The concept of “indigenous ways of knowing” is increasingly popular in North American universities. However, this enthusiasm is largely abstract, for educational institutions have not yet processed the implications. In Venezuela, my experience as an educator has been different. Members of the Bari tribe believe that the semen of multiple men can contribute to the formation of the embryo. Should this be respected as an “indigenous way of knowing”? I posit that it should not, and I urge North American institutions to take note.
In 2005, Richard Dawkins proposed to teach the stork theory of conception in public schools (1). When I first learned about this, I was baffled. How on Earth could Dawkins, the brilliant scientist, make such an outrageous proposal? I soon came to realize that this was typical Dawkins sarcasm. At the time, those pushing the Intelligent Design agenda were requesting educational reforms, so as to introduce new creationist theories in school curricula. According to the argument advanced by the Discovery Institute, to live in a truly democratic society, schools would have to “teach the controversy” (2) and so, Darwinism would have to be taught alongside Intelligent Design. Dawkins then weighed in on this issue, arguing that, if we are to teach such “controversies,” then we ought to teach an alternative to the conventional theory of human reproduction; schools should include the stork theory.
Dawkins won the day. With his stingy yet effective reductio ad absurdum, he made a point: not every topic is open to “teaching the controversy.” For his illustrative purposes, Dawkins chose a cartoonish example. Nobody actually believes storks deliver babies. In fact, although the image of the stork carrying the baby wrapped in diapers has powerful appeal in a variety of cultures, it is rather doubtful that anybody ever held such a belief. For that very reason, this colorful theory served as a perfect example for Dawkins’ affront against the new versions of creationism.
Yet, as an educator in Venezuela, I have encountered students who do have strange theories about human reproduction. The Bari Natives of Zulia State in Western Venezuela are a case in point. Members of this tribe believe that semen from multiple men can contribute to the formation of the embryo. In fact, it is common for Bari women to have multiple partners, and all of them play the role of father to the child the woman may conceive. This works to the advantage of such a child, to the extent that he or she may be nourished and protected by many men. This particular custom can only take place if, indeed, the whole community accepts that all those men have equally contributed their semen to the biological formation of that child.
The Bari are amongst a few other tribes (mostly in South America) who adhere to the concept of “partible paternity” (3). Anthropologists have long been fascinated by this concept, because they see great functionality in this particular belief. For the case of the Bari, anthropologist Stephen Beckerman has closely studied this phenomenon (4). Over the years, Beckerman discovered that the belief in multiple paternity is very useful for the Bari, and it is an optimate cultural adaptation that serves the purpose of protecting children in a very hostile environment, such as the Perija mountains of Venezuela.
As an educator, I perfectly understand that. But my role is to teach science and to train students in the quest for truth. The Bari belief in partible paternity may be functional, but it is not any closer to truth than the stork theory of conception. Some philosophers with pragmatist inclinations might believe that truths ought to be defined in terms of utility. By that standard, if a particular belief is useful for the Bari, then it is true. But, that is sloppy thinking. A statement is true if and only if it corresponds with facts.
Over the years, I have had Bari students argue with me whenever I lay the basic facts about human reproduction. I listen to what they have to say, and I give them every opportunity to explain why their belief in partible paternity serves a purpose in particular tribal settings. But, I do not give in. I present facts, and that is that. In exams, if such students answer that more than one man can contribute semen to the formation of an embryo, they get zero marks. Just as we all agree that to “teach the controversy” regarding the stork theory of reproduction is ridiculous, it seems to me that it would be equally risible to “teach the controversy” about partible paternity.
Until recently, I never had problems with this uncompromising stance. But now, things are beginning to change throughout educational institutions in Latin America. For years, governments in the region have promoted multicultural education, on account of Latin America’s traumatic colonial history. The argument is straight forward: colonialism has inflicted massive damage on the psyche of indigenous peoples, and that needs to change. Justice must be done, and this needs to be reflected in education. This implies decolonizing the curriculum, by focusing less on the Western canon, and giving more educational space to indigenous oral literature, arts, and so on.
This is all great. But, the push to decolonize the curriculum goes much further than that. Just as Canada, Australia, and other Western nations are now doing, this decolonizing of the curriculum also implies the acceptance and recognition of so-called “indigenous ways of knowing.” Such efforts would serve the purpose of doing what postcolonialist scholar Vish Visvanathan calls “cognitive justice”, i.e., the recognition of the right for different forms of knowledge to co-exist (5).
