Indigenous Knowledge of the Rainforest

Abstract

Indigenous knowledge is currently flavour of the month: both economic commodity and political slogan. It has a market value placed upon it, and has become pivotal in preserving the identity and culture of indigenous peoples whose traditional way of life is under threat 1. In this chapter it is intended to review how rainforest peoples conceptualise their interactions, construct their ethnobiological knowledge and alter and maintain the character of the forest through their activities. What will be said will substantiate the observation that indigenous peoples have perceived, interacted with, and made use of tropical rainforest in historically diverse ways, and that this diversity has sometimes been obscured by the understandable prominence given to the experiences of particular peoples with a high political profile, such as the Kayap’o, Yanomami and Penan 2. This process of globalising particular instances has resulted in an over-simplification of the relationships which people can establish with forest. It will be argued that it is important for those making recommendations in the fields of forest management to take indigenous knowledge seriously, but also to form balanced judgements based on evidence available for particular situations.