A Biocultural Ethics Approach 59
sometimes voluntary and sometimes implemented through policies or within
regulatory frameworks. Since the 1960s and 1970s, professionally and within
many academic disciplines, ethical guidance has been formalized into codes of
ethics, codes of conduct or codes of practice that prescribe what one should and
should not “do” to be ethical.
A biocultural ethics approach draws particular attention to relational
dimensions and raises the question of how we should “be” with one another, as
pre-requisite to (and co-requisite with) the questions of what we should “do”
together or what we should “produce” together. The former question is particularly important amid a flurry of current interest in knowledge co-production,
a popularized term (Armitage et al., 2011; Norström et al., 2020; Reed et al.,
2014) referring to a collaborative process of bringing a plurality of knowledge
sources and types together to address a defined problem and build an integrated
or systems- oriented understanding of that problem (Armitage et al., 2011). However, knowledge co-production cannot be pursued without careful attention to
ethics of knowledge sharing, lest the co-production process unwittingly reproduces colonial structures and inequities that have historically misrepresented,
marginalized and misappropriated the knowledge of Indigenous peoples.
The question of how to “be” with one another is vital but often overlooked
in intercultural fields of inquiry, including settings where Western trained scientists, scholars and legal practitioners are seeking to collaborate with Indigenous
peoples to address cultural and ecological concerns and protect the biocultural
rights of Indigenous peoples. Biocultural ethics invites us to deepen our awareness and cultivate the capacities needed for understanding, creating and enacting ethical processes between and across different worldviews and traditions. In
contrast, too heavy reliance on rights-based mechanisms, instruments and tools
derived from a Western legal framework, along with a focus on Western notions
of ownership, may reproduce a colonial paradigm.
Cree scholar Dr. Greg Younging (2018) notes this phenomenon at work along
with a contemporary response by Indigenous peoples:
Cultural rights are part of contemporary Indigenous cultural realities.
Understanding these rights, including how they evolved, is key to working
in a culturally appropriate and respectful way. Indigenous Peoples think of
Creation as something that includes and sustains all living things. People
are part of it and responsible for caring for it. The question of “who owns
it” has no context.
By contrast, “who owns it” preoccupies European notions of the world.
[…] If something isn’t “owned” – air, for example – European notions
consider it either free for the taking (mostly without value) or not yet
owned. Indigenous Peoples have formulated a new idea of ownership –
Indigenous cultural property – to assert their place in a post-contact world
of owned things.
(Younging, 2018, p. 25)
sometimes voluntary and sometimes implemented through policies or within
regulatory frameworks. Since the 1960s and 1970s, professionally and within
many academic disciplines, ethical guidance has been formalized into codes of
ethics, codes of conduct or codes of practice that prescribe what one should and
should not “do” to be ethical.
A biocultural ethics approach draws particular attention to relational
dimensions and raises the question of how we should “be” with one another, as
pre-requisite to (and co-requisite with) the questions of what we should “do”
together or what we should “produce” together. The former question is particularly important amid a flurry of current interest in knowledge co-production,
a popularized term (Armitage et al., 2011; Norström et al., 2020; Reed et al.,
2014) referring to a collaborative process of bringing a plurality of knowledge
sources and types together to address a defined problem and build an integrated
or systems- oriented understanding of that problem (Armitage et al., 2011). However, knowledge co-production cannot be pursued without careful attention to
ethics of knowledge sharing, lest the co-production process unwittingly reproduces colonial structures and inequities that have historically misrepresented,
marginalized and misappropriated the knowledge of Indigenous peoples.
The question of how to “be” with one another is vital but often overlooked
in intercultural fields of inquiry, including settings where Western trained scientists, scholars and legal practitioners are seeking to collaborate with Indigenous
peoples to address cultural and ecological concerns and protect the biocultural
rights of Indigenous peoples. Biocultural ethics invites us to deepen our awareness and cultivate the capacities needed for understanding, creating and enacting ethical processes between and across different worldviews and traditions. In
contrast, too heavy reliance on rights-based mechanisms, instruments and tools
derived from a Western legal framework, along with a focus on Western notions
of ownership, may reproduce a colonial paradigm.
Cree scholar Dr. Greg Younging (2018) notes this phenomenon at work along
with a contemporary response by Indigenous peoples:
Cultural rights are part of contemporary Indigenous cultural realities.
Understanding these rights, including how they evolved, is key to working
in a culturally appropriate and respectful way. Indigenous Peoples think of
Creation as something that includes and sustains all living things. People
are part of it and responsible for caring for it. The question of “who owns
it” has no context.
By contrast, “who owns it” preoccupies European notions of the world.
[…] If something isn’t “owned” – air, for example – European notions
consider it either free for the taking (mostly without value) or not yet
owned. Indigenous Peoples have formulated a new idea of ownership –
Indigenous cultural property – to assert their place in a post-contact world
of owned things.
(Younging, 2018, p. 25)