As far as I can see, in countries such as Canada, this movement in favor of “indigenous ways of knowing” still remains on a more abstract level. As Josh Dehaas describes it, there may be some veneer of magical thinking and new spirituality in Canadian universities as a result of this push to decolonize the curriculum (6). But so far, in the North American educational scene, there has been no real clash on the ground between science and “indigenous ways of knowing.”
In Venezuela, I have encountered this clash on a far more concrete level. A few Bari students have protested my “stubborn” adherence to the conventional theory of human reproduction, and school administrators are now feeling the heat of bureaucrats who want educators to accommodate indigenous religious beliefs, even if they directly clash with science. This implies giving marks to Bari students who answer in exams that two or more men can contribute semen to the formation of an embryo. It is one thing to enact religious rituals in class so as to make indigenous students feel welcome in seminars (as some Canadian universities now do); it is quite another to accept that folk theories of reproduction are as valid as scientific theories.
The concept of “cognitive justice” flies in the face of a fundamental principle of logic: Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction. Two contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time. And yet, this is what “cognitive justice” amounts to. The Bari and the scientific theories of reproduction contradict each other; therefore, it is logically impossible to accept both of them as true. On an epistemological level, they cannot coexist, but somehow, school administrators want them to coexist.
The Bari belief is clearly false, and for that very reason, it cannot be called “knowledge.” This also applies to the wide array of beliefs that in North American academia, are beginning to be honored as “indigenous ways of knowing.” The word “knowledge” has a very specific philosophical definition, as laid out by Plato in the Theaetetus: justified true belief (7). Many of the alleged “indigenous ways of knowing” are either not true beliefs (they are demonstrably false, such as the Bari belief in partible paternity), or they are not justified (such beliefs are arrived at, not by way of empirical finding or reasoning, but by way of mysticism).
Now, of course anthropologists such as Beckerman have a point when they argue that concepts of partible paternity have an inner logic, and have been a useful adaptation for many indigenous tribes. But, I am afraid that education is about the quest for truth wherever it leads. Anything short of that would be a hypocritical disservice to students themselves. Indeed, I have had brilliant Bari students who are eager to continue on to medical school. Would I be helping their cause by telling them that their traditional theory of reproduction is as true as the scientific one? How is that going to help them when, as doctors, they investigate genetic diseases in their own communities? To erroneously believe that multiple men contribute genetic material for the formation of embryos, will certainly not help in treating disorders such as Huntington’s, which at some point was rampant in Western Venezuela.
So far, my colleagues and I have been able to resist, but I do not know if educators in Venezuela (and Latin America at large) will be able to do so for much longer. Ever more, populist politicians in the region appeal to indigenismo, and we have to come to feel the heat of this in classrooms. The same politicians who once laughed at the gringos for having even considered allowing religious fanatics teach that the Earth is 6,000 years old and humans coexisted with dinosaurs, now toy with the idea that, all in the name of postcolonialism, educators ought to accept indigenous beliefs as epistemologically on par with scientific theories.
This should be a cautionary tale for North American educators. Few school administrators have actually given enough thought to what the push for “indigenous ways of knowing” really implies. So far, North American educators pay lip service more than anything else. But, inevitably, if the current trend continues, the time will come when administrators will have to put to test all that lip service, and consider whether or not they are willing to accept the teaching of flat out wrong theories in classrooms. I hope they make the right decision on time.
References
- Dawkins, Richard & Cone, Jerry. One side can be wrong. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/01/schools.research
- Scott EC, Branch G. Evolution: what’s wrong with ‘teaching the controversy’. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 2003 Oct 1;18(10):499-502.
- Walker RS, Flinn MV, Hill KR. Evolutionary history of partible paternity in lowland South America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2010 Nov 9;107(45):19195-200.
- Beckerman S, Lizarralde R, Ballew C, Schroeder S, Fingelton C, Garrison A, Smith H. The Bari partible paternity project: Preliminary results. Current Anthropology. 1998 Feb;39(1):164-8.
- Visvanathan, Shiv. The search for cognitive justice. http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/597/597_shiv_visvanathan.htm
- Dehaas, Josh. ‘Indigenous Ways of Knowing’: Magical Thinking and Spirituality by Any One Name. https://quillette.com/2018/05/22/indigenous-ways-knowing-magical-thinking-spirituality-one-name/
- Plato, Theaetetus, 187b.
- Paradisi I, Hernández A, Arias S. Huntington disease mutation in Venezuela: age of onset, haplotype analyses and geographic aggregation. Journal of human genetics. 2008 Feb;53(2):127-35.
24 comments
There are significant problems with this article. One is its out-of-hand dismissal of Intelligent Design, when many of our most genius scientists say that there is strong evidence of an element of design by an intelligence within nature. The fact is that we cannot replicate the formation of DNA. The old ‘lighting hitting a swamp’ theory is now derided. The fact is, we simply do not know. There is much that we do not know, but these gaps are skipped over because there is political and financial adherence to a certain theory. The other is on the matter of multiple men genetically contributing to one child. While it is true that the idea of one embryo being fertilised by multiple men to create one child is not supported by the evidence, there is significant evidence idence that genetic matter from semen of multiple men can be retained within the body of a woman, notably the brain, interestingly, and then integrated into the genetic makeup of future children born from that woman. So there does seem to be a grain of truth within the Bari thinking, and one that is often overlooked by the mainstream because of its political nature – it undermines arguments for promiscuity and supports the idea of female virginity until marriage and marriage to one man. In the current climate this is simply unacceptable. It seems to me that the writer of this article is under the misapprehension that science is a neutral viewpoint. This is not the case at all. There is no such thing as a neutral viewpoint. Every point of view, every process, has presuppositions built into it.
I’m with you particularly with regards to the author’s cavalier dismissal of intelligent design which you criticize.
Can you provide a citation for the idea that genetic material from men’s semen is retained in the female brain? I can’t think of a mechanism for that to occur. Sperm never enter the woman’s bloodstream.
I believe you are referencing micro-chimerism where the genetic material from multiple CHILDREN can be retained in the mother.
Decolonization in education is distinguised by its outcomes. Traditional and current pedagogical best practice is describing outcomes in terms of a behavioural or cognitive performance. Outcomes of decolonization are based on attitudes. To meet decolonization outcomes, students must agree with the teacher. Everybody knows you cant prescribe respect, love, or sincerity. Changing opinions through facts is more effective. An example is the Auscwitz memorial (check out their twitter), which has just the facts and, boy, are they powerful attitude changers. Seeing the pictures and reading about the causes of death are shocking. Indians claim genocide based on the fact that the govt fed, clothed, and educated children who were abanded and abused and that this was done only to indian kids. But to even mention this argument is considered racist.
The irony of this article is the author is arguing against the fruit of postmodern critical theories while trying to promote its root as the antidote.
There is no reason to assume according to the tenets of Darwinian materialism that the chemical and electrical processes occuring in a individual hominid (or a collection of them) can ascertain any form of immaterial truth either empirically or transcendentally.
There is no material difference between the three pounds of proteins and lipds in a hominid deterministically dancing to their selfish genes and the star dust they originally came from. There is nothing outside matter animated solely by energy somehow adhering to strangely precise laws of physics.
The soft sciences have consistently deduced from materialistic presuppositions there is no transcendent truth possible, only individual experience.
Now matter precedes essence is assaulting the gates of the hard sciences. The boffins protest keep your social constructions away from our empirical truth without realizing they have been intellectually dishonest dead men walking from the start.
The modern scientific method was birthed from Christian ontology, epistimology, and teleology. When you deny the Intelligent Designer for random mater animated solely by energy you can’t start crying foul when a colocation of stardust produces a stream of vibrations in the atmospheric molecules you disagree with.
Left unchecked the universal acid of materialism will dissolve all “truth” value of emperisim just as it has with rationalism. To defend any notion of truth or transcendentals as a materialist is impossible and is intellectual plagiarism.
Pure gobbledygook.
Germ theory is also great and I would hate to try to do medicine without it. Many indigenous belief systems hold that we can be made sick by human enemies, either by some magical action that they do or by their hatred directly. This makes it hard to prevent illness and it contributes to an atmosphere of suspicion, jealousy, and feuds.
I think that, unless the deconstructionists have gotten to them, most indigenous people still hold to the correspondence view of truth, which is the common sense human view. This means they are perfectly capable of learning about, and being convinced of, stuff like germ theory and it’s an insult to their intelligence to suggest otherwise.
“Indingenous” people in Canada just participated in burning 4,700 books at a French school. Fahrenheit 451 is alive and well and living in Canada. This book burning doesn’t seem to present a very “common sense human view” to me. Sounds more like vicious revanchists getting revenge because they can (on top of the billions of tax dollars they have received over the past century from Canadian taxpayers’ whose books they are now burning). There’s another English word for this: Con as in Con Game and Con Artist. There’s a sucker born every minute in Woke Town. Why is the maple leaf the symbol of Canada? Because it’s a country full of saps.
Q: How do you convince Progressives to burn books?
A: Read them quotes from Fahrenheit 451.
“You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right?…Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, to the incinerator.”
Canadodoland is “the world’s first post-nation state” (Justinian Trudeau 2015).
Fabian Socialist Vegetable People chant: “Burn, books, burn!”
Shit Show Sheeple submissively squawk: “Soma! Soma! Soma!”
We Are The Dead.
When I also saw that, I was surprised to learn that book burning was indigenous tradition. (cynical)
I just wanted to add that there are certain extremely rare circumstances where two sperm can enter an egg, and create twins. Usually the children are stillborn, but it’s possible for them to survive. The Bari are still wrong with their reasoning, but it’s possible for multiple males to have their genetic material passed on this way once in a blue moon.
I agree with the gist of the article, but I’m afraid the author has a terribly misinformed view of pragmatic philosophy. A pragmatist would not claim that the Bari view of reproduction is scientifically true. If it is useful for their social structure, it is socially true; but there are different ways in which something can be true. This does not conflict with the fact that this concept is untrue biologically. This is similar to how 1 = 1 is mathematically true, but socially untrue, as one individual is not the equivalent of another individual, except in a purely legal or statistical sense. As individuals, we are very different. Or, how something can be metaphorically true while being physically false, such as the statement that “monsters lurk in the darkness.” That is not sloppy thinking in the least—to think that a true statement must always be completely true regardless of context is sloppy thinking. Context is important in ascertaining truth.
So, of course a Bari student taking a biology class should learn the biological facts of reproduction. If said student wants to take a course on pragmatism, he might also be able to learn that partible paternity, while still biologically false as he learned in biology class, is also socially true in a society that recognizes multiple fathers. And this is emphatically NOT the same thing as “Indigenous Ways of Knowing,” which we both would agree is completely garbage postmodern logic.
Another analogy: this is very much akin to how, in the western world, the statement “I am a father” can be completely true socially, and completely false genetically. It’s called adoption, and we all accept this way of thinking. A man who adopts a child is a father to that child, even if he has never reproduced. One can accept both kinds of fatherhood to be ‘true’ without any internal contradiction. “Indigenous Ways of Knowing,” on the other hand, is merely doublethink as they are trying to conflate religious or social truths with scientific truths, hence their inane drive to actually substitute scientific truths with other kinds of truths which do not belong in the scientific realm.
The Kinnouri tribe in the Himachal (India, and some other cultures in surrounding regions) have the practice of polyandry. Two or more brothers marry the same woman, and live as a very close knit family. Obviously, it is driven by the need to survive and conserve natural resources in a fragile eco-systems. It is a way of life and needs to be respected as such. They do not have this belief of multiple men contributing to a making a single child. They manage their custom without the aid of this belief.
Point is, allowing people to practice their way of life is different from literally granting that their belifs are true (according to our modern criteria). That is an inconsistent mix. Because, the mainstream scientific knowledge of our times plays by some strict rules – experimental validation of hypothesis etc. The folk beliefs can be accomodated but only in their way of life. People cannot opt to join the mainstream way of life and then impose the demand that their beliefs coming from their original way of life should be held true according to our, mainstream, criteria of ‘knowledge’.
But there are other cases that need more consideration. Michael Harner has done a lot of work in Shamanism, and has embraced it and tried to create a modern version of the practice. I think such attempts need to be given their space, by mutual agreement …What would yout take be on it?
Modern technology has forced many people to have to come to terms with similar realities in monogamous societies. It used to be that you had to accept who the father of a child was, unless the child looked very unlike the apparent father, and very much like someone else the mother knew. Now a simple DNA test confirms who is who. Those involved either have to shrug this off, and move on in the interests of the child, or be torn asunder.
Well the goodnews is for the time being, due to Covid, everyone gets to see their kids being taught online.
Pay attention and see the non indigenous knowledge stuff and where it hits. like vocabulary and reading and see how they subtle shape your children’s ideals. My son’s favorite example he shared was on the word ‘benevolent’:
‘Democrats have long been known as the benevolent party of politics while the Republicans are generally uncharitable people’ -that was the sentence teacher used for the definition.
The teachers unions are destroying America, along with the Police unions and the politicians who are controlled by them
I’m a teacher myself and simply don’t understand how these teachers can color their courses with political diatribe. No, correct. I actually do.
Many teachers, once they get over the typical hurdles of learning how to manage a class, grade exams and deal with school politics, eventually realize that their salaries are going to pretty much stay the same for the rest of their lives. They look at their friends who studied other subjects, some of whom are outlearning them by 300%. Envy sets in and they figure they’ve been the butt of a huge joke. Tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and no hope of career advancement or meaningful salary increase. The system must therefore be evil. They despise the more business-minded of their for acquiring more financial and societal success, and seek to bring the capitalist system down.
