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In recent years, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) has gained prominence in ecosystem science and governance, enhancing understanding of landscape conditions, systems dynamics, and ethical restoration practices. However, Indigenous community engagement in science and practice remains limited. In this paper, we investigate TEK’s contribution to forest ecosystem research for resilient livelihoods, methods for bridging TEK with Western science, and share insights from Ojibwa perspectives on ecological restoration and wellbeing. A systematic review of TEK literature from 2001 to 2022 was conducted using Web of Science, with bibliometric analysis and narrative review using VOSviewer and Biblioshiny. Our findings suggest that while TEK is prevalent in social-ecological resilience and climate change mitigation research, forest ecosystem restoration receives less attention. Most literature considers Indigenous peoples as research participants rather than collaborative research partners. Differences in ontologies and sociological barriers between Indigenous peoples and government agencies may hinder TEK’s inclusion in restoration practices. Reflecting on the wild rice restoration efforts of Ojibwa in the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, we discuss timescale dimensions of research partnerships and restoration projects with Indigenous communities. Guided by Indigenous knowledge systems, we conclude that restoration activities have the potential to strengthen humanecosystem livelihoods in our shared landscapes and futures.
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Ecological Legacies and Ethnotourism: Bridging Science and Community in Ecuador’s Amazonia
This paper offers paradigmatic insights from an international workshop on Ecological Legacies: Bridge Between Science and Community, in Ecuador, in the summer of 2023. The conference brought together foreign and local scholars, tour operators, village community, and Indigenous leaders in the upper Amazonia region of Ecuador with the goal of developing a vision for a sustainable and regenerative future of the upper Amazon. The conference offered three epistemological contributions to the existing literature in the emergent field of Montology, including addressing issues of (a) understanding the existing linguistic hegemony in describing tropical environments, (b) the redress of mistaken notions on pristine jungle environments, and (c) the inclusion of traditional knowledge and transdisciplinary approaches to understand the junglescape from different perspectives and scientific traditions. Methodologically, the conference bridged the fields of palaeoecological and ethnobotanical knowledge (as part of a wider conversation between science and local communities). Results show that local knowledge should be incorporated into the study of the junglescape and its conservation, with decolonial approaches for tourism, sharing language, methodology, tradition, and dissemination of the forest’s attributes. Our research helped co-create and formulate the “Coca Declaration” calling for a philosophical turn in research, bridging science and ethnotourism in ways that are local, emancipatory, and transdisciplinary. We conclude that facilitating new vocabulary by decolonial heightening of Indigenous perspectives of the junglescape helps to incorporate the notion of different Amazons, including the mountainscape of the Andean–Amazonian flanks. We also conclude that we can no consider Ecuador the country of “pure nature” since we helped demystify pristine nature for foreign tourists and highlighted local views with ancestral practices. Finally, we conclude that ethnotourism is a viable alternative to manage heritagization of the junglescape as a hybrid territory with the ecological legacies of the past and present inhabitants of upper Amazonia.
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- PAR ID:
- 10537926
- Publisher / Repository:
- Sustainability
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Sustainability
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2071-1050
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4664
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/su16114664
