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Abstract
The African proverb “When an elder dies, a library burns down” clearly sums up the importance of traditional knowledge preservation and cultural continuity, which the study found to be a key need and concern amongst First Nations communities in Ontario, Canada. To follow-up on elders’ suggestions that libraries are potential custodians of traditional knowledge, this paper explores how traditional knowledge preservation intersects with Library and Information Science (LIS) practices of knowledge classification, organization, and dissemination and establishes the various challenges that this intersection poses to these LIS practices. The paper concludes that libraries and other information institutions need to re-examine and reconstruct themselves in ways that take into account non-western epistemologies and worldviews and develop much needed cultural competency in order to undertake traditional knowledge custodianship.
Notes
1 African proverb and Alaskan saying.
2 See resolutions adopted by the General Assembly (A/RES/59/174) at its 59th session (2004). See United Nations. CitationGeneral Assembly (2004). For the purposes of this paper, Indigenous Peoples are defined as proposed by Martinez Cobo, the Special Rapporteur of the UN Sub-commission, in his report entitled the Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations (UN Doc. E/CNA/Sub.2/1983/21/Add.8). See CitationUnited Nations. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (1983). Cobo proposes the following working definition of Indigenous Peoples: Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.
3 For the purposes of this paper, I use the term libraries to encompass archives, museums, herbariums, and other institutions that are involved in the organization and dissemination of information.
4 In order to ensure anonymity of the elder, I have used a code that consists of the elders’ linguistic groups and then a number to distinguish between elders from the same linguistic group. Participants’ anonymity was guaranteed in both the interview protocol and the consent forms that I used.
5 In education, CitationHjartarson (1995) interviewed elders to get an understanding of traditional Native education from a First Nations’ perspective. In environmental science, forestry, botany, geography, and cultural anthropology, CitationKenny (2000), M’Lot (2002), and CitationWall (2008) collected their data through interviews with First Nation elders. CitationKeewatin (2004) writing in sociology and by CitationHart-Wasekeesikaw (1996) and CitationBrass (2004) in their psychotherapy and nursing studies also interviewed First Nations elders to gather their data. Likewise, CitationRoss-Leitenberger (1999), writing from a women’s studies perspective, also interviewed First Nations elders in her exploration of whether traditional midwifery and birthing practices are applicable to contemporary birthing.
6 In his analyses of the members-driven WIPO, the WTO, and the CBD, CitationMaina (2009) found that these forums define traditional knowledge in ways that either suit their mandates or serve their members’ interests. For examples of how these forums define traditional knowledge, see CitationCBD (2007) and CitationWIPO (2010).
7 According to CitationBattiste and Henderson (2000), efforts to understand and explain traditional knowledge systems by contrasting them to scientific knowledge systems simplify and misrepresent the former. Similarly, CitationSillitoe, Bicker, and Pottier (2002) argue that two-column comparisons of traditional and scientific knowledge are inadequate and misleading because such comparison “tends to depict science as more rational, better integrated, having a strong theoretical model, and better grounded in evidence with controlled experiments and so on. It may even suggest differences in thought processes and intellectual capacity between scientists and non-scientists…” (p.111). CitationAgrawal (1995) adds that the exchange and communication between the two types of knowledge make the distinction between indigenous and scientific knowledge artificial. Furthermore, interactions of cultures results in hybridization of knowledge, which leads CitationSillitoe (2007) to question the propriety of distinguishing traditional knowledge from scientific knowledge.
8 See CitationMaina (2009), for an analysis of the multilateral forums that are currently debating traditional knowledge issues and for a discussion of the various stakeholders’ views and proposals on these issues. The author juxtaposes the needs and concerns of Indigenous Peoples as expressed through various declarations and submissions to the multilateral forums onto grassroots views of indigenous stakeholders who the author found to be either unrepresented, misrepresented, or absent in these international forums.
9 According to CitationTwarog and Kapoor (2011), the young generation perceives traditional knowledge as ‘old-fashioned’, which leads the authors to observe that a change in format, for example, to digital format might appeal to the youth.
10 “Mukurtu began in 2005 as a grassroots project of the Warumungu Aboriginal community in Central Australia to create a digital archive that matched their cultural needs … [but] has expanded and the platform is expanding to meet the diverse needs of Indigenous communities globally” (CitationMukurtu, 2011).
11 See CitationGarwood-Houng (2005).
12 See CitationGilman (2006) for a more detailed account on the Brian Deer Classification Scheme and CitationMacDonell et al. (2003) for the development of the scheme, its use in Canada, and for its comparison to the Library of Congress scheme.
13 In the following example, the CitationRoyal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996b) illustrates the way objective and subjective knowledge interact and inform everyday life: “the skills used to track and bring down the animal are rooted in experience, learned in the subjective realm. Objective knowledge, directly traced back to the Creator, teaches that the spirit of the slain animal must be honored and thanked. The ceremony itself is a teaching from the Creator” (p. 115). Mohawk Elder3 added that “the experiential lessons and the emotional as well as the spiritual components of traditional knowledge are what have been inbuilt in us through our most influential and intimate relationships” (Personal interview, 19 June 2007).
14 For a definition of cultural competency, see Michigan Education Association. In Mestre, L. S. (Citation2010).