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Indigenous Peoples around the world are increasingly concerned about protecting their Indigenous knowledge (IK) and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) from exploitation and preserving it for future generations. In mine and many cases, Indigenous cultural legacies are often governed by ancient and complex cultural protocols. Laws to effectively protect cultural legacies require an innovative, expansive, respectful, and sensitive approach that addresses the wide variety of protocols, tangible and intangible cultural expressions, and intellectual property. 

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For the last few summers news reports were dominated by coverage of raging, massive, out-of-control wildfires. The fires devastated some communities, forced others to evacuate, destroyed vast tracts of forest, fields, fauna, and disrupted livelihoods. These massive forest fires consumed phenomenal capital to fight, flee and rebuild in the aftermath.

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Of the most spoken languages in the world, English is the third after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. But English is the most commonly spoken second language in the world and is the most common language used on the internet. As accessibility to the digital world expands, so too will the spread of English as a second language.

This will impact all languages but those languages already endangered will be the most severely impacted as young people become fluent in the language of the internet and not their home language; the impact will be compounded through the following generations.

 

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Traditional Indigenous knowledge (TK) and traditional resources have been managed by Indigenous communities since time immemorial. The arrival of Europeans and the ensuing insatiable demand for resources, coupled with colonizing policies and the imposition of western worldviews, undermined and threatened the continuity of traditional knowledge. However, over the past four decades, there has been an increasing appreciation of the value of traditional knowledge in resource development projects, environmental management, government policies, and co-management strategies. Increasingly, its role in climate change monitoring is considered critical.

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There are more and more articles in the news about the value of Indigenous traditional knowledge being taken into account in climate change studies, environmental assessments, wildlife management, plant species’ studies. That has not always been the case. Historically, traditional ecological knowledge was largely ignored by western ecological science practitioners.

In this article, we take a look at the many factors that had to be in place to support recognition of Indigenous traditional knowledge (ITK) from obscurity to being considered a valuable asset in environmental studies. At the time of this writing, May 2018, it is still not mandatory in the environmental assessment process.

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