Data and Indigenous Knowledge


  Date: 2024-07-23
  Author: Nathan Pieplow
  License: CC BY-NC-SA
  Domain: Persuading with Data
  Subdomain: Making Claims with Data
  Type of Resource: Activity

This activity includes a set of discussion questions based on the article “The Leading Edge: What Inuit Can Teach Us About Climate Monitoring And Adaptation” from Forbes Magazine. These questions could form the basis for an in-class discussion or they could be used as prompts for a reading reflection and response assignment.

Keywords:  Indigenous Knowledge    Indigenous Rights    Ways of Knowing    Climate Change    Global Warming  

MLA Citation: Pieplow, Nathan. ‘Data and Indigenous Knowledge’ (discussion questions). Data Advocacy 4 All, University of Colorado. 23 July 2024.


Note: The Forbes article is behind a paywall, but Forbes allows a certain number of free articles to non-subscribers.

Article

These discussion questions assume that students have read the 2022 article “The Leading Edge: What Inuit Can Teach Us About Climate Monitoring And Adaptation” in Forbes Magazine.

Discussion Questions

“That’s anecdotal. We need data to believe you.”

  • What’s the difference between anecdotal evidence and data?
  • What are the advantages of requiring decisions to be made with data instead of anecdote? What are the drawbacks?
  • Do you agree that “talking to other hunters and elders” can be considered “a kind of peer review system?” Do you agree that Indigenous knowledge has always had a kind of data behind it? What are the advantages of Indigenous knowledge over the kinds of knowledge that academics consider “data driven”? What are the advantages of the academic type of data?

Indigenous knowledge and science

  • Can you envision a scenario in which Indigenous knowledge gets the answer to a question right, while the academic approach gets it wrong? Can you imagine a scenario in which the opposite happens?

Consider knowledge-making as a process by which we increase our degree of confidence about certain claims (NOT as a yes/no proposition in which we either know something or we don’t.)

  • If knowledge-making is about increasing degrees of confidence, how could Indigenous knowledge and academic approaches work in harmony with one another?