TEK and Western Science

Traditional Ecological Knowledge & Western Science/Scientific Ecological Knowledge

TEK has become a popular concept within the natural and social sciences. Often it has been used as a way to compare the ecological knowledges held by Indigenous peoples that have been passed down from generation to generation, to the ecological knowledges offered by scientific studies, whose findings are created through western methods of research. However, Indigenous scholars have adamantly rejected this simplistic dichotomy, positing multiple areas of overlap between the two forms of knowledge.

*Concepts in this diagram sourced from Barnhardt & Kawagley (2005), Bussey et al. (2016), Kimmerer (2012), McGregor (2005), Stephens (2001), and Whyte (2013)