Talk:Definitions and identity of indigenous peoples

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[edit] Indigenous from David Suzuki's "Native" perspective

There is confusing and irritating discussion on the talk page of the Indigenous peoples article on this topic, when this is of course the correct place for it.

After reading a lot about constructivism, I hypothesized that a natural environment, such as a forest, has what constructivists would call a "community of knowledge," or a vast information set that exists on a layer above (or below if you prefer) the actual physical layer of a community, or in this case, an environment. The information in the "community of knowledge" of a forest would not only include facts about important things in the environment, such as food or dangerous snakes, but also would include the digital data in the DNA of all the plants and animals. People who live in this environment would have in their own "community of knowledge" containing a significant amount of information about this environment, including the expressions of the DNA in all the organisms. These people I would call tribal natives, and their study would be tribal nativism. Unfortunately "nativism" has been taken by certain people to mean something completely different by "native." So the only other word to fit this concept would be "indigenous."

So I am saying that native, and hence indigenous, people are completely keyed into their natural environment so much so that they are actually a part of the "community of knowledge" of the environment.

A great many traits would go along with this, and David Suzuki, who is well loved, describes below specific key components of a tribal native, or indigenous, culture, that I think can add to the definition.

"Native knowledge about the natural world tends to view all-or at least vast regions-of nature, often including the Earth itself, as inherently holy rather than profane, savage, wild, or wasteland." .. "Tribal culture can allow ‘for a science’ that is negotiated in the same way that people negotiate social relations with one another." --David Suzuki

Peter Knudtson and David Suzuki: Wisdom of the Elders (1992)

John van v 03:02, 26 October 2007 (UTC)