E-Letter responses to:

essays: Paul Alan Cox ESSAY ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: Will Tribal Knowledge Survive the Millennium? Science 2000; 287: 44-45 [Summary] [Full text]

E-Letters: Submit a response to this article

Published E-Letter responses:

Preserving Tribal Knowledge Through the Millennium

'Afa K. Palu   (19 December 2007)

Should the Local Knowledge Survive? For Whom?

Sudhirendar Sharma, Ph.D.   (17 January 2001)

Equity of Knowledge

Deep Narayan Pandey   (11 September 2000)

Scientific Method vs "Knowledge"

Jim O'Neil   (8 February 2000)

Preserving Tribal Knowledge Through the Millennium 19 December 2007
'Afa K. Palu, Advance Research Scientist Tahitian Noni International Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Preserving Tribal Knowledge Through the Millennium	I agree with the ideas expressed in P. A. Cox’ essay (Science and Society, "Will tribal knowledge survive the millennium?", 7 January 2000, p. 44). Traditional healing has been passed on by the women in my family for over 200 years but that is not going to continue. Since my two sisters expressed no interest in it, it has been gone since 2005, the year that my mother (a Tongan traditional healer) passed away. I learned a lot from my mother, including how to collect Tongan medicinal plants such as noni and how to prepare them for use by those who came seeking treatment. Some came seeking treatment for diabetes (suka), high blood pressure (toto ma'olunga), gout (kauti) and many other ailments, some of which are published in the literature. Now, that I have obtained degrees from Western universities and am working for Tahitian Noni International as an Advance Research Scientist/Molecular Biologist, I am blessed to discover and elucidate the mechanisms involved in the health benefits of noni and other medicinal plants in Tonga and the Pacific. Briefly, noni fruit juice can inhibit ACE enzymes and act as antagonists for AT1 and AT2 receptors, which might account for their anti-hypertensive effects as alluded to by my mother and other healers in Tonga. Without traditional knowledge, which helps guide us towards the starting places to look for healing resources, we will begin in the dark and spend so much money before we discover any meaningful health benefits such as the one that I described above. Any knowledge from the past, including traditional healing and medicinal plants' usage, should be preserved for our research now and for our future generations. If we do not preserve this knowledge, we will deprive future generations from the learning of our ancestors and the potential of new benefits. 'Afa K. Palu Tahitian Noni International, American Fork, UT 84003, USA.
Should the Local Knowledge Survive? For Whom? 17 January 2001
Sudhirendar Sharma, Ph.D., Consultant & Editor Energy Environment Group, PO Bag 4, New Delhi 110 024, India Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Should the Local Knowledge Survive? For Whom?	Paul Cox’s Essay and the accompanying dEbate responses by Jim O’Neil and Deep Narayan Pandey make compelling reading. Cox’s contribution is indeed provocative, but O’Neil seems to be traversing in totally different direction. Deep Narayan Pandey treads the conciliatory path of hope and expectation. All three, however, bring up significant issues. WHOSE LOSS IS IT? By citing the solitary example of Paracelsu’s Zebethum Occidentale, O’Neil tries to write off the entire repository of traditional knowledge by saying that "it deserves to be lost." Such a thought can only emerge in a mind that is totally immersed in the virtues of modern science. No harm, but the fact of the matter is that modern science has itself acknowledged that it is yet not equipped to explain several natural phenomena. The profound hallucinating experience (by drinking a concoction made up of a score of local herbs) of tribes from Latin America clearly demonstrate the lack of tools and techniques to understand and explain processes that transcend scientific inquiry. Should failure to decode the complex practice/phenomena lead to dismissal of what people practice and believe in? In our own documentation of farming practices, we have come across several such practices that have yet to figure in a formal research portfolio. A village woman in north-India (Mrs. Rojo Devi) administers a boiled and filtered mixture of Boerhavia diffusa, Trachyspermum ammi, and Trigonella foenum-graecum to treat cattle suffering from colds. The veterinarians do not prescribe such treatment, but the scientific literature does indicate that all three plants inhibit antiviral activity. Although there isn’t any formulation in the market that is derived from what Devi has used to some benefit, her experience does indicate the potential of developing a new drug. Because most marginal farmers cannot