Languages
Indigenous languages are indispensable for the transmission of ecosystem-specific knowledge. Ecosystem-specific knowledge is a prerequisite for the sustainable existence of humans within an ecosystem.
Languages endemic, or native, to the land of their origin are indicative of the inhabitation of Indigenous peoples and the presence of healthy ecosystems.
Language diversity signifies cultural diversity; cultural diversity is a determinant of putative biodiversity.
In general, where you find language diversity, you find cultural diversity, and where you find cultural diversity you find ecological health; insofar as that diversity is related to indigenous culture and language.
The greater the biotic and a biotic variation that exists within a biome landscape and its ecosystem sub-structures, the more cultural and linguistic diversity is needed to comprehend and sustain the natural ecology of the area. Increased natural diversity requires a corresponding increase in cultural diversity for intelligent maintenance of the land by humans.
Earth-based languages develop and change, forming variant dialects and budding into new languages over large expanses of land. They evolve in form and structure, adapting to fit new ecosystems where indigenous populations expand into them; indigenous people both encompass, and are encompassed by, the ecosystems they inhabit.
New language derivatives arise to reflect characteristics of the ecosystem of habitation, resulting in the emergence of vocabulary descriptive of the environment. A culture is modified by novel vocabulary, and through introduction of ecological concepts conducive to comprehension and interaction within new inhabited ecosystems.
Earth based people change and adapt to fit the natural character of the land; they are molded by the characteristics of the landscape. New tribal identities form where the shift of ecosystem characteristics is dramatic or discontinuous from that of former habitations. Small environmental adaptations evolve rapidly and may form new dialects or cultural variants within a mother culture. Radical shifts, as between biome climates, transform culture fundamentally and irreversibly; critical adaptations occur over long spans of time and lead to the generation of new languages.
The land remakes Earth-based cultures according its own image, over time, regardless of cultural origins; this, so long as they remain Earth-based ecosystem oriented peoples. As the land changes, the people change. According to the “concept of symbiotic conservation”, as stated by B. Nietschmann, "biological and cultural diversity are mutually dependent and geographically coterminous".
Indigenous cultures are modified by the nature of their environments; indigenous cultures are ecological cultures; indigenous languages are ecological languages. Indigenous cultures understand and steward their natural homelands with astonishing scientific expertise. Indigenous languages are powerfully specialized for this task. They describe phenomenon and ecological features not observed or described by languages external to the culture. They are considered “sacred languages” by their native speakers; they necessarily contain a ‘spiritual component’, and are intrinsic to the native Cosmos or ‘Universe of Creation imbued with a sacred essence and mystic quality’.
Indigenous cultures contain specialized knowledge of herbs and healing techniques which are kept by professionals inside the culture. This knowledge may be conveyed in speech which ordinary tribal members cannot recognize or understand due to its high degree of specialization; hence indigenous cultures are known to keep and nurture complex sciences.
They are the world’s first pharmacists, agriculturalists, botanists, ecologists, and confederated, communal democratic societies. They are the original educators and instructors of ancient and modern civilizations. Indigenous societies continue to supply scientists with innovative insight, information, and novel theory; some of this knowledge spurs new waves of scientific advance and generates breakthroughs in our understanding of how the world works.
Occasionally, indigenous knowledge leads to the creation of new scientific fields. In some areas of scientific understanding, indigenous knowledge far surpasses that so far developed by modern sciences. In addition to widely accepted genius of native ecological science, for instance: Indigenous cultures possess a synchronistic system of utilization of nature and spirituality that is only dimly understood.
The holistic approach of indigenous culture combines aspects of religion, medicine and botany, social organization, natural landscapes, psychology and ecology in a formula little understood by the non-indigenous world. Each of these aspects is brought into play at once, in varying degrees and measures, depending on the circumstances of particular situations; and who and what is involved in the situation at a given time.
Never are any of the underpinning elements of life, separated, divorced, or ignored, from the whole of ordinary life. They are constructively organized, sometimes playfully, at other times seriously, to achieve a desired affect. The means of employment, coordination and concentration of each factor, is skillfully assessed and handled by given individuals, or collective groupings of individuals, to ensure health and harmony within the entire cosmos. All of life and everything within it is tightly interwoven; the relationships between all people and all things cannot be broken; as they are implicate reality.
A beneficial effect must by considered for each and all of the inherent aspects that constitute human and natural life; for each affects all, and the totality of all affects each; the universe must be approached with wisdom for humanity and the natural world to survive and prosper. Indiscriminate action is dangerous; life must be lived carefully; with consideration for all living things.
The power, efficiency, and practicality of holistic indigenous sciences are the most valuable knowledge system of the ancient world, and the one which has been given the least emphasis in terms of research and application by modern science. It is yet futuristic (too far ahead of its time), and far too complex for science to competently fathom, investigate or effectively utilize currently. The modern world lacks an effective language framework and verbal structuring to adequately convey or engage holistic indigenous concepts.
