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Chapter 29
Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Border
Theory and Justice

Lyn Carter and Nicolas Walker

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a
different complexion of slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you
look at it.
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1902/1999, p. 7)

Introduction

Recent times have seen a growing preoccupation with diversity as a consequence
of the newly intercivilisational encounters of our rapidly globalising world.
Globalisation has meant that at the local level, the world’s peoples rub more closely
together not only ensuring that diversity, plurality and hybridity have become the
leitmotifs of the global age, but also raising some deeply vexing questions about
their consequences for science education. For example, questions about the ways in
which science knowledge should be conceptualised and represented by science
education invite debate about the epistemological parity between western science and
other non-western sciences or Indigenous Knowledges (IK), as well as our under-
standing of justice, and our visions for the future. On the one hand, globalisation
brings with it an appreciation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) as a
form of indigenous knowledge while on the other, it sustains rather than challenges
existing boundaries and their attendant hegemonic impulses (Li 2003).
Snively and Corsiglia (2001) define TEK as the “timeless traditional knowledge
and wisdom of long-resident, oral peoples” (p. 8) acquired over thousands of years of
direct human contact with local environments. They emphasise the ecological depth
of the knowledges, their persistence, consistency and reliability, their specificity,

L. Carter
Australian Catholic University

D.J. Tippins et al. (eds.), Cultural Studies and Environmentalism, 337
Cultural Studies of Science Education, Vol. 3, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3929-3_29,
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010