Broadcast Training
Indigenous Knowledge
- The Importance of indigenous knowledge
- Indigenous knowledge and livestock raising
- Farmers and scientists work together to improve indigenous practices
- Local people understand local weather patterns
- The importance of local crops
- Traditional food processing
Local knowledge for local radio
Attracting listeners and developing a loyal audience is the work of radio broadcasters everywhere. A tested and true method is to provide interesting programs with relevant, local content. For farm radio broadcasters, programs that discuss and share indigenous knowledge work well.
What is indigenous knowledge?
Also known as traditional knowledge or local knowledge, it is the wisdom held and shared by the people in your community, and passed down from generation to generation. It can be knowledge about farming methods, medicine, technologies, the environment, the spiritual world, or anything else that is important to a particular community of people. Some indigenous knowledge is common, and shared widely. Traditional recipes are an example of this. Sometimes it is specialized, and passed only from (for example) one traditional healer to a student.
For a long time, indigenous knowledge was ignored by modern science. It was said to be primitive, superstitious, or unscientific. Agricultural and medical science tried to replace indigenous knowledge and practices with modern practices. But recently, modern science has rediscovered the wisdom of indigenous knowledge, and found that it also has a great deal to offer.
Yet the disappearance of indigenous knowledge is a significant problem. Women and elders have an important role to play in preserving this valuable resource. Women possess an enormous amount of knowledge about food production and processing, medicine, child-rearing and other important survival skills. As a radio broadcaster, you can help by getting the voices of women and elders on the air and recording their experiences.
Programs about indigenous knowledge benefit your audience, and your programs.
- Your listeners may find new confidence in their own methods, upon hearing stories about other farmers who successfully use indigenous methods.
- Farmers who hear success stories about traditional methods may realize they already have solutions to their problems, and don¹t need to rely on governments or other outside help.
- Indigenous methods are often more appropriate for the local environment and conditions than solutions or methods suggested by outside experts.
- Indigenous knowledge systems generally minimize risk. This is especially important for your listeners who have limited access to resources.
- Rural people from all walks of life will learn to respect traditional ways and those who follow them.
- Your radio programs will offer local, relevant content that other broadcasters don¹t have. If you promote them, listeners will tune in at the appropriate time to hear their peers speak about issues of importance to them.
Remember to present different perspectives. In spite of the good it has to offer, indigenous knowledge is not always beneficial. In fact, some traditional practices are harmful or inappropriate. So although it is unwise to reject tradition in a community, it is equally unwise to accept indigenous practices without careful examination. Do your research. Find out why a tradition was started in the first place, how it evolved, and how practical or useful it is today.
Your radio program can be a forum for the discussion or debate about the usefulness of indigenous practices. Invite people in the field or the studio to comment on this issue.
Use your program to educate people about traditional or local methods. Indigenous knowledge is the basis for the survival of many of the people in your audience. Farmers with small plots of land often struggle to put food on the table. They have developed effective methods of producing, harvesting and storing food that have survived and proven useful over time.
With the world changing so quickly, indigenous knowledge can be easily lost, so it is wise to make efforts to preserve it. At the same time, we should not expect traditional practices to remain exactly the same. Rural people are constantly experimenting, adapting and modifying traditional methods and ideas.
In your community, you can find hundreds of other methods to be encouraged and validated on your radio programs. Your programs about indigenous knowledge are an important way to empower small-scale farmers and their families.
Indigenous knowledge protects biodiversity
Indigenous knowledge plays a key role in protecting biological diversity. In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development declared that:
Governments .... should recognize and foster the traditional methods and knowledge of indigenous people and their communities, emphasizing the particular role of women, relevant to the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of biological resources, and ensure the opportunity for participation of those groups in economic and commercial benefits derived from the use of such traditional methods and knowledge.
Program Ideas about Indigenous Knowledge
Program Idea #1: The Importance of indigenous knowledge
Indigenous knowledge is concerned with many things that are important to local people, but that scientific research doesn't always study. Indigenous knowledge integrates spiritual, environmental, agricultural and all other kinds of knowledge within a culture, whereas modern science often separates these different kinds of knowledge. For many communities, preservation of indigenous knowledge is vital for cultural survival.