This holistic system of science might be conceived as magic, sorcery or quackery to one lacking in language or education, in the same way chemistry might be similarly confused to one ignorant of it. The power to drive ecosystem health, wildlife abundance, crop productivity; to restore and heal individual and group psychology, and administer herbal medical remedies; all at once, applies a synergistic methodology unknown to modern science.
The results are group cohesion or community integration, enforcement of social mores and positive behavior, emotional health and psychological well-being, and promotion of valuable ecological interactions which themselves communicate mystical perceptions of the natural relationships of things. Herbal chemistry, related to the purpose of the event, may or may not be for causes of physical healing; herbs and natural elements are used in a wide variety of ways.
These synergistic events are education that instructs through usage. “Nature is our classroom, the Earth is our school, the Life-giver our teacher.” The practical application of indigenous sciences occurs in the everyday communal life of the people applying it. The open communication system of indigenous peoples, through indigenous languages, allows for shared observation, entailing group participation in trial and evaluation phases of ecological restoration and viability enhancement. As a result, community education systems are informal, collective, and continuous. Scientists define this socio-ecological research, development and application of indigenous science as panarchy theory; the study of it in the western world is called ethno-ecology. Indigenous sciences regarding soil management systems are termed ethno-pedology. Modern science has only recently realized that such sciences exist in the indigenous world; the more that we discover, the clearer grows our comprehension of the value of their systems, and the greater the modern scientific investment of resources that are subsequently expended in bettering our knowledge of native language and sciences.
The achievement of integrative health in the environment, the nuclear family and community, have so far received little serious commitment by modern society; the notion of a unifying principal which optimizes ultimate gain for each constituent component through assessment of the holistic totality at once, remains vague and premature in the western mind. Yet this coordinated system forms the bedrock of Indigenous society and culture; and ‘elemental basics’, the roots that feed the whole system, dominate intellectual prioritization. Maintenance of the basic valuable elements of ecosystems and social cohesiveness are experienced, emotionally, as the crux societal achievement. Alternative systems, which devalue the fundamental elements of life, are positively incompressible, meaningless and of no intrinsic value in the indigenous concept. It can be said that ‘more’ is gained of little, in systems of native calculation. Indeed, Indigenous cultures yield the larger, longest lasting fruits though they be the very smallest trees anywhere found. Indigenous language is the seed of those fruits; without it, the trees will grow barren. Language makes the world revolve in the way it does only for the culture that speaks of the world as a circle.
The dominant Indo-European languages are preoccupied with analysis, objectification, and noun fixation. They have certain value, but fail attempts to adequately capture movement, transition, qualification, and interrelationship; they prove frail as means of entry into paradigms of non-materialistic phenomenon. Indigenous languages have been observed to have adept advantage of function (over Indo-European languages) when dealing with complex scientific fields such as quantum physics and relativity theory. Indigenous languages are also better fit for communicating spiritual and mystical realms of activity.
Language information excerpted or paraphrased from the CBD report14:
An overview of the present condition and endangerment of indigenous languages
Of the nearly 7000 extant languages in the world today, about 96 per cent them are spoken by only 3 per cent of the world’s people. The vast majority of these languages are spoken by Indigenous communities. “More than half of the world’s languages are spoken by less than 10,000 people. According to the most pessimistic predictions, the world may lose 90 per cent of languages until the end of this century”.
Relation of the indicator to the focal areaCulture and language define the societal identities of human beings. We are identified by our language, and the religions, customs, values and world views to which we subscribe. “Knowledge, customs and beliefs thus vary for social reasons. But they are also dependent on specific environmental conditions that people have adapted to - what we eat, how food is preserved, the rhythms of work (when there is light; patterns of cold and warm, winter and summer, rainy and dry seasons), etc. - all depend on where we happen to live.” “What we say is adapted to our biological and social environments; we talk about what is important to us. Different languages have developed distinct vocabularies to express those differences that are important to their speakers. One would not expect to find dozens of words for different types of snow or reindeer in the languages spoken in the Sahara desert, or scores of words for different types of sand and camels in the languages of the far North. In this sense, languages have been called “the DNA of cultures”—they have encoded the cultural knowledge that people have inherited from their ancestors, and each generation continues to add to this heritage. Traditional knowledge, innovations and practices concerning the living environment are transmitted and maintained largely, if not exclusively, through language. Specialist environmental knowledge is associated with specific vocabulary, for which there is frequently no equivalent in other languages. Linguists point to various levels at which language loss can and does affect the maintenance of traditional environmental knowledge and it is commonly agreed that the structural and functional processes of language loss are correlated with the deterioration of traditional knowledge, innovations and practices.”
