XVII. Ethnobiology Education Approaches

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The importance of local and Indigenous Knowledge are recognized more widely and frequently in fields like ecology, anthropology, and archaeology than they have been in decades past. Despite this, there are a number of often-overlooked, systemically discriminatory practices that continue to prevent Indigenous and local knowledge (and knowledge holders) from fully being included, recognized, and honored in the discussions and decisions that shape these canons of knowledge. This paper looks at some of the new laws and policy changes in Washington state that were developed to work to reduce some of these barriers. This paper will review these laws and policies, share recent examples of work putting these new laws and policies into action, as well as share critiques of the continued challenges that remain. 

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Forest management has changed significantly over the last several decades as researchers and forest managers and practitioners deal with changing social, economic, and climatic needs. To address this, we propose using a new ecosystem wellbeing approach that centers both community and environmental wellbeing, understanding that both need to be addressed simultaneously and with equal seriousness. Achieving this starts with a formal process to engage people which is done through a learning-based collaboration approach where stakeholders, tribes, forest managers, and researchers engage with one another to address management questions and options through the scientific process. Input derived from the diverse array of participants is fed into ethnoforestry prescriptions, a people-focused forest management, that has a key goal of achieving ecosystem wellbeing. We present how this work is being applied on two large, operational-scale forest management experiments on state and federal lands on the Olympic Peninsula, WA.

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In this introductory session, attendees will learn about the global work of Local Contexts, an Indigenous-led nonprofit. Responsive to years of iteration and learning with researchers and local communities, Local Contexts delivers much-needed digital tools which affirm Indigenous Peoples' access, attribution, and provenance over their own data in the natural and social sciences fields. The Biocultural and Traditional Knowledge Labels are assigned by Indigenous communities to reflect protocols, while Notices are used by researchers and institutions to disclose Indigenous data and interests. Ethnographers and those in related fields will learn how to use Local Contexts as a path finding tool for valuable collaboration in research and its utility to apply permanent identifiers in metadata to uphold the FAIR and CARE principles in support of Indigenous Data Sovereignty.

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Ethnobiology is a field that describes long-term, reciprocal relationships between humans and other living beings. The knowledge and ways of being with others that underlies these relationships is always contextual, a function of ecology, political economy, and culture. As a theoretical framework, social reproduction theory scholarship tends to ask how class is continually formed and labor differentiated. In ecological spaces, this social work also continually creates a physical environment: the stages on which ecological skill is performed. While capitalist or colonial models of production often fail to describe value in ethnobiological terms, social reproduction provides a useful vocabulary for exploring the work, value, and learning of ethnobiology. This presentation explores ecological knowledge, traditional or not, through the lens of social reproduction theory to explore the work of learning and living in a dynamic landscape

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The Giriama people live along the coast of Kenya in an area of rich forest and ocean biodiversity.

This paper will describe how in 2024 members of the Giriama community, in partnership with SIL Global and A Rocha Kenya, held a two-week rapid word collection workshop during which small groups crowdsourced Giriama names of local fauna and flora. They also recorded indigenous ecological knowledge and traditional stories about the environment in the Giriama language.

The paper will then present plans on how the data collected will be used. Books will be produced in Giriama to share knowledge across the community and help inspire and educate the younger generation to care for their forest home. Data will be shared on the Global Biodiversity International Facility with the global scientific community to allow them to interact with the Giriama population to promote healthy ecosystems.

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Around the world, the growing distance between people and plants has coincided with a global increase in 'plant awareness disparity' or 'plant blindness' - the inability to notice, understand and appreciate the plants in one's own environment. Plants make up the majority of life on Earth and foundational to life-giving and sustaining processes upon which humanity depends. It is not possible to facilitate sustainable development or build resiliency to climate change without increasing awareness, understanding and appreciation of plants. Ongoing research in the Cayman Islands is exploring the relationship between traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) and plant (non)awareness, the interlinkages between plant awareness, nature-connectedness and sustainable behaviours, and the potential role of TEK in efforts to increase plant awareness.

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Databases have been proposed as tools to protect local knowledge of biodiversity and to foster its repatriation to the original knowledge holders, however, the technical challenges are many. We designed the BDEthno as a way for storing ethnobotanical data available from literature, covering all plant uses and vernacular names in French Guiana.

The use report is the central entity of the database, linking, for a given bibliographic reference, a Linnaean species, its use(s) and its local name(s) in a considered cultural group, completed, if available, by the plant part(s) used and herbarium vouchers.

The project uses open source software PostgreSQL and LibreOffice Base to manage data, and the data model has been debated with experts to fit to ethnobotanical requirements. It is thought to be replicable and reusable by those wishing to protect local knowledge, and It might be the first step towards a larger-scale database network project.

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Ethnobiology offers rich opportunities to study teaching and learning, and contribute to the broader experience in knowledge exchange. In 2019, Simon Fraser University's Institute for the Study of Teaching and Learning (ISTLD) pioneered a project studying the conditions for well-being in learning environments, targetting social connectivity, civic engagement, optimal challenge, and personal development, among other measures. Here I present the findings from one such study, conducted across several cohorts of classes in food history and African history. While anectodal evidence suggested that instructor food sharing led to students feeling strongly that the instructor cared about them, the target in the study cohorts was student food sharing. Did student sharing lead to increased social connection? And, beyond eating, can learning from other students through restaurant reviews, experimental cooking, and reporting "Food in the News" impact student well-being? I end by reflecting on unique contributions that ethnobiologists can make to the field of teaching and learning.