afford expensive medication, the need has triggered their creative powers to innovate treatments. In addition, there are many interesting practices that have the potential to replace the most damaging treatments. Take, for instance, the use of controversial (banned in several countries including India) bovine somatotrophin hormone for increasing milk yields in cattle. The alternate harmless local version consists of Foeniculum vulgare, Lens ulinaris, and Eruka vesicaria cooked in milk. The filterate is mixed with jaggery before being fed to cattle to increase milk yields. This innovation is courtesy of Rojo Devi. Though we haven’t yet come across scientific validation of this practice, the fact that the same has been put to effective use speaks about its inherent strength and usefulness. Validation is essentially the business of the scientists; local practitioners are better without it. They practice what has been tested and proven effective under their local conditions. Many times, such practices are borne out of years of experimentation involving many generations. Cox’s concern about documentation of such practices is in light of the incomparable value of peoples’ incredible knowledge. Given the above two examples (of the several hundred documented practices), traditional knowledge should get some requiem before it is dismissed in a single stroke. WHO PAYS AND WHO GAINS? Though traditional knowledge has caught the attention of the scientific community with a whimper, there are hidden dangers in the manner and the guiding principles under which the time-tested knowledge of people is being documented and stored. The very fact that peoples’ knowledge is branded "traditional" speaks about the superiority of our modern formal knowledge system over it. Knowledge transcends any geological time scale. Will physicists favour calling Newton’s gravitational principles "traditional," if not now maybe a century later! Why then brand Devi’s knowledge as traditional? The extinction of local knowledge (I prefer using "local" in place of "traditional") is a concern, but local knowledge is part of a continuous and evolving process. In each generation, some of it is lost. However, the same gets rediscovered elsewhere. In our documentation process, we have observed that a solution to a problem in one part of the country is found in locations several thousand kilometres away. The need, therefore, is to establish people-to-people links and dialogue so that they exchange their knowledge and experience in the language and the dialect they are comfortable with. Why should the scientific community be keen to document local knowledge? Is it because the magic of the scientific wand is fading? Or, is it to gain control over knowledge that is still not in its hands? When under the U.S.-sponsored Land Grant programme the agricultural universities in India were established, farmers were paid incentives to switch to monoculture crops and modern techniques of farming. After having robbed the farmers of healthy soil and crop biodiversity, the focus is now to take total control by documenting the farmers' knowledge as well. This will have dangerous consequences. The Convention on Biological Diversity talks about "equitable sharing of benefits from traditional knowledge," but where has it been put into practice? My information is limited to two to three examples that at best stand out as "exceptions." Exceptions, to my mind, do not prove a rule. Historically, the germplasm storage under the CGIAR system was based on the similar guiding principle of "benefit sharing." What did the farmers get in return for parting with their traditional seeds? These poor farmers of the biologically rich developing world were robbed of their wealth for good. Will such a situation not apply in the case of local knowledge? The current safeguards for benefit sharing are dubious. Even within our own country, the current trend of awarding innovators and documenting knowledge is essentially a plan to favor the markets. There are vested interests who favor mainstreaming local (informal) knowledge with the formal knowledge. Informal knowledge has evolved in an informal environment – caging it in a formal system will be its death knell. We need to think of another system of local knowledge documentation, retrieval, and mainstreaming.
Equity of Knowledge 11 September 2000
Deep Narayan Pandey, Indian Forest Service Indian Institute of Forest Manaagement, Bhopal, India Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Equity of Knowledge	Ethical retrieval, transmission, and use of indigenous knowledge about the forests and traditional water management is also important from the point of view of equity of knowledge. Management of natural resources should be based on the integration of indigenous knowledge with formal science, which I refer to here as "equity of knowledge." Equity of knowledge will not only help in the management of common property, it will also enhance the empowerment, security, and opportunities of the local people, and the sustainability of local natural resources. 1. Equity of knowledge as Empowerment: If the state and formal institutions incorporate people's knowledge into their resource mamagement decisions, they reduce the social barriers to participation in common property resource management and enhance the capacity of the local people to make choices to solve the problems of decline of the riparian commons. Traditional societies have accumulated a wealth of local knowledge, transmitted from generation to generation. Experience has taught them how the water, trees, and other natural resources should be used and managed to last a long time. In terms of people's participation in common property resource management, respect for the cultural values of communities, entitlements, cost effectiveness, removal of vested interests, multi-tier biodiversity enhancement, flow of nonwood forest products, productivity, equity, sustainability, adaptive management, and decentralization of decision-making, equity of knowledge is more efficient than the contemporary practice of relying on scientific technology and formal institutions alone. 2. Equity of knowledge as Security: By capitalizing on the collective wisdom of formal and traditional sciences, we shall be able to help people address the problem of declining commons and to manage the risks they face because of the destruction of the resource base. Collective wisdom can help in the planning and implementation of suitable programs for managing the existing commons and creating new ones. This results in ecological, economic, and social security. 3. Equity of knowledge as Opportunity: Indigenous knowledge is a resource that provides local people an greater opportunity to participate in the management of common property. It also provides the opportunity for self-determination. The process of acquisition, transmission, integration, and field application of indigenous knowledge with formal science promises to enhance the productivity and efficiency of managing of natural resource.
Scientific Method vs "Knowledge" 8 February 2000
Jim O'Neil, Environmental consultant Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Scientific Method vs "Knowledge"	Paul Alan Cox seems to argue that some people should be isolated and not allowed to advance beyond a primitive life-style so their “knowledge” will not be lost. He uses the Gosiutes and the fact that there are now fewer than 20 speakers of the language as an example, suggesting, it seemed to me, that their desert hunter-gatherer life-style was life in a veritable Eden. He ends that section with the following statement: “Whether the cause is considered to be the touted superiority of Western technology,... few indigenous societies have been able to withstand the onslaught of Western culture.” This is not new: stronger cultures have replaced less effective ones as long as people and cultures have existed. In North America, just as one example, the Natchez Indians conquered and absorbed all tribes they could reach, destroying those cultures. The Inca colonial system was an even better steam roller than that of the British. I suspect that if Europeans and gun powder had never come to America, it is quite possible that all Americans would be speaking the Inca language today. Cox uses a Samoan “healer’s ” herbs as an example of priceless, irreplaceable knowledge that may be lost. He notes that he recorded 131 herbal remedies that the healer uses, and the 37th on the list was her cure for hepatitis. He does not say if the cure works or if people using it stay ill or die because they do not receive effective, modern medical treatment, only that the herb may (or may not) be effective in dealing with HIV. One out of 131 remedies (possibly) effective and not necessarily against the illness for which it is prescribed, this is knowledge? He concludes his essay with: “Will tribal knowledge survive this millennium? If it doesn’t, the world will be far poorer for it’s loss.” Looking back at some of my own -of European descent- tribal knowledge, I find things such as, “Take Paracelus’s Zebethum Occidentale, of good Colour and Consistence, dry slowly till it be pulverable: Then reduce it into an impalpable Power; which is to be blown once, twice or thrice a Day, as occasion shall require, into the Patient’s eyes.” This recipe for curing eye problems is attributed to Robert Boyle (Boyle’s Law). Paracelsu’s Zebethum Occidentale is, by the way human feces. I suggest much “tribal knowledge” deserves to be lost and we are all better off trusting “... the touted superiority of Western technology,...” and scientific method.