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Indigenous Knowledge: Towards Learning Materials and Methodologies that Respond to Social Processes of Marginalisation and Appropriation in Eastern Southern Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Rob O'Donoghue
Rob O'Donoghue*
Affiliation:
Rhodes University, South Africa
*
†Gold Fields EE Service Centre, Rhodes University EE Unit, Grahamstown, South Africa. Email: greenbike@futurenet.co.za
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Abstract

This study sheds light on how a rich legacy of intergenerational, contextual knowing (indigenous environmental knowledge) was successively overlooked and marginalised, or was appropriated and re-orientated in developing scientific institutions, in eastern southern Africa. The Nguni case evidence reviewed, uncovers a somewhat blind appropriation and reorientation of environmental knowledge in the colonial administration and within emerging scientific institutions. It examines how processes such as this served to marginalise indigenous “ways of knowing,” and consequently, “African knowledge systems” in the region. Evidence of colonial oppression is nothing new, but a closer look at some of the institutional processes involved is used to inform the design of the “IK & Today,” materials being developed with educators and communities by researchers working on The National Research Foundation (NRF) programme of the Rhodes University Environmental Educatiuon Unit.

Keywords

indigenous environmental knowledgedevelopment of environmental education materials
Type
Research Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 19 , 2003 , pp. 57 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003

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