TEK and Climate Change Survey

Through many generations of occupancy of particular places, humans have accumulated a vast amount of knowledge encompassing and explaining more than western science. It embraces the whole of human experience. TEK allows people to live in the environment without destroying its biodiversity. It allows people to work with nature in a positive way. One core principle is not to take more than you need because what you do not use will not be lost.

More projects need to be funded focusing on TEK because when people have information and actually see change occurring around them, they act. I remember last quarter for my Anthropology of Climate Change class we were asked to take a survey around campus. It was a particularly nice day so we were to ask random people if they were thinking about climate change on such a beautiful day, if climate change concerned them, and if they thought climate change was affecting them right now. Almost all the people I spoke with were not thinking of climate change or global warming. They liked the idea of warm Seattle days. And while climate change concerned them to a degree, they felt like presently it was not a threat to them. It was a problem to be dealt with in the future. I think this is a good example of how something is out of sight and out of mind. The people on campus were not directly affected by changes in climate at this moment so they had no reason to change their lifestyles. This home is not being swallowed up by the rising ocean and they have no noticed foreign species migrating to their land, species for which they have no name for. TEK and climate change are so intimately connected. That will be the focus of my next blog.