School for Indigenous and Local Knowledge
“We cannot conserve what we do not understand”
“In the end, we will conserve only what we love we will love only what we understand we will understand only what we are taught” — Baba Dioum
- policy makers
- donors
- researchers
- students
- NGOs
- Baka people
To achieve these goals, the three-pronged objectives of the program will be:
Provide community members with the practical skills and technical knowledge needed in the fields of cultural documentation, which would enable them to record, archive and manage access to their own cultural heritage.
Set up a documentation center equipped with low-cost, low-energy use computers powered by solar energy, where the community can access print and digital material. This will populate an existing museum structure with traditional musical instruments, tools, basketwork, and posters relating to traditional practices that serve as vehicles for culture.
Enable exchanges with other Baka villages, to widen the pool of elders who can equip youth with skills and tek through traditional modes of transmission
Inform people about the SILK project
- define need for the project and background
- create awareness about the Baka
- share Baka knowledge and links with ecology and conservation
- explore role of the Baka in managing forests
- include Baka in forestry research and conservation
- Baka traditional ecological knowledge
- Education resources and lesson plans
- Icons arranged in a honeycomb
- click on with photo on icon
- Forest Foods / Food Security & traditional ecological knowledge
- Medicinal plants / Health & traditional ecological knowledge
- Plant-animal interactions / conservation & traditional ecological knowledge
- Specialized Baka Vocab / Language & traditional ecological knowledge
- Cultural Heritage / Music, dance, stories, cosmology / ICH
- Baka-Eng-French dictionary
- Movies, music, stories
- Lesson plans
- Forest foods
- mushrooms,
- insects
- plants
- Medicinal plants
- Plant - Animal interactions – frugivory and seed dispersal
- Animal life histories and behavior
- Documentation methods
- ethnobiology
- TEK and IPR, Ethics
- Field course for Baka Youth at Bouamir Research Station
- Activities and events in village
- Collaborative research on animal-dispersed tree Phenology, FFA