and ways of knowing as constituting knowledge systems in their own right, and even less on what it means for participants when such divergent systems coexist in the same person, organization or community. It is imperative, therefore, that we come at these issues on a two-way street, rather than view them as a one-way challenge to get Native people to buy into the western system. Native people may need to understand western society, but not at the expense of what they already know and the way they have come to know it. Non-Native people, too, need to recognize the co-existence of multiple worldviews and knowledge systems, and find ways to understand and relate to the world in its multiple dimensions and varied perspectives.

The intent of this article is to extend our understanding of the processes of learning that occur within and at the intersection of diverse world views and knowledge systems through a comparative analysis of experiences derived from across multiple Fourth World contexts, drawing in particular on our work with the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative over the past ten years. The article will outline the rationale behind a comprehensive program of educational initiatives that are closely articulated with the emergence of a new generation of indigenous scholars who are seeking to move the role of indigenous knowledge and learning from the margins to the center of the educational research arena and thus take on some of the most intractable and salient issues of our times.

Indigenous Knowledge Systems

In 2003 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a comprehensive report titled, A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country, in which the following conclusion was drawn with regard to education of Native American students:

As a group, Native American students are not afforded educational opportunities equal to other American students. They routinely face deteriorating school facilities, underpaid teachers, weak curricula, discriminatory treatment, and outdated learning tools. In addition, the cultural histories and practices of Native students are rarely incorporated in the learning environment. As a result, achievement gaps persist with Native American students scoring lower than any other racial/ethnic group in basic levels of reading, math, and history. Native American students are also less likely to graduate from high school and more likely to drop out in earlier grades (2003:xi).

Students in indigenous societies around the world have, for the most part, demonstrated a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the experience of schooling in its conventional form-an aversion that is most often attributable to an alien institutional culture, rather than any lack of innate intelligence, ingenuity, or problem-solving skills on the part of the students (Battiste 2002). The curricula, teaching methodologies and assessment strategies associated with mainstream schooling are based on a worldview that does not adequately recognize or appreciate indigenous notions of an interdependent universe and the importance of place in their societies (Kawagley, Norris-Tull and Norris-Tull 1998)

Indigenous people have had their own ways of looking at and relating to the world, the universe, and to each other (Ascher 2002; Eglash 2002). Their traditional education processes were carefully constructed around observing natural processes, adapting modes of survival, obtaining sustenance from the plant and animal world, and using natural materials to make their tools and implements. All of this was made understandable through demonstration and observation accompanied by thoughtful stories in which the lessons were imbedded (Kawagley 1995; Cajete 2000). However, indigenous views of the world and approaches to education have been brought into jeopardy with the spread of western social structures and institutionalized forms of cultural transmission (Barnhardt and Kawagley 1999).

Recently, many Indigenous as well as non-Indigenous people have begun to recognize the limitations of a mono-cultural education system, and new approaches have begun to emerge that are contributing to our understanding of the relationship between indigenous ways of knowing and those associated with western society and formal education. Our challenge now is to devise a system of education for all people that respects the epistemological and pedagogical foundations provided by both indigenous and western cultural traditions. While the examples used here will be drawn primarily from the Alaska Native context, they are intended to be illustrative of the issues that emerge in any indigenous context where efforts are underway to reconnect education to a sense of place and its attendant cultural practices and manifestations.

Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science Converge

While western science and education tend to emphasize compartmentalized knowledge which is often de-contextualized and taught in the detached setting of a classroom or laboratory, indigenous people have traditionally acquired their knowledge through direct experience in the natural world. For them, the particulars come to be understood in relation to the whole, and the “laws” are continually tested in the context of everyday survival. Western thought also differs from indigenous thought in its notion of competency. In western terms, competency is often assessed based on predetermined ideas of what a person should know, which is then measured indirectly through various forms of “objective” tests. Such an approach does not address whether that person is actually capable of putting that knowledge into practice. In the traditional Native sense, competency has an unequivocal relationship to survival or extinction—if you fail as a caribou hunter, your whole family may be in jeopardy . You either have it, or you don't, and it is tested in a real-world context.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has begun to recognize the potential contributions that indigenous people can make to our understanding of the world around us (Lambert 2003). In addition to sponsoring a day-long symposium on “Native Science” at the 2003 Annual Meeting in Denver, AAAS has published a Handbook on Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Property to guide traditional knowledge holders in protecting their intellectual property and maintaining biological diversity (Hansen and VanFleet 2003). In the handbook, AAAS defines traditional knowledge as follows:

