Extracting indigenous knowledge changes nothing in the extractors’ worldview

Evidence

World Bank assistance comes at the request of governments. These stories prepare us to take a critical stance toward such “assistance.” Within that framework, we should remind ourselves that the preparation of “technical papers” that will extract methods from so-called “indigenous knowledge” will not be accompanied by any change of mindset in the researchers. By contrast, we draw out from literary and social texts some impossible yet necessary project of changing the minds that innocently support a vicious system. That is what “learning from below” means here. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2207

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends her strategic-essentialism critique trajectory: the World Bank instrumentalizes ‘indigenous knowledge’ as a fixed appropriation without the self-deconstructing stance she demands. — connects to: Ecojustice educators must honor indigenous knowledges without appropriating or speaking for them — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1568; Indigenous oral records can span centuries beyond Western scientific statistics — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1615; Indigenous land-as-gift and settler land-as-property are irreconcilable worldviews — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 70 (+1 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: the World Bank’s own 1992 report excerpted at 2206 as exhibit of how institutions co-opt authentic subaltern knowledge while refusing the ethical singularity that would change them.