NABHAN, GARY P. Center for Sustainable Environments, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff AZ 86011-5765. - Bridging Western science and Indigenous science: Ethnobiology and cross-cultural conservation collaborations in the binational Southwest.
The demographics of graduate biology is changing to include more
Native Americans, Latin Americans and indigenous peoples from other
continents than ever before. Biology is not no longer Western science
as much as it is cross-cultural science, with the capacity to
integrate traditional ecological knowledge from diverse cultures to
develop and test novel hypotheses. But with this opportunity comes
the challenge of teaching biology less ethnocentrically, of
developing multicultural field teams, and involving diverse
communities as collabotators in interpreting and applying the results
of field science. On incubation grounds for these experiments is the
binational Southwest, where I have been involved in novel
cross-cultural projects with indigenous peoples of the Colorado
Plateau and Sonoran Desert. The Colorado Plateau is not only one of
the most diverse ecoregions north of the tropics in terms of its
species richness of plants, birds, butterflies and tiger beetles; it
is also culturally diverse, with more speakers of Native American
languages persisting in this region than all others in North America.
It and the binational Sonoran Desert region are also rich in
narrowly-distributed endemics for which local residents have
considerably more information than scientists who have only
sporadically visited their habitats. I will present as case studies
two collaborations with indigenous communities which honor both
Western and indigenous scientific knowledge, and which are leading to
on-ground conservation benefits. Biologists can no longer ignore the
vital links between biodiversity and cultural diversity; our future
depends upon how well we link them.
Key words: cross-cultural projects, ethnobiology, indiginous peoples, Latin Americans, Native Americans, plenary address