Native Science: Understanding and Respecting Other Ways of Thinking

Abstract

• Over generations, Native Americans have developed a timely and reliable knowledge of the land, its processes, and its management needs. This knowledge has been referred to as Native science.
• Native science employs many concepts such as observation, background research, and experimentation familiar to non-Native researchers and recognizes the interconnectedness of science. Good rangeland management also requires recognition of interrelatedness.
• If we are open to it, Native science can give us new ways of looking at the landscape and all that it has to offer in terms of chemical, physical, and ecological processes and communities.

Keywords: Native science, respect, holistic, scientific method.