In January 2023, an Insight Report appeared on the World Economic Forum website called ‘Embedding Indigenous Knowledge in the Conservation and Restoration of Landscapes’. The report was in collaboration with Deloitte and it sought to prioritise “the voice of nature and those Indigenous peoples who have spoken for it for millennia” (p4). It refers primarily to the Indigenous Knowledge Systems of Australia.
My respect for the Indigenous people of Australia did not come lightly. Twenty years ago, while consulting on-site for Argyle Diamond Mine, I was startled to hear what seemed to be the voice of the Mountain informing me that the land being mined was sacred. As a Yale-trained scientist, it was a difficult moment that I managed to force into the realm of ‘I did not actually hear that’. For a while at least. To cut a long story short, a three-year process of severe cognitive decline followed during which time I had to choose between Indigenous and Western psychological solutions to my problem. The mainstream solution involved a great deal of medication; the African solution (I had scuttled back to Africa after my experience) was to learn how to divine through an Indigenous Southern African training process that continues to this day.
Before I go further, let me respond to the Acknowledgement of Country in the upfront section of the report. I acknowledge the Indigenous Elder who welcomed me as a reader, Deen Sanders. Marrungbu – Thank you. I am from Africa, though I am a descendant of settler colonials and my ancestors descended from the Celts in Scotland and England. The lineage that accepted and trained me is that of Vondo which forms part of the Southern African tradition of Ngoma, which means ‘song’, ‘ritual’ or drum’. I offer my thoughts as a contribution and I believe that we both stand on the side of beauty.
I agree with and honour so many of the concepts shared in this report, including ideas such as ‘relational obligation’, ‘multigenerational responsibility’ and ‘fractal scalability’; the context is clear; and it is a compelling read. Yet I find myself wondering: Is it truly possible to prioritise the voice of nature and Indigenous people in this way?
I am not an IK expert; I am simply a practitioner who has no blood ties to the knowledge, but who walks the land and has remained in mentorship for more than two decades. My submission concerns not the content but rather the entire proposition and form of the report, which flies in the face of what virtually every Indigenous Knowledge holder and serious student knows: it is exceptionally difficult for someone trained in the North Atlantic paradigm to hear and act with integrity when they seek to apply or “include” Indigenous Knowledge. Indigenous Knowledge cannot be “embedded” by a WEF report; my concern is that is also risks being used as currency or paraded in the hope of capturing the attention of a society bereft of options that feel real.
The five-point action framework aligns with the consulting industry’s need for simple linear steps. In my view, investors can memorise, follow, celebrate, roll up and smoke it. The potential for those five steps to be “authentically embedded across the project lifecycle” is close to zero. Let’s pray that an ‘Indigenous Inside’ project certification scheme does not surface in the next few years.
How might we seek to “moderate or modify the reporting requirements attached to investment funding” when the framework is controlled by a paradigm that does not recognise spirits? Say, for example, I had wanted to add into my audit report for Argyle that the mountain told me that the diamond mine was on a sacred site. Where would I have put it? How might I have written it? Would there have been ears to hear? Twenty years later, are we likely to hear any better? Admittedly we are only asking investors to consider Indigenous Knowledge in the conservation and restoration of landscapes, not in how their investments destroy them in the first place. So that might be a little easier to get right.
After Argyle was sold to Rio Tinto in 2002 (enough said), I learnt that the local community began holding ‘Welcome’ ceremonies for visitors as part of a renegotiated agreement with the traditional owners. There is clearly politics around Welcome ceremonies as anthropologist Francesca Merlan suggests and which I don’t understand, but I for one would have been happy to be smoked and washed if it might have avoided a cognitive shutdown. Do you think it would have worked? Not according to my traditional mentor who told me straight that “We do not get to wash away the desecration of a sacred site”.
I was lucky to live in South Africa where remnants of the old cures for affliction by spirits still exist. I know that those who taught me would have great trouble imagining that Indigenous Knowledge can be authentically embedded in investment life cycles. Twenty years since I heard the mountain talk, I’m starting to explore the possibility of applying what I learnt in the organisational sustainability field. Even now, my ability to do this with integrity remains tenuous.
For too many of us, at Swiss mountain retreats or sweaty site-meetings, a momentary openness to Indigenous Knowledge gives way to cynicism and expedience. I wonder whether reports like these will validate the belief that, “At least we gave it our best shot”.
As the WEF report states, “the transactional process for exchanging knowledge that is commonly accepted within business, philanthropic and government systems is not fit-for-purpose when it comes to respecting Indigenous Knowledge systems”. The problem lies in Western knowledge systems that have all but destroyed indigenous science, along with indigenous law, politics, religions and above all economics.
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Post script: This was one of my first posts on LinkedIn and the first time I’ve ever shared my views on Indigenous Knowledge. Within an hour of posting, an American who calls himself “The Organisational Justice Guy!” accused me of being paid by De Beers to oppose Indigenous Knowledge, and reminded me that my ancestors brutally destroyed IK and that “to equate IK with primitivism is racist at its core”. Just for the record, I was not paid by De Beers to make this post. I would have thought that was obvious. I am grateful for the guidance of Dave Snowden who explained that using irony on public platforms carries the risk of being badly misunderstood. Neither Dave nor I could continue our engagement with The Organisational Justice Guy because we were blocked. I have since improved my understanding of how to write on public platforms and would probably write this differently were I to do it again; my views on the need to engage and the difficulty of applying Indigenous Knowledge in the context of modern organisations, including investment, remain unchanged.
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Banner picture a composite of a screenshot from the cover of WEF Deloitte’s (2023) report and an image of Argyle Diamond Mine from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:00_2192_Argyle_Diamond_Mine_-_Australien.jpg which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0.