 Right, I think we'll make a start now. Welcome back everyone, really nice to see you all again. And this is the fourth and the final webinar in the series of the IEDQ workshop on Indigenous People's Food Systems, Biocultural Heritage and the Sustainable Development Goals. Great, so this final webinar is focusing on exploring research methods, interdisciplinary methods and decolonising methods for research on Indigenous People's Food Systems. So we've had a very rich discussion in the last three webinars, we've heard from many Indigenous experts, and I would like to start by highlighting some of the key points that have been made, particularly relating to the priorities for research. So we've heard that Indigenous People's Food Systems and Biocultural Heritage are fundamental for Indigenous People's Food Sovereignty, identity, spirituality, health and wellbeing, and for everyday life. And that's, we heard that they also play a significant role in the transition to sustainable food systems and can make important contributions to economic national economies, as we heard yesterday from Hindu Ibrahim, a pastoralist from Chad. I think a key message I've got also is that there's a really strong urgency. The Indigenous Food Systems face many threats, traditional knowledge is disappearing very fast, and research must focus on these threats and challenges and not only on the Indigenous Food Systems themselves. The threats include restrictions on forest use and resource use, a spread of modern agriculture and modernisation of cultures and inappropriate economic development and also education, Western education systems. The second message that I got from yesterday is the critical need to do more research on Indigenous People's Land Rights. As Hindu Ibrahim explained, most land belongs to governments and land that is vital for pastoralists is being sold off to sedentary people and that is a massive threat to their Indigenous food system. We heard also from the representative from the Arctic region of Russia, that the introduction of industrial development has almost destroyed their traditional way of life. And that traditional food culture of hunting and fishing is very close to nature and that that diet is actually essential for survival in that harsh climate. And that in response to the challenges of climate change, and they must return to their Indigenous food system, and for this they need to preserve the land. And we learnt that for hunter-gatherers in tropical rainforests who are mobile, egalitarian, very culturally diverse, they are also facing many threats from economic expansion and from protected areas. We also heard from the academic side that land rights is an issue which is under-researched. We heard from Hindu Ibrahim that Indigenous People's don't call it food security, they call it food sovereignty. And this is a priority for research as well, as food sovereignty is essential to sustain Indigenous knowledge systems. And also she emphasised that maintaining seven generations' thinking is really important, not only in Chad but we also heard that Indigenous People's in China have this seven generation thinking. Hindu also stressed the need to get traditional knowledge respected on the same level as science. And we heard from FAO that traditional knowledge contains ancestral wisdom, whereas often science is just information. Frank Roy stressed the need to gather evidence of how destructive industrial agriculture is on Indigenous peoples, for example in Asia. And he also stressed the need for researchers to respect the value of Indigenous knowledge rather than viewing it as backward as this sometimes happens. And the need to mainstream Indigenous perspectives in research and to respect Indigenous peoples' rights and the rights enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and to support Indigenous methods of knowledge transmission like storytelling. And he stressed the need for a multicultural research approach that blends Indigenous knowledge and science. And we heard that the multi, multiple evidence-based approach is one method to do this. We heard that Indigenous peoples would like academics to recognise them as equally expert, and that academics can play a useful role in helping to show that Indigenous peoples are experts. And that they should support research that is led by Indigenous peoples. Conventional research that is externally led is not useful to Indigenous peoples and can never fully understand them is something that Hindu Ibrahim emphasised. But there's also, we also heard that there's much scope for collaboration when there is mutual respect. And we heard on the interdisciplinary issue that Indigenous peoples don't have separate fields of study, everything is interlinked. So community-led research can provide a framework for interdisciplinary research. And we heard that it is crucial to empower Indigenous communities and to support community networking and to also understand the governance issues and engage at policy level. And that more research is needed on gender and women's health issues. And finally, we heard from FAO about the new global hub on Indigenous peoples' food systems that brings together universities, UN agencies and Indigenous peoples and seeks to inform policy processes like the World Food Systems Summit in 2021. And just to mention that John Fernandes de Rallenoa from FAO replied to my question after the webinar because there wasn't enough time. But he confirmed that UK universities can become members of the hub and that the emphasis is placed on institutions and research centres that are doing hands-on research with Indigenous peoples and they're respecting the principle of free, prior and informed consent. So for this webinar we will explore Indigenous and decolonising research methods and we'll also explore interdisciplinary research methods. So the first session will focus on interdisciplinary methods, methods that draw on more than one discipline to better understand and protect Indigenous peoples' food systems to enhance the evidence of their importance and to help address the challenges they face. And then after a 15 minute break, we'll have a panel of Indigenous peoples talking about decolonising and Indigenous research methods that seek to empower Indigenous peoples and help to address the key challenges they face through the research process. So they strengthen culture, Indigenous knowledge and help to strengthen rights to land and to strengthen biodiversity, etc. So I will hand over to Philippa now. She's going to chair the first session. Just a briefly remind presenters that we are a very diverse audience, so please don't use academic jargon. And also for the Q&A that follows each session today, we would prefer if everybody can raise their hand or use the raise hand function and briefly introduce themselves rather than using the chat, but you can use the chat if we run out of time. Okay, thank you so much. I'll hand over to Philippa. Good morning, everyone. So yeah, this first panel is on interdisciplinary methods for research on Indigenous and traditional crops, whole food systems and temple changes. And I'm going to start by talking about combining ethnobotanical and historical approaches. So ethnobotanical approaches to studying Indigenous food systems can include documenting crop diversity and uses, relationships between crops and land use, and between crops and foods. All these elements are connected