Indigenous people do a form of “science” when they are involved in the annual cycle of subsistence activities. They have studied and know a great deal about the flora and fauna, and they have their own classification systems and versions of meteorology, physics, chemistry, earth science, astronomy, botany, pharmacology, psychology (knowing one's inner world), and the sacred (Burgess 1999). For a Native student imbued with an indigenous, experientially grounded, holistic world view, typical approaches to schooling can present an impediment to learning, to the extent that they focus on compartmentalized knowledge with little regard for how academic subjects relate to one another or to the surrounding universe.

To bring significance to learning in indigenous settings, the explanations of natural phenomena are best understood by students if they are cast first in indigenous terms to which they can relate, and then explained in western terms. For example, when choosing an eddy along the river for placing a fishing net, it can be explained initially in the indigenous way of understanding, pointing out the currents, the movement of debris and sediment in the water, the likely path of the fish, the condition of the river bank, upstream conditions affecting water levels, the impact of passing boats, etc. Once the students understand the significance of the knowledge being presented, it can then be explained in western terms, such as flow, velocity, resistance, turbidity, sonar readings, tide tables, etc., to illustrate how the modern explanation adds to the traditional understanding (and vice versa). All learning can start with what the student and community already know and have experienced in everyday life. The indigenous student (as with most students) will then become more motivated to learn when the subject matter is based on something useful and suitable to the livelihood of the community and is presented in a way that reflects a familiar world view (Kawagley 1995; Lipka 1998; Battiste 2000).

Since western scientific perspectives influence decisions that impact every aspect of indigenous people’s lives, from education to fish and wildlife management, indigenous people themselves have begun to take an active role in re-asserting their own traditions of science in various research and policy-making arenas (Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy 1993; Cochran 2004). As a result, there is a growing awareness of the depth and breadth of knowledge that is extant in many indigenous societies and its potential value in addressing issues of contemporary significance, including the adaptive processes associated with learning and knowledge construction. The following observation by Bielawski illustrates this point:

Such an awareness of the contemporary significance of indigenous knowledge systems has entered into policy development arenas on an international level, as is evident in the following statement in the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy:

Indigenous societies, as a matter of survival, have long sought to understand the regularities in the world around them, recognizing that nature is underlain with many unseen patterns of order. For example, out of necessity, Alaska Native people have made detailed observations of animal behavior (including the inquisitiveness of caribou). They have learned to decipher and adapt to the constantly changing patterns of weather and seasonal cycles. The Native elders have long been able to predict weather based upon observations of subtle signs that presage what subsequent conditions are likely to be. The wind, for example, has irregularities of constantly varying velocity, humidity, temperature, and direction due to topography and other factors. There are non-linear dimensions to clouds, irregularities of cloud formations, anomalous cloud luminosity, and different forms of precipitation at different elevations. Behind these variables, however, there are patterns, such as prevailing winds or predictable cycles of weather phenomena that can be discerned through long observation (though global climate change is taking its toll on weather predictability). Over time, Native people have observed that the weather’s dynamic is not unlike the mathematical characteristics of fractals, where patterns are reproduced within themselves and the parts of a part are part of another part which is a part of still another part, and so on.

For indigenous people there is a recognition that many unseen forces are at play in the elements of the universe and that very little is naturally linear, or occurs in a two-dimensional grid or a three dimensional cube. They are familiar with the notions of conservation of energy, irregularities in patterns and anomalies of form and force. Through long observation they have become specialists in understanding the interconnectedness and holism of our place in the universe (Barnhardt and Kawagley 1999; Cajete 2000; Eglash 2002).

