Does Citizen Science Make Sense When Co-Producing Knowledge with Indigenous Peoples?

• In Event: Citizen Science, Law and Policy - II

Abstract

Territorial mapping and environmental monitoring are scientific tasks of great interest for most indigenous peoples worldwide given the many external pressures looming over their territories. Many indigenous communities have therefore engaged in such tasks under participatory schemes led by scientists. Despite the use of increasingly accurate technologies in these scientific endeavors, indigenous participation has significantly improved mapping and monitoring results owing to leveraging their situated knowledge. One could argue that this specific alliance between scientists and indigenous communities to co-produce environmental and territorial knowledge can be regarded as citizen science. Here I claim, however, that the use of this term in the context of indigenous people is problematic. First, the current two strands of the citizen science literature do not seem representative in this case (neither in the natural sciences, where it is conducted by volunteers—mostly white middle-class environmentalists—nor in the social sciences—concerned with activists and ethnic minorities subject to environmental racism who seek health justice). Second, the very term of “citizen” is problematic in the case of indigenous peoples who are often invisible or bluntly a burden to the state and corporations. And third, the majority of the citizen science literature refers to projects conducted in the Global North, whereas most indigenous peoples live in the Global South. Reflecting from my own experience mapping and monitoring with indigenous peoples in Latin America, I suggest the need to theorize on citizen science from epistemologies of the South to revalue the natures, knowledges and peoples of indigenous nations.

Author

• Jaime Paneque-Gálvez