What inspired the African Biodiversity Network (ABN) and yourself to focus on indigenous and local knowledge?
Over the last years, I went through a transformative journey of deschooling and decolonizing mindsets. It is a process of going back to my indigenous roots to rediscover the value of traditional culture. I grew up in a rural area, the Tharaka community in Kenya, in harmony with nature but then lost that connection as I entered the conventional education system. Now, I am reconnecting with the community elders and going through the rites of passage to rediscover our traditions and reconnect with nature through practices. It has been an exciting journey of unlearning, learning and relearning to develop a sense of belonging and a deep understanding of nature and its language. Through this journey, I realised that nature’s language is accessible to humans aware of being just a part of a giant net. This transformation, made possible to me through the Botswana Process, gave me a great inspiration on how to take care of the planet.
At ABN, our work with indigenous and local communities follows the same logic. We encourage communities to revive their indigenous and local knowledge and promote the rights of the indigenous peoples and local communities in Africa. For example, we supported communities in documenting their customary governance systems and laws and developing a call to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. That work created significant interest in the importance of preserving the core element of indigenous African traditions, namely sacred natural sites and their customary governance systems. By providing legal and policy support to the statement of the custodians of knowledge, we fostered the resolution adopted in 2017 calling the African Union Member States to respect the intrinsic value of sacred natural sites and territories while recognizing their essential role in biodiversity preservation and protection of human rights.
Our partners across African countries such as Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi work with young people to support their transformative journey, encouraging them to reconnect with nature and their communities and learn from the elders and nature.
How are you working with indigenous peoples and local communities to promote indigenous food systems and food security?
With the Community Seeds and Knowledge (CSK) programme, we see the seed as an essential element of life. We don’t view seed as a grain, as it happens conventionally; the seed is sacred to indigenous and local communities since it is the element that gives life.
Our focus is on the community, while the seed represents the knowledge of the community and a link to ancestral wisdom, so when a community loses the seed or its diversity, they also lose knowledge. When you revive a seed or preserve the variety of seeds, the community is also restoring the diversity of knowledge. Traditionally, communities had different seeds because of their diverse nutritional values, resistance to parasites and climatic conditions, or importance in community’s cultures and traditions including ceremonies for rites of passage. This awareness was lost through agricultural commercialisation. Monoculture and uptake of hybrid seeds led to a decline in cultivation of indigenous seeds and ultimately loss of associated knowledge and cultural practices. However, a community that recognizes and cultivates the diversity of seeds passes to younger generations a variety of knowledge and practices. This is a truly rich and sustainable community!
Through dedicated programmes, ABN aims to revive the diversity of seeds for food and nutrition security, while also acknowledging and preserving spiritual and cultural aspects. Across Africa, our partners have developed a seeds catalogue to capture lost seeds and seeds that can be revived while outlining the nutritional value and traditional practices associated with each indigenous seed. That’s how we recognize that, in one acre, there is much more than just nourishment – there is also solidarity and connection to the roots.
What is the role of women, and especially rural women, in this process?
When we began reviving the traditional seeds and knowledge, we recognized the importance of women as custodians of the seeds. While almost entirely marginalized in mechanized agriculture, rural women have a crucial role in selecting, storing and enhancing the diversity of the seeds in most African communities. Women’s intimate relationship with the land and the seeds enabled them to develop a unique set of knowledge and practices.
The understanding of nature belonging to rural African women shaped the culture and traditions of some communities. For example, in the Tharaka community, married couples are given a variety of seeds during their wedding. Here, seeds symbolise a new life and blessings for the couple. This practice highlights the importance of women (as custodians of seeds) in sharing traditional knowledge with younger generations, preserving the bio-cultural diversity of the crops and ensuring food security. In collaboration with the Gaia Foundation, the ABN documented these practices in the Celebrating African Rural Women report.
ABN participated in the BES-Net Anglophone Africa Trialogue event. Could you share your experience and suggestions for future initiatives?
The Trialogue event was great and presented us with an opportunity to showcase how were are reviving and promoting indigenous and local knowledge to promote food security and biodiversity conservation. An area of joint future collaboration may be around implementing the Multiple Evidence Base (MEB) approach.
As ABN, we aim to revive the indigenous and local knowledge and bring the wisdom of our elders to society and the academic community. Our success is when the indigenous and local knowledge is recognized and heard, not being judged or perceived as a superstition of the illiterate, nor justified or validated by science In most cases. Indigenous peoples and local communities are eco-literate. So, together with BES-Net, we can foster the dialogue between diverse knowledge systems, bringing them together in the context of respect, reciprocity, transparency and equity.
As Thomas Berry, a spiritual leader and seeker close to your heart, put it, “it is all a question of a story. We’re in trouble now because we don’t have a good story. We’re in the middle of stories: the Old story is not functioning properly, and the New story is yet to be revealed”. What is the story that you would envision for the future of humanity?
In the future that I envision and work for, the indigenous and local communities are motivated by the spirit of self-determination, upholding their rights, knowledge, and decision-making power. They are empowered to write their stories, to thrive inspired by the indigenous and local knowledge.
One of the elders told me, ‘’We, humans, behave like cancer cells. When we disconnect ourselves from the larger web of life, the ecological harmony is broken’’. We must recognise that other beings also have their rights. This pandemic results from such behaviour, from human ignorance and disconnection with Mother Earth, so we’re dying of our own irresponsibilities. So, hopefully, the new story will be the one where we listen to elders and Nature, where there is bio-cultural dialogue and understanding.
ABN and SwedBio recently released a report based on the exploration of walking workshops and eco-cultural mapping as methods for supporting communities in dealing with uncertain future and challenges. The explorative process described in the report was developed together with ABN partners in Kenya, Ethiopia and Benin.
Simon Mitambo is the Regional Programmes Coordinator for the African Biodiversity Network (ABN) in 12 countries. Since joining ABN in 2007, Mitambo has walked a transformative journey of deschooling and decolonising his mindset. Mitambo is a trained Earth Jurisprudence Practitioner and a Core Member of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. In addition, he is an expert in ancestral wisdom and world views across Africa and especially the Tharaka community where he hails. ABN is a partner and member organization under the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Network.
Credits:
- Image courtesy of Simon Mitambo - Franco Pecchio, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons - Image courtesy of Simon Mitambo - Image courtesy of Simon Mitambo - Image courtesy of Simon Mitambo - H4m240m4r1, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons