TEK and the Global Market Economy

Question

How do you see the relationship between TEK and the global market economy?

(Dr. Alan White brought up some aspects regarding this issue in his response to last week's question.)

Cheers: Kathy and Jamie

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Responses

From: Gene Anderson

Two conflicting ways:

1. TEK is now desperately needed. Much of the knowledge of plants, animals, and local environmental management in TEK is not only valid but necessary to our survival as a species. We just don't have time or facilities to rediscover all the knowledge the indigenous peoples have. Without their help we are lost, I truly believe.

2. But, the power elite who run the global economy are as interested in ripping off and savaging indigenous and traditional peoples as they are in ripping off and savaging the rest of us. (No sense mincing words about this. One problem with mincing words is that it makes it sound as if some abstract entity-"globalization" or "modernity"-is the bad thing. Nope. In this case, the bad thing is evil individuals, and their ability to climb the power hierarchies.) In so far as TEK seems valuable to these guys, they will try to steal it and/or misuse it. There is also a less pernicious but somewhat depressing tendency to publish TEK without proper credits or safeguards.

What to do about this, I don't know, but it MUST involve remembering that human rights and the environment are very strongly linked, and that we have to protect everyone's rights to their knowledge. Various proposals are out there; probably none perfect but all useful, at least to get the problem raised. It seems to me that the fundamental thing is to get that knowledge down, with its context and local application and social grounding, while there yet is time. But in the process we have to protect the rights of the people involved.

best-Gene Anderson

From: Alan White

Dec. 19

We must try to maintain and support TEK, its use and importance to sensitize global markets and globalization in general. As with so many modern changes in our lives and especially in the accessibility of goods and services, we must keep some contact with the reality of values in traditions and knowledge not generated simply by modern technological means. TEK is very important in this sense because as it is lost, global markets become more vicious. The secret may be to keep the connections wherever possible. An example of a global markets going awry is the demand for tropical marine fish both for aquarium use and food. These demands are way beyond the sustainable limits of most tropical marine fisheries, and, the demand being so great is driving the use of destructive and illegal methods to catch the fish. The value of some of these fish, such as large wrasses, grouper etc. makes them vulnerable to the most unscrupulous collectors. The solutions are complicated at best but for sure, TEK can play a role in helping set up proper management regimes. As a society we have to make the markets follow, otherwise we will fail to control the decline of these species and management systems which can protect them. If they do not follow, the market will ultimately collapse in any case and so will the population of fish and their ecosystem!

From: Darrell Posey

Interesting that with all the focus on TEK there is no discourse (even by the people who are responding to your questions) about intellectual, cultural and scientific property rights of communities. Little chance TEKers will do more than contribute to the rip-off if this is not only addressed by US, but integrated into everything from project conception, to methodology, to publication and application of results. dap

From: Daniel Clément

Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 08:45:33 -0500

Ideally, what Indigenous Peoples know about the environment should be taken into account in the development of global market economy. However, this is not necessarily the case in my opinion and experience. The reason seems to be what the people are referring to when they are using such concepts as TEK, TEKMS, TBK, etc. For administrators or politicians, it can have meanings quite the opposite as those an anthropologists would seek. But even then, there are many interpretations among anthropologists or ethnobiologists on the nature of those concepts.

At one extreme, the concepts are equivalent to pure empirical facts. At the other, they include religious values. In between, you have everything including uses of plants and animals, occupancy of territory, cultural components and values, etc.

Sometimes, TEK is used abusively by politicians as a camouflage maneuver to exploit resources and keep quiet some populations who would oppose the project if it would not be of this superficial taking into account of their knowledge which resumes itself as something only on paper (e.g. case of the BHP Diamonds in 1995 in the Northwest territories; Voisey's Bay Nickel Company in Labrador in 1997-1998 where the local population stated quite clearly it did not want a mine on its territory but, nevertheless, there were some public audiences and "inclusion of TEK" in the assessment review; the company has a crew of 100 on Native territory which has been explorating for at least two years now!).

When one acknowledges the historical nature of anthropology which is linked with colonialism, this is not surprising. Before developing other people's resources for Westerners' needs, one should reevaluate Westerners'own needs but also specifically the needs of the People that lives in the prospected environment. Before assessing knowledge of the environment, maybe we should start by assessing what should be "economy" and who is the first beneficiary of "global" economy.