Indigenous and Western Science: Bringing Worldviews Together for Biocultural Restoration

This session is designed in a workshop format, where people from varying backgrounds come together to explore how traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and scientific ecological knowledge (SEK) can come together in a synthesis to create biocultural restoration frameworks. These kinds of frameworks are meant to renew and revitalize ecosystems while simultaneously renewing and revitalizing the cultures that are historically responsible for them. Biocultural restoration is an emerging field within the discipline of ecological restoration. It's interdisciplinary and requires a combined methodology that draws from social and natural sciences. This workshop focuses on guiding people through the process of learning the basics of TEK and SEK, why it's important to include culture into ecological restoration, and what successful biocultural restorations might look like. We'll work together to identify goals, indicators, or mission statements that would guide an example project. Then finish with a set of tools for people to bring back to their own communities.