By broadcasting stories about the use of traditional farming knowledge you can help rural people realize that many times they can find solutions their own solutions to their own problems and therefore don't need to rely on outside help.
Program suggestions:
- How local rituals support sustainable farming practices in your region.
- Local farmers find solutions to local pest and weed problems.
- Indigenous soil fertility practices.
- Some innovative ways that local people use to collect water.
- Traditional taboos against environmentally destructive practices, such as cutting trees in sacred groves and elsewhere.
- How the disappearance of local language affects local culture.
Program Idea #2: Indigenous knowledge and livestock raising
In most rural areas, people use traditional practices to raise livestock. The methods used are very specific to a given region and have been developed over a long period of time, handed down from one generation to the next.
Your community is probably no exception. For example, local people probably learned how to collect and use plants to treat livestock diseases from their parents and grandparents. Find and broadcast information about indigenous livestock husbandry that will be relevant to listeners in your community.
Program Idea #3: Farmers and scientists work together to improve indigenous practices
Farmers and scientists can combine their different types of knowledge to improve indigenous practices. For example, a soil conservation technique such as a stone barrier, used by local people, could be improved by incorporating a live hedgerow. This is a case of indigenous knowledge improved by scientific research. This type of cooperation is common these days as scientists and extentionists spend more time in the field working with farmers.
Radio programs about improved indigenous knowledge could involve interviews with both scientists and local farmers, separately or together, to discuss improvements to a traditional method of food processing, food storage, soil conservation or seed saving, among others.
If you plan to go to the field to talk with farmers, remember to:
- Identify and make an appointment with a knowledgeable farmer in the community.
- Interview the farmer.
- Check the information with other local farmers to verify its accuracy.
Program Idea #4: Local people understand local weather patterns
Many farmers and other rural people have learned to recognize signs in nature that warn them of upcoming changes in the weather. Sometimes this kind of indigenous knowledge is incorporated by scientists into weather forecasting systems. Consider producing a series of programs about how local people use signals in nature to predict the weather.
Program Idea #5: The importance of local crops
Some indigenous crops become central to the culture and survival of a community of people. The way that a community of people cultivates, stores and propagates that crop is an important part of conserving plant biodiversity.
"Wild foods" are important local crops. Wild foods are edible plants and animals that are not cultivated. Rural people will know the best places to find these foods and how to hunt and gather them. Wild foods are important during the off-season when there isn't much other fresh food available. Wild foods are also important during major stress periods such as droughts. And they are especially significant for women, children and others who struggle to make a living.
Program suggestions:
- One community or one family's relationship with a plant or animal over time.
- The origin, history and spread of important local crops, including grain crops, tree fruits, vegetables, and medicinal plants.
- Local crops used in religious rituals. How these rituals can play an important role in conserving plant biological diversity, especially if endangered plants are used.
- Indigenous methods of seed storage and how they contribute to the conservation of plant genetic resources.
Program Idea #6: Traditional food processing
Look around and everywhere you will see people processing food; food is being dried, crushed, milled, canned, bottled, cooked and sweetened. Food processing is a common way for rural people to earn their income. Often, in the way of many traditional technologies, the ideas and methods are passed down through the generations, from mother to daughter.
Because food processing is such an important part of rural life, it should be easy to find people who can talk about it on air. You can, for example:
- Interview a daughter about a recipe she learned from her mother or grandmother.
- Ask listeners to send in letters about ways they have found to make food processing easier and less labour intensive. Produce a program based on the letters you receive.
- Set up a panel discussion where participants compare the advantages and disadvantages of traditional vs. modern food processing methods.
- Interview a woman who earns a good living by adding value to a food product through food processing.
As much as possible, organize your programs in such a way that women and other local people can tell their stories on the radio in their own way and in their own words.
Program suggestions:
- Experimenting with local fruits to make jams and jellies.
- How to add value to food crops before marketing them.
- Local people develop labour-saving ways to process foods.
- Customary ways to store grains, fruits and vegetables, or roots and tubers in our community.
- Tools used to extract oil from oilseed crops.
