Overview

Aboriginal Overview

Scientific knowledge about events in the natural world has an early history. Indigenous people depended on accurate predictions of natural events to ensure their survival. One of the basic assumptions today for regarding the inclusion of FNMI (First Nations, Métis & Inuit) knowledge in the Alberta Science Program Outcomes is that elements of this knowledge are scientific. If science is defined as knowledge about the natural world (p.28, Biology 20 Program Outcomes), then areas of both western scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge can be combined to inform students about natural events. Another basic assumption, in addressing the question of ‘Why infuse traditional knowledge into the science curriculum?’, is that an indigenous worldview and a western scientific worldview both operate under different paradigms or belief systems. Access to knowledge about the natural world from both perspectives occurs where these two knowledge systems intersect.

Before examples of FNMI science can be ‘infused’ into the curriculum, students and teachers will need to establish their basic conceptual framework of these two knowledge systems: that of western science and that of indigenous knowledge. This framework will include concepts of, for example, how an Aboriginal worldview differs from and how it is similar to the western scientific one (see References). For example, from the western scientific worldview, knowledge is implicit and theoretical whereas other valid ways of knowing (i.e., indigenous knowledge) often include experiential knowledge. Western scientific methodology uses the experience of laboratory experimentation to test or prove hypothesis. Indigenous knowledge is grounded in experience where experience is regarded in the natural world as a part of it, not apart from it. This scientific knowledge is called tacit knowledge by Polyani (cited in Peat, 2002, p. 66).

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• Aboriginal Overview--start here