Editorial: protecting and sustaining indigenous people’s traditional environmental knowledge and cultural practice

Abstract

As applied to the circumstances faced by particular indigenous communities—from theYorta Yorta of Australia to the Bhotiya of Nepal—and to indigenous communities aroundthe world, the five intellectual tasks of the policy sciences enable the authors in this specialissue to clarify the values and goals of the participants, and whether and how they relate tothe protection of human dignity, as a critical first step toward developing an effectivestrategy to combat an evident wrong. This initial inquiry raises what Lasswell termed the‘‘historical question’’ (1963, 2), and so each analysis in this issue was informed by anexamination of the events and conditioning factors over time in relation to the realizationof the goals identified. In the light of this ‘‘trend and factor knowledge’’ (Lasswell 1963, 2),the authors have been able to explore the ways in which future developments might unfoldand policy alternatives can be devised. Each contributor to this special issue has thusaddressed an aspect of the question of the role of indigenous peoples’ knowledge andpractices for a range of outcomes including poverty alleviation for indigenous peoples andthe sustainable management of biodiversity, among others. The intention is to raiseimportant questions on juxtaposing human rights with the collaborative development ofculturally sensitive strategies through which indigenous peoples may move closer to therealization of sustainable self-determination and human dignity.For millennia, the Earth’s geophysical environment has co-evolved with the biosphere,resulting in a diversity of uniquely adapted species and systems, and ultimately fosteringhuman civilization. The twentieth century saw the emergence of human beings as thedominant catalyst of change in the earth system—by almost any measure we have begun a