17 Worldview s and Integra tion Cultural ways of doing and seeing things can differ widely but all refer to or are done in a real world of physical objects and processes that are shared by all. A tree, for example, can be seen as a good source of firewood because it burns well to boil water with residual coals that will slowly cook the meal without burning. Elsewhere, the same species of tree might be seen as a precious shady spot for a family picnic. The first case is most common in rural areas where wood is still used for cooking and the second in urban areas where trees may not be cut down as firewood. It is also conceivable that many indigenous peoples may hold both perspectives, these having grown from within and into use without an oppositional narrative or a social discourse of exclusivity. This is particularly apparent in urban areas where new patterns of more wasteful practice have developed into the modern age. The RCE cases of working and learning together with and from indigenous knowledge practice are centred on an endogenous (learning from within) perspective. This sets out to juxtapose the heritage practices alongside modern institutional knowledge to better address the sustainability challenges of our globalising risk society, now beset with real fears of global climate change. In the RCE programme, indigenous2 and scientific/institutional knowledge are brought together in a real world referenced, boundarycrossing 116 journey where the critical nexus of events in indigenous and institutional perspectives are worked within the context of current risk to re-imagine better ways of doing things together in the world. Here the meaningmaking interplay of indigenous heritage practices and explanatory scientific narratives, open the way to an explanatory grasp to enable change to more sustainable ways of living together with dignity and respect. In this way, each indigenous knowledge informed story of learning-to-change in the Makana context of increasing risk, draws upon both heritage and what is now known in modern institutions for a journey of practical engagement to learn from within together. The three sides of being in the world and experiencing increasing concerns, and a recovery of intergenerational heritage practices are felt within and read with and against modern science and institutional conventions. The interplay of these three dimensions of mediated social learning is represented in Figure 1. RCE change practices across emergent risk, heritage practices and what is now known Key: Resolve into components Re-describe for relevance Retrodict to antecedent causes Eliminate ambiguity and risk Identify open explanations Correction as reflexive process Figure 1: An interplay of situated risk, heritage practices and modern science in expansive environmental learning to change. In each case that follows, the story was developed in a mother tongue recovery of the reality congruent wisdom in indigenous knowledge practices. The practices were process-mapped to differentiate the relevant nexus of events that enable participants to develop more sustainable practices and a better explanatory grasp. Both of the cases examined are education and development interventions to mitigate climate change. These had, up until the advent of an endogenous approach, been awareness creation interventions commonly ‘parachuted in’ or ‘facilitated’ to change community behaviour. The focus areas for an inclusion of indigenous heritage practices were: 1. C ompost gardening for local food production; and 2. Planting indigenous trees to restore biodiversity. Below both practices are represented in a brief summary of the salient points of the emergent story of heritage practices. The stories are used as start-up for a learning 2 Indigenous participants do not make the claim that their knowledge practices are scientifically constituted so these are not referred to as scientific here, although in intellectual debates on the nature of Indigenous and Western Knowledge the claim to both having the character of science is now fairly commonly advanced by intellectuals (See Shava, 2008, for example).
Traditional Knowledge and Biodiversity
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