Module II Response

Essential Question: How is everything connected from the perspectives of indigenous peoples and Western scientists? What are the advantages to knowing both ways?

How is everything connected from the perspectives of indigenous peoples and Western scientists?

First of all I believe in order for us to make connections between indigenous ways of knowing and Western ways of knowing, we must look at each as equally valid. I noticed that blogger, Bill-Alaska Geoscience, said that “The Inuits did not do actual science but understood their environment.”

So what is science? According to Wikipedia, the word science means “knowledge” in Latin. Wikipedia defines science as “any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome.” Looking at this definition, I reflect on my experience of building a traditional Western Greenland Inuit kayak. The Smithsonian institute refers to the kayak as “the most sophisticated boat ever built for a single purpose.” Each component is treated, bent, and carved with a specific prescription based on the builders’ proportions. This creates an amazing balanced and functional vessel that even modern materials and engineering methods cannot duplicate. Clearly this technology evolved over time. This evolution required focused specific questions that had to be answered through trial and error. The control would have been the first design, and the manipulated variable would have been the modified element. I have to conclude that Inuits did do actual science in determining what worked or what didn’t while coming up with the “prescriptive practice” of building a kayak.

Even this interpretation of the kayak’s evolution fits a classroom’s more narrow definition of science. In the classroom we tend to refer to science as a stepwise process that tests a hypothesis, or the scientific method.

So how is everything connected….Actually, it’s all science!

What are the advantages to knowing both ways?

There are many ways to answer this question. I noticed that blogger, Explore Alaska!, answered this question in terms of knowing both ways in a survival situation. Explore Alaska! stated that “integrating the two can have deadly consequences.” and “If you are in a life and death situation, stick with what you know.”

I would like to answer this question in terms of teaching both ways in our classroom. I believe the advantages to knowing and teaching both ways is that simply, multiple view points are always better than one when you are teaching to a classroom of diverse individuals. I really liked blogger, Bill-Alaska Geoscience’s quote from Richard Glenn that said “Each point of view is like a flashlight shining down the same path.”

I also believe that including Indigenous science makes science concepts relevant to all students. Indigenous science is place-based science. When you take science and teach it in a way that connects the concepts to what students are able to observe and experience in their local environments, suddenly you have a whole classroom that is engaged and learning.

Another reason to including both in the classroom is that both types of science can validate each other. An example of this is the Navajo’s taboos related to mice. If a mouse came in contact with anything belonging to a Navajo such as food or clothing, tradition said that it would have to be burned. Now Western science validates this tradition after discovering the deadly hantavirus carried by the deer mice in the Four Corners area of the United States (http://www1.umn.edu/ships/culture/index.htm).

Including both ways is essential in teaching a world view as well as a local view of how science is applied in student’s lives. Like blogger, Woven Ideas and Practices, so eloquently put it, “I to would like to see our state and our people use the gifts of our cultures to play together as one orchestra!”