and subject to dynamic change. There are multitudes of reasons for growing crop varieties as we all know, including for different uses such as food or fodder, for their taste in cooking properties, for their resilient traits or yield, and for their suitability to specific moments within seasonal cycles or specific patches of land. So documenting crop diversity and uses within the local agricultural context could include recording which crops are grown in different micro environments and patches created, for example, by differences in soils or altitude, or through land use systems and such as terracing and home gardens. And studying crops from cultivation through to cooking practices can include all the practical steps from harvesting through to storage and food preparation, and how they connect with material culture, technologies, cultural practices and knowledge. And many crops considered minor today have been more important in the past. And documenting farmer's memories can provide valuable information about crop uses, about the advantages of different crops, about growing methods that are useful in being forgotten, and reasons for any of these changes. And historical documents and archaeological data can then provide further information on the long term crop histories, and less insights into their local environmental suitability. Over the past years I've been collaborating with Sudanese colleagues in Nubian communities studying traditional crops. This is based in the hyper arid north, where agriculture is centered on family farms and dependent on the River Nile. So I've got a couple of slides to show now, but introduce my collaborators and some of the farming environments and traditional material culture. So I will just introduce you to farmers about crops they have grown today and in the past to compare and their uses and where they're grown. We recorded cultivation and crop processing methods, focusing on serials and pulses, as well as associated foods. I have also asked how practices have changed with the introduction of new crops and methods, especially since the mid 20th century when traditional irrigation systems changed. So several previously staple crops are now minor food crops, and there are many reasons for such changes, including shifts in food preferences and processing methods. And many of these crops are now just grown for home use in small patches, especially along the river banks. This is a dominant commercial in food pulse crop, but previously a wide diversity of pulses were eaten more frequently, especially lab lab and cowpea. And baked wheat bread has also become an increasingly dominant food, partly replacing flatbreads, which also used to be made with a wider range of cereal and pulse flowers. Crops and foods are also reflected by material shifts, such as the disappearance of many traditional kitchens and storage rooms. And the dominant hybrid crops and use today can only be grown in the winter and they're dependent on intensive irrigation. In contrast, the local cultivators of African crops that were dominant in the past, low input and could be growing throughout the year. These previously important crops issues have a long history of use in the archaeological record of the region, helping highlight their long term stories and environmental suitability. Connecting botanical plant identifications and local names is always a key element of ethnic botanical research. And recording the names of crops and types of foods in Nubian, as well as in Arabic was also important. There weren't any more specific in Nubian, and this knowledge is also endangered as it is mostly held within the memories of the older generations and Nubian languages of themselves also endangered. So to help preserve the local agricultural histories, the findings were summarized in a booklet that was shared with local communities, and its content and design involved the local community and teachers throughout. I'm going to present a video from my colleague Mohamed Sad, who discusses all the search in Sudan further. Mohamed worked at the National Museum in Khartoum. Agriculture in the past depends on the single system of irrigation, Shadoof and Sagya, as well as traditional tools to cultivate and harvest crops. It is very important to talk to the old people and old farmers about their agriculture, because some of them still grow all the crops for food in a small area, because they are important as easy to grow when it is hot. And the main crops is wheat and beans and dates. Also the old farmers, they have good knowledge especially about growing crops, seasons, and flood. Some change happened when the farmers used the modern system of irrigation and also they used a machine to cultivate their crops. Some farmers, they changed from food crops to cash crops, as well as also some change happened because people, they grow like a big land instead of a small land. Brilliant, thanks. And now we're going to move on quickly to Raj Puri from the University of Kent, who's going to talk about using ethnobotany and participatory action research to document agrobariodiversity. Okay. Hello, everyone. Pleasure to be here. Nice to see you all. Okay, I'm going to try and link these three things as best as I can. I don't have any slides, but I'm happy to answer questions afterwards. Okay, ethnobotany then studies the relationship of people to plants. And we think of that relationship as mutual, an interdependency caused by co-evolutionary processes that results in what we like to call biocultural diversity. I'm sure many of you are familiar with this. Our food plants and other cultivated crops are some of the clearest examples of this ongoing co-evolutionary process, wherein we have manipulated and domesticated these plants and produced this agrobariodiversity. But they have also domesticated us and produced the knowledge that we need to grow, protect, harvest, store and use those plants. And those uses derive ultimately from the materials, symbolic and spiritual needs, beliefs, practices and values that underpin the cultural lives of peoples around the world. So when we speak of agrobariodiversity, that's only half the story. For what our plant varieties, seeds and other plant parts without the cultural context and shared knowledges that enliven them and give them meaning. So losing one aspect here necessarily leads to losses in the other. Maintaining crop diversity requires maintaining the recipes for dishes, the celebratory feasts and rituals that require these special varieties. Conserving biocultural diversity therefore is a multidisciplinary task, requiring integrated research on this co-evolutionary relationship on this biocultural diversity. It's resilience and threats to it from globalization and climate change to name just a couple, and on its changing nature culture as it transforms in the face of both internal and external forces and trends of change. So there are many manuals out there and many examples of research of this kind being conducted around the world. I wanted today to focus on participatory action research or par using tested and tried ethnobotanical methods to solve problems and but being conducted by residents of communities who are trying to resolve these problems and develop new directions for their lives and livelihoods. So our role in this is as consultants and trainers, gathering together people to help them think through issues, providing training and perhaps funