By beth duncan | Program Manager
The Worldwide Indigenous Science Network (WISN) has for the past 26 years worked to bring together the two ways of knowing—Indigenous Science and Western Science.
“Earth Wisdom and Change” guides our activities in our overall mission of creating global healing for humanity and its relationship to embodied knowledge. In accordance with the issues and with respect to the forces of Mother Earth, we conduct cutting-edge research using our innovative indigenous science approaches and protocols. In all of the actions and programs, we strive to promote respect, understanding and empowerment that comes from knowing our true identities and relation to life in all of its forms. This includes our work with the Big Cats and the Global Alliance for Big Cat Conservation.
In the last quarter of 2015, we worked closely with the Snow Leopard Conservancy to develop a methodologies matrix that demonstrates how these two ways of knowing can and should work together to create mutual understanding and respect. As far as we know, it is the first matrix of measures and indicators of its kind, and we believe it is critical to understanding how bridging the wisdom of the indigenous elders, big cat shamans, and Western conservationists can effectively (and qualitatively) work together.
As a result of our work this last quarter and along with our partners at the Snow Leopard Conservancy, we have received a grant from a large organization that specifically promotes big cat conservation. Together with the funding we have received from your generous donations, we will begin Phase II of the Central Asian Snow Leopard work (networking indigenous elders from Central Asia and conservationists) and we will continue our work with Jaguar shamans in South America, bringing together Jaguar shamans from the rainforest of Brazil and from Oaxaca, Mexico in January to discuss next phases of our work together.
Stay tuned! We will have photographs and and an update of these meetings to share with you in our next report.
And as always, we are IMMENSELY grateful for your ongoing support to help preserve these sacred apex predators! We wish you all a very happy, healthy, safe new year!
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