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The Cooperative Innovation System Modernized people often view indigenous knowledge as myth based on ignorance, compounded and fused to oddly simplistic survival strategies. “What could they teach us anyway, to dig in the dirt with a stick?!”, objects the uneducated thought of multitudes. In this light, indigenous knowledge is a backward, unproductive knowledge, harkening back to the stone age; a knowledge, impractical, ill-fit, and outmoded in modern times. The extinction of indigenous knowledge is, therefore, considered an unavoidable consequence of the emergence of ‘true sciences’. “Inconsistent and incompatible with competitive truth, the indigenous world is unequipped and ultimately incapable of withstanding the test of hierarchical scrutiny in a new age of wisdom”, such thinking declares. “Be that fate poignant or not, primitive thought must be exchanged for sophisticated technological progress; and the process of eradication is, itself, supporting evidence that a great new age of enlightenment has now dawned”, according to such preconceptions. (quoted ideas are concocted, they have no author other than myself, and only serve to illustrate general misconceptions.) This is an extraordinarily dangerous view. Eighty percent of the world's people continue to rely upon indigenous knowledge for their medical needs. At least half, and possibly two thirds, of the world's people could not survive without the foods provided through indigenous knowledge of plants, animals, insects, microbes, and farming systems. To an extent that will astonish most readers, indigenous knowledge continues to be a major source of innovation and development in both agriculture and pharmaceuticals in developed countries, and its role in other forms of industrial production can be expected to increase substantially in the decades ahead. Indigenous knowledge fuels multi-billion dollar genetics supply industries, ranging from food and pharmaceuticals to chemicals, paper products, energy, and other manufactures. Integrating Two Systems of Innovation The cooperative innovation system of indigenous communities can be seen as a mirror image of the institutional innovation system. As a fair simplification, it can be said that the institutional system offers humanity micro-system developments that find application on a macro-scale. Highly specific improvements in molecular biology or micro-electronics may have vast commercial application. The cooperative system, on the other hand, offers broad macro-system innovations that generally can only be applied at the micro-level, i.e., the local environment. Indigenous knowledge often involves the use of complex big-systems integrating plants, insects, and soil, for example, in a common strategy. Because of this micro-macro mix, in which each kind of knowledge makes a unique contribution, there is a great need for the continued availability of indigenous knowledge. The more we come to understand the complexity of the eco-system, the more we recognize that the huge global problems that surround use atmospheric pollution, soil erosion, species loss, malnutrition, and poverty will not be resolved through UN resolutions or through sweeping new technological "silver bullets." Both sides of the mirror are needed. The micro-innovations of the institutional system are in no way denigrated by recognition of the contribution of the macro-innovations of indigenous communities. The real challenge for science and technology in the decades ahead is to find mechanisms to allow these two separate, but highly complementary systems, to work together. The challenge for the cooperative system is to recognize the potential merits of the other side. The key to cooperation may rest in the development of a framework that will safeguard the intellectual integrity but not necessarily the intellectual property of indigenous innovators. Such a framework must involve organization, public information, certain institutional mechanisms, and the development of a new covenant to guide the relationship of public and private researchers and of cooperative and institutional system innovators.

There are approximately 15,000 culturally distinct ethnic communities in the world today and, while the diversity to be found among these cultures is both marvelous and extraordinary, most indigenous peoples share a sense of communal responsibility for their land and its living resources. It is rare to find a deeply rooted culture that permits a patent-like monopoly over the products or processes of life. It is largely because of this communal tradition that many indigenous peoples look upon intellectual property especially related to life forms as a kind of blasphemy.

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