The new sciences of chaos and complexity and the study of non-linear dynamic systems have helped Western scientists to also recognize order in phenomena that were previously considered chaotic and random. These patterns reveal new sets of relationships which point to the essential balances and diversity that help nature to thrive. Indigenous people have long recognized these interdependencies and have sought to maintain harmony with all of life. Western scientists have constructed the holographic image, which lends itself to the Native concept of everything being connected. Just as the whole contains each part of the image, so too does each part contain the makeup of the whole. The relationship of each part to everything else must be understood to produce the whole image. With fractal geometry, holographic images and the sciences of chaos and complexity, the Western thought-world has begun to focus more attention on relationships, as its proponents recognize the interconnectedness in all elements of the world around us (Capra 1996; Sahtouris 2000). Thus there is a growing appreciation of the complementarity that exists between what were previously considered two disparate and irreconcilable systems of thought (Kawagley and Barnhardt 2004).

The incongruities between western institutional structures and practices and indigenous cultural forms will not be easy to reconcile. The complexities that come into play when two fundamentally different worldviews converge present a formidable challenge. The specialization, standardization, compartmentalization, and systematization that are inherent features of most western bureaucratic forms of organization are often in direct conflict with social structures and practices in indigenous societies, which tend toward collective decision-making, extended kinship structures, ascribed authority vested in elders, flexible notions of time, and traditions of informality in everyday affairs (Barnhardt 2000). It is little wonder then that formal education structures, which often epitomize western bureaucratic forms, have been found wanting in addressing the educational needs of traditional societies.

When engaging in the kind of comparative analysis of different world views outlined above, any generalizations should be recognized as indicative and not definitive, since indigenous knowledge systems are diverse themselves and are constantly adapting and changing in response to new conditions. The qualities identified for both indigenous and western systems represent tendencies rather than fixed traits, and thus must be used cautiously to avoid overgeneralization (Gutierrez and Rogoff 2003). At the same time, it is the diversity and dynamics of indigenous societies that enrich our efforts as we seek avenues to integrate indigenous knowledge systems in a complementary way with the system of education we call schooling.

Intersecting World Views: The Alaska Experience

The sixteen distinct indigenous cultural and language systems that continue to survive in villages throughout Alaska have a rich cultural history that still governs much of everyday life in those communities. For over six generations, however, Alaska Native people have been experiencing recurring negative feedback in their relationships with the external systems that have been brought to bear on them, the consequences of which have been extensive marginalization of their knowledge systems and continuing erosion of their cultural integrity. Though diminished and often in the background, much of the Native knowledge systems, ways of knowing and world views remains intact and in practice, and there is a growing appreciation of the contributions that indigenous knowledge can make to our contemporary understanding in areas such as medicine, resource management, meteorology, biology, and in basic human behavior and educational practices (James 2001).

Alaska Natives have been at the forefront in bringing indigenous perspectives into a variety of policy arenas through a wide range of research and development initiatives in recent years. In the past two years alone, the National Science Foundation has funded projects incorporating indigenous knowledge in the study of climate change, the development of indigenous-based math curriculum, the effects of contaminants on subsistence foods, observations of the aurora, and alternative technology for waste disposal. In addition, Native people have formed new institutions of their own (e.g., the Consortium for Alaska Native Higher Education, the Alaska Native Science Commission and the First Alaskans Institute) to address some of these same issues through an indigenous lens.

Alaska Native people have taken an active role in promoting the integration of traditional knowledge with western science traditions, though their reasons for sharing their knowledge with outsiders have been varied, as indicated by Richard Glenn, an Inupiaq who has served on the Arctic Research Consortium and the Alaska Native Science Commission:

In an effort to address the issues associated with converging knowledge systems in a more comprehensive way and apply new insights to address long-standing and often intractable problems, in1995 the University of Alaska Fairbanks, under contract with the Alaska Federation of Natives and with funding support from the National Science Foundation program, entered into a ten-year educational development endeavor—the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative. The most critical salient feature of the context in which this work has been situated is the vast cultural and geographical diversity represented by the sixteen distinct indigenous linguistic/cultural groups distributed across five major geographic regions, as the following map illustrates.