General Description
“52 per cent (of human languages) are spoken by less than 10,000 people; 28 per cent by less than 1,000; and 10 per cent are spoken by less than 100 speakers. Overall, languages with 10,000 speakers or under total about 8 million people, less than 0.2 per cent of an estimated world population of 6 billion.
About 97 per cent of the world’s people are native speakers of about 4 per cent of the world’s languages; and conversely, about 96 per cent of the world’s languages are spoken by about 3 per cent of the world’s people.
Indigenous and local communities speak the vast majority of the world’s languages, 90 per cent of which are not represented on the Internet. Half of all languages occur in only eight countries: Papua New Guinea (832), Indonesia (731), Nigeria (515), India (398), Mexico (295), Cameroon (286), Australia (268) and Brazil (234). At least 50 per cent of the world’s languages are losing speakers.”
“Virtually all languages with 1,000 speakers or under are threatened... Among these smaller languages, many have reached a stage of near extinction, with only a few elderly speakers left. Statistics on “nearly extinct” languages range between 6 and 11 per cent of the currently spoken languages.
The loss of languages has been especially marked in the Americas and the Pacific. Of Australia's 250 languages, with at least 600 dialects, at least 50 languages are now extinct and another 100 face imminent extinction. In the early 1990s, only nine had more than 1,000 speakers. In the United States and Canada, the situation is equally grave. Ethnologies lists 417 nearly extinct languages as of the year 2000 - that is, languages with only a few elderly speakers still alive. This means that these languages are no longer being transmitted to the younger generations and thus, as the older generations pass on, the languages will cease to be spoken.
Of these “nearly extinct” languages, 161 are spoken in the Americas (particularly the United States of America) and 157 in the Pacific (principally Australia). Asia has 55 “nearly extinct” languages, Africa 37, and Europe seven. These numbers for “nearly extinct” languages may seem small, but linguists warn that they only represent the tip of the iceberg. Many more languages are considered “endangered”, showing signs that their speakers are beginning to switch to other languages, and that younger generations are no longer learning the language of their elders.
Some scholars' prognosis is that even as many as 90 per cent of existing spoken languages may be extinct or near extinction by the end of this century.
The growing recognition of the scope and implications of the linguistic diversity crisis parallels the process that earlier led to the recognition of the biodiversity crisis. But in addition, ... there is also an increasing realization that biological diversity and cultural and linguistic diversity are not separate aspects of the diversity of life, but rather intimately related, and indeed, mutually supporting ones. Likewise, the extinction crises that are affecting these manifestations of the diversity of life may be converging also -due to common economic, political, and social factors -and perhaps even driving each other on.
This is especially the case with indigenous and minority communities that live close to the natural environment and depend on it for subsistence. They rely directly on it for food, medicine, construction materials and other products essential for their subsistence (through farming, herding, hunting, fishing, or gathering foodstuffs), as well as for their cultural and spiritual needs.
Over time, these communities have through such activities developed in-depth knowledge of local ecosystems. They have adapted to them while at the same time learning to use and manage them to fulfill their needs. These societies have also elaborated complex classification systems for the natural world, reflecting a deep understanding of local flora, fauna, ecological relations and ecosystem dynamics.
Anthropologists call this traditional ecological knowledge... In many cases, indigenous and traditional knowledge has been found to be more sophisticated than Western science, and it precedes other sources of knowledge, such as scientists’ findings. Ironically, the knowledge that was embedded in the smaller languages sometimes gets “rediscovered” by outsiders. When young people no longer learn the language of their forebears, or know it only partially, the special knowledge incorporated in their languages is often not transferred to the dominant language that replaces it. Commonly, this is because the dominant language does not have the vocabulary for this special knowledge, or even because the very situations in which this kind of knowledge and its relevance for survival are learned do not occur in the dominant culture whose language indigenous or minority people adopt.
This occurs especially where the earlier informal family and community-based education is replaced by formal education. For example, Maya youths in the Highlands of Chiapas now get most of their education formally in schools. But textbooks do not teach them about the medicinal plants found in the local environment, which earlier generations have been using effectively for a long time to treat illness. Much of this knowledge is thus not being transmitted in the course of daily life. Many younger people do not learn the names, characteristics, and uses of such plants, which would constitute readily available and reliable medicinal resources. Instead, they have to resort to the generally poorer medical care they can obtain from the “modern” medical system.
Although it has not been uncommon for indigenous peoples to gradually move away from their low-impact technologies, as they have experienced heavy exploitation of and encroachment upon their territories, communities still strive to continue documenting and transmitting elders' knowledge to succeeding generations. The very existence of traditional ecological knowledge depends not only on databases, knowledge centers or research publications, but also on the possibility to use and develop it through traditional livelihood practices and traditional management systems.”