I think this pretty much characterizes the Democrat mindset. At the heart of it is a politics of envy and frustration disguised as altruism for the down-trodden and poor. White men, perceived as the most successful demographic, are the natural targets of this enmity.
The Oedipal complex is a fundamental developmental issue for all human children. Mental illnesses are directly attributable to destabilization of the mother/father/child triad. We all need to psychologically separate from our mothers, and the presence of a father is the critical factor for both boys (who need to let go other their mother fixation) and girls (who need to develop the capacity to love an opposite sexed person).
Education should be about challenging and expanding students’ world view, not about confirming their biases. This is a worrisome trend in Higher Education lately. We are experiencing it now with transgenderism.
“Education should be about challenging and expanding students’ world view, not about confirming their biases. This is a worrisome trend in Higher Education lately.”
I suspect this is part of Universities moving towards more of a commodity business model, seeing students as customers, a source of revenue, and giving them what they want, rather than training them to have the skills they need.
Looking back at my own experience, the professors who gave the lessons that mattered the most were the least popular at the time. I ran into a former professor who nearly burst into tears as I was friendly towards her.
“My students never like me”
That’s because you tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.
This was a very good article on the subject of indigenous knowledge. I work with an indigenous community in Canada and I will tell you the problem is quite severe. You have politicians and universities telling First Nation communities they respect and honour their traditions and beliefs when the communities themselves no longer know what those are; Over 100 years of assimilation training has seen to that. Their children beaten, molested and psychologically abused all in the name of removing their identity as First Nations. These broken children went on to become parents who in turn abused their child. Rampant alcoholism and drug use leading to children born with defects and learning handicaps. Now, 25 years after the closure of the last residential school First Nations are asked to teach of their traditional ways when there is nothing left to teach. It’s almost lost, all of it scattered with a handful left of the old and dying who do not have the energy or will to teach. Broken, ill equipped and lost they are told now that they are respected for their traditional values and beliefs only after they’ve been stripped of it. These people’s culture has been decimated and in order to repair what we can we must fix the individual people first. Culture and tradition can be recreated but it will never come back as it was. The culture is all but dead, what is left over is fragmented and borrowed, confused and despairing. To lie to these people and tell them that you value their traditional knowledge after you killed it is to spit in the face of a dead man.
Your article was more on the subject of traditional knowledge being archaic and there was a lot of merit in that, I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it was very honest. I wanted to comment that issues of policy makers and universities valuing indigenous knowledge here in Canada has less to do with that knowledge being outdated and flawed and more to do with those statements being outright lies, naive beyond belief or completely ignorant of the reality of the situation. They break the nation’s back and then ask them to walk.
It is important to note that my being a fellow Canadian imparts no responsibility on me for your statements or actions just as it imparts no responsibility on me for the statements or actions of previous generations of Canadians. If anything we are more intrinsically linked to each other as fellow Canadians that at the very least just so happen to be alive at the same time than either of us are to long dead fellow Canadians from a past we never experienced. Ironically it is a reflection of the more intrinsic connection that we have to one another as fellow Canadians alive today that I am confident when I presume that we both agree in individual responsibility. I suspect you will not object to my presumption that neither of us agree that we are both collectively responsible for each other’s actions and I can say this quite humourously with such confidence because our shared contemporary Canadian culture can collectively be described as individualist. As an individual I wish to distance myself from the people who claim to value the traditional knowledge of Canada’s indigenous peoples through lip service, but likewise I wish to distance them from the people who actively worked to assimilate and remove indigenous peoples from their traditional knowledge and cultures because they are not the same individuals. Though the last residential school closed only 25 years ago it was established with the intent to civilize and forcibly assimilate indigenous children by the Canadian government of the 1800s. None of the people who established Canada’s residential schools are alive today, thus none of the contemporary Canadians who claim to value indigenous knowledge are responsible for the destruction of those traditions by the establishment of residential schools.
“Though the last residential school closed only 25 years ago it was established with the intent to civilize and forcibly assimilate indigenous children by the Canadian government of the 1800s.”
the canadian govt is doing the same thing now. formal education is colonial. to encourage or coerce formal education is colonial. If by “forcibly assimilate” you mean the community taking responsibility for abused and abanded indian children, you wold be right. nothing has changed in this regard. The govt did the same for non-indians and the boarding schools for orphans in quebec and elsewhere were residential schools, which used the same methods regardless of race.
This is a well-thought out response. There is no easy way to repair the damage that was done in the past to these people, and this new wave of self-indulgent collective guilt isn’t really helping them either. It will probably take several generations before things get better.