Indigenous Peoples Biodiversity Information Network (IBIN)
Elders
Discussions over intellectual property rights, indigenous knowledge systems, indigenous apporaches to biodiversity, its use and conservation, and related issues, may obscure the fundamental issue that the knowledge is not disembodied or something held by a culture, but exists in the minds and actions of individuals. The carriers of traditional knowledge and traditional innovation systems are the elders who act as the bridge between the ancestors and the future of their peoples. If indigenous knowledge is to be remain a vital force in our world, then support must be given to those who practice it by living on the land and waters, and for their efforts to pass this knowledge on to the next generation.
Here we provide links to resources on the role of elders in maintaining indigenous knowledge. If you know of others, please contact:
Dave Moore (dmoore@netshop.net)
Resources
Passing of the Elders: An on-line forum in which to post memorials of elders who have passed on to live with the ancestors, to honor them and to remind us what they have given us and what we have lost.
Gone Forever
I am an old woman now. The buffalos and black-tail deer are gone, and our Indian ways are almost gone. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I ever lived them.
My little son grew up in the white man's school. He can read books, and he owns cattle and has a farm. He is a leader among our Hidatsa people, helping teach them to follow the white man's road.
He is kind to me. We no longer live in an earth lodge, but in a house with chimneys; and my son's wife cooks by a stove.
But for me, I cannot forget our old ways.
Often in summer I rise at daybreak and steal out to the cornfields; and as I hoe the corn, I sing to it, as we did when I was young. No one cares for our corn songs now.
Sometimes at evening I sit, looking out on the big Missouri. The sun sets, and dusk steals over the water. In the shadows I seem again to see our Indian village, with smoke curling upward from the earth lodges; and in the river's roar I hear the yells of warriors, the laughter of little children as of old. It is but an old woman's dream. Again I see but shadows and hear only th roar of the river; and tears come into my eyes. Our Indian life, I know, is gone forever.
Buffalo Bird Woman, Hidatsa
Waheene: An Indian Girl's Story Told by Herself to Gilbert L.
Wilson.
North Dakota History: Journal of the Northern Plains 38(1/2).
Winter/Spring 1971.
In: Native American Testimony. Peter Nabokov (ed.). Viking Press.
1991.
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