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Warren Mirko: Indigenous ways of knowing? You wouldn't understand

Through UNDRIP, Canada endorses “Indigenous Knowledge” as inherited and rooted in ancestral relationships to the land

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Canada is rapidly abandoning a principle that has shaped western democracies since the Enlightenment: the idea that no person or group has privileged access to sacred or divine knowledge unavailable to everyone else.

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Now, this principle is being threatened by Canada’s increasing embrace of “Indigenous Knowledge”— whereby knowledge is treated as collectively owned and restricted by ancestry rather than something open to examination and shared across society.

Warren Mirko: Indigenous ways of knowing? You wouldn't understand Back to video

The governments of British Columbia and Canada — both of which have formally adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) — endorse “Indigenous Knowledge” as inherited, rooted in ancestral relationships to the land, and encompassing spiritual, cultural and metaphysical dimensions passed down through generations.

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