The integration of indigenous knowledge/languages in formal education is a contentious issue in post-colonial Africa. For historical and economic reasons, these are devalued in the formal education system. We argue that appropriate use of indigenous knowledge/languages can empower African students academically even in typically “Western” disciplines, such as Computer Science. We discuss the pot...

The new science of genomics endeavors to chart the genomes of individuals around the world, with the dual goals of understanding the role genetic factors play in human health and solving problems of disease and disability. From the perspective of indigenous peoples and developing countries, the promises and perils of genomic science appear against a backdrop of global health disparity and polit...

This article examines the symbolic transformations and material consequences of an irrigation development project designed to empower indigenous peoples in Cañar, Ecuador. It argues that the project deepened market society and reproduced colonialism more than it empowered indigenous peoples, but indigenous people found ways to appropriate project resources and embed the market in alternative pr...

This article examines the design of digital indigenous knowledge archives. In a discussion of the distinction between indigenous knowledge and western science, a decentred perspective is developed, in which the relationship between different local knowledges is explored. The particular characteristics of indigenous knowledges raise questions about if and how these knowledges can be managed. The...

BACKGROUND Studies have shown that social capital is positively associated with health, and the association is context-based. Indigenous populations with poor access to health care largely depend on social capital for their health care needs. This study was conducted to explore the dimensions and types of social capital and its utilization by families with thalassemia for their health and well-...

BACKGROUND The Negative Life Events Scale (NLES) has been included in nationally representative surveys of the Indigenous and Australian population since 2002 as a measure of exposure to a range of 'life stressors'. There has been limited reporting or analysis of estimates of the NLES from these surveys. This paper reports changes in exposure to stressors from 2002 to 2008 for the Indigenous po...

Contemporary Western attitudes concerning the management of natural resources, treatment of nonhuman animals, and the natural world emerge from traditions derived from Western European philosophy, i.e., they assume that humans are autonomous from, and in control of, the natural world. A different approach is presented by Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of indigenous peoples of North Amer...

In today’s schools there are often competing accounts of natural phenomena, especially when schools are located in multicultural communities. There are also competing claims about what counts as science. This article examines the definition of science put forward from multicultural perspectives in contrast to a universalist perspective on science; that is, the Standard Account. The article argu...