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15 - Indigenous Storytelling and Climate Change Adaptation

from Part III - Global Change and Indigenous Responses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

By
Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares  and
Mar Cabeza
Edited by
Marie Roué ,
Douglas Nakashima  and
Igor Krupnik
Marie Roué
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
Douglas Nakashima
Affiliation:
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), France
Igor Krupnik
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
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Summary

Storytelling among indigenous peoples is central to the intergenerational transmission of indigenous and local knowledge (ILK), allowing for human adaptation to new social-ecological contexts. However, little attention has been paid to the potential applications of storytelling in guiding climate change adaptation efforts. In this chapter, we present a number of case studies from all over the world in which indigenous stories and traditional oral narratives have been applied to inform culturally sensitive climate change adaptation strategies. We contend that greater consideration of indigenous ontologies, as transmitted through storytelling, can contribute towards making climate change communication and adaptation more acceptable to local communities, facilitating intercultural discussions and bridging worldviews. Our chapter shows that attention to and promotion of indigenous storytelling can lead to enhanced understanding of diverse values and perceptions around climate change, hence allowing climate change adaptation strategies to become tailored to the local contexts where they are implemented.

Keywords

biocultural heritageIndigenous Knowledgeintergenerational transmissionoral historysense of placesocial-ecological resiliencestorytelling
Type
Chapter
Information
Resilience through Knowledge Co-Production
Indigenous Knowledge, Science, and Global Environmental Change
 , pp. 247 - 260
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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