indigenous

Rant- tangentially related: I’m not a member of an Indigenous group, but I work in a field where the big push recently is incorporating “traditional ecological knowledge”. Holy shit, the un-deserved patience that Indigenous teachers extend to us crackers is mind boggling. Like we’re slowly using western scientific framework to “discover” knowledge, which has already been cultivated by other peoples over time, peoples that we genocided without mercy, but now that our cultural hegemony has declined so much and we’ve fucked up the balance of the ecosystem so much, we have the gall to finally “acknowledge” other knowledge systems. It even still is empty gestures until something meaningful is done with it. I’ve heard tribal elders talk about the necessity of patience, and they’re seemingly endless fonts of it, because god damn do we never get the point. Like at a recent event, an Indigenous scientist was talking about how everything is about balance, and a PhD asked how we can quantify balance. Like…1) such an effective missing of the point. 2) like fucking look outside idk- you’re a fucking climate scientist surely you’ve observed the world around you. I’m constantly feeling the need to shake and shout at my colleagues, and I’ve not been doing this nearly as long. As patronizing of a tone that crackers always take with Indigenous people, we really are just the shitty teenage nibling who insists they’re an awesome driver after wrapping their car around a tree- maybe one day we’ll be better, but I have a hard time finding faith. Anyway, that’s why I’m not a member of the Sturgeon clan.