documenting Indigenous knowledge on iNaturalist & the power of names
hi all!
this journal is long overdue, but i thought i'd keep an updated list of various languages i've been slowly but surely adding to the iNaturalist database. most languages i add are in danger due to colonialism & the genocide & systematic language death that comes with it. sometimes these languages are extinct. sometimes they have tens of thousands of speakers but are still gatekept out of science. i have a firm stance that Indigenous knowledge should be held over Western natural science. sure, Western natural science is applicable to the species that have been native to western Europe for thousands of years, but it should stop there. while i understand how important scientific taxonomy is to the branch of science iNaturalist is concerned with, adding Indigenous names is something i can do to stress the importance of Indigenous knowledge!
some languages i've been working on:
. a wide variety of Indigenous Californian languages & how fungi plays into their lexicon
. Alabama
. Nāhuatl
. Ainu
. Kwéyòl (Saint Lucian Creole)
