Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

Although Indigenous peoples have always used scientific principles to analyze and understand the world around them, it was not until the late 1960s that their perspectives began to be accepted within mainstream Western science. Because Indigenous science is not identical to Western science in its approach and because it originates with marginalized peoples, Western academics and scientists were long skeptical about its value. This gradually changed as more Indigenous people gained access to Western academic institutions. Indigenous scientists began speaking at conferences, organizing professional bodies, and writing scholarly texts. By 1975, the American Association for the Advancement of Science had passed a resolution recognizing the value of Indigenous science. As mainstream audiences became more accepting of Indigenous perspectives, popular texts based in Indigenous science also emerged. A frequent focus of these popular texts is environmental science—because Indigenous science has qualities particularly well-suited to this field of study and because of mainstream biases associating Indigenous peoples with the natural world and a growing desire to seek all possible solutions to the developing climate crisis.

Among the first to use Western academic credentials to promote an Indigenous perspective in science writing were Tewa professor Gregory Cajete and Lakota professor Vine Deloria, Jr. More recently, books like Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings (2023), by Anishinaabe author Wendy Makoons Geniusz and Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science (2022), by Maya Ch’orti and Binnizá-Zapotec writer Jessica Hernandez, have focused attention on the value of Indigenous perspectives in science, particularly in the area of environmental studies. Like Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss, Chickasaw author Linda Hogan’s Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World (1995) and The Radiant Lives of Animals (2020) use personal essays and the principles of Indigenous science to speak to a popular audience about humans’ relationship to the natural environment.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s career is focused on plant biology and environmental stewardship; she is among the most well-known scientists promoting Indigenous perspectives on caring for the environment. The approach that she uses in her work is called “TEK,” which stands for “Traditional Ecological Knowledge.” TEK combines empiricism with long-term observation and the Indigenous principle of relationship. Although the many hundreds of Indigenous nations around the world are not a cultural monolith, in general the “Indigenous” perspective in environmental science emphasizes participation with the environment rather than observation alone, and it places a greater value on intuition, sensation, emotion, and imagination than does Western science. As Cajete says in Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence, “Native science is a metaphor for a wide range of tribal processes of perceiving, thinking, acting, and ‘coming to know’ that have evolved through human experience with the natural world. Native science is born of a lived and storied participation with the natural landscape” (2). These qualities make Indigenous science particularly well-suited to the field of environmental studies and particularly adept at understanding environmental stewardship.