The politics of Indigenous knowledge.

Research on Indigenous knowledge over the past decade has retained a vitality of discussion and generality of interest from both specialists and general audiences in a form that must be truly gratifying to scholars of Indigenous knowledge. Nonetheless, those who think about Indigenous knowledge need to grapple with a curious and continuing lack. Much of the scholarship on this critically important subject remains inattentive to the integral relationship of power with Indigenous knowledge. I do not mean the relationship of the variety that is expressed in common phrases such as 'knowledge is power' or, for that matter, 'power is knowledge'. I refer to a somewhat different set of issues, those that come to the forefront in considering how the nature of the Indigenous is shaped by the workings of power, and what are the ways in which power is a property of that which is classified as Indigenous. This chapter suggests it is important to consider this relationship especially because it can help clarify the viability and nature of political strategies used by both advocates and detractors of Indigenous knowledge.

To illustrate my claim about the limited attention given to the relationship between power and Indigenous knowledge, consider three important works published in the past decade: by James Scott, (1) James Clifford (2) and Akhil Gupta. (3) These all touch upon the question of power explicitly but tangentially, or centrally but implicitly as they discuss ideas about indigeneity and the nature of the Indigenous. But none develops a careful analysis of how one might conceptualise a concern with power and articulate it with a concern with the workings of Indigenous knowledges, what such knowledges are, or what is happening to them.

The issue is both broad and deep enough that my chapter is of necessity a preliminary investigation at best. In a sense, it is a series of ideas in the making, advanced with a view to provoke discussion and debate, rather than as an attempt to settle a dispute.

Descriptions of Indigenous knowledge attempt what might be called a dual redemption. One, they seek to redeem their subject by pointing to how folk knowledges exist in a kin relationship with more formal investigations, their relevance to science, to particular utilitarian ends, and potentially to the interests of those who are not Indigenous. In generating an account of the specific form of knowledge, descriptions of Indigenous knowledges and peoples thus provide an implicit justification for the continuation of the folk lifestyles and livelihoods that gave birth to that form of knowledge. Second, descriptions of the Indigenous seek to prevent its loss in describing it. They serve this second redemptive function thus insofar as the very act of description serves to protect. Even if the peoples with whose knowledge a particular description is concerned were to disappear their knowledge will be preserved. In each of these senses, writings on indigeneity are also what Clifford has called 'allegories of salvage'. (4)

The notion of salvage is central to research on Indigenous knowledge work because of its concern with loss and value. Folk taxonomies, studies of specific people's relations with their plants and animals, and investigations of changing cultural practices are necessary because of the potential loss of information were such studies not carried out, or even were they to be delayed. In common with much work on peasants, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers, then, scholars of the Indigenous see the subject of their interest as always-already disappearing.

Questions related to loss, value, and salvage are intimately concerned with power--how power is exercised, who exercises it, and what its role is in social change. I seek to uncover some of these themes by discussing briefly a particular case of mobility and dislocation: one concerning state interventions in the lives of a group of mobile pastoralists. The example raises issues that resonate with other cases of mobility and displacement, other examples of the potential disappearance of ways of Indigenous living and peoples. I use it to open a dialogue of how ideas about power can be reconceptualised in discussions of indigeneity in a way that has not been particularly common to these discussions.

Research on the Indigenous: A Paradox

Studies of Indigenous knowledge are viewed as necessary because the subjects of this research are seen to be under threat, indeed slowly disappearing. Much research on the subject presents an antagonistic relationship between economic growth or development in its many different guises and the interests of Indigenous peoples. This antagonistic relationship where development processes produce usually harmful changes is seen to be true of market-led changes, as well as situations where nation states initiate programs of development. Social, economic, and ecological deterioration that confronts Indigenous peoples is, in this view, a result of inexorable capitalist market expansion, or externally imposed political, social, legal, and economic structures. (5) Market expansion can make existing production strategies of…