The Postulate of Indigenous-ness: A Report to the Academy on Conundrums of Global Totalization and Classification

Abstract

Critiques ethnography as a tool of power, erosion of language diversity, classification of "indigenous" and legal "rights" to information gathering and dissemination. Notes the rise of databases of traditional, "indigenous," and tribal knowledge as creating a conflict with the traditions of those who have had their knowledge put into both gated and open-web environments from the philosophical stance that these databases are critiqued as contradictory to the very knowledge types/formats of the peoples having their knowledge gathered. Explores, in tandem, the effects of colonizing ideologies associated with new standards of knowledge, knowledge organization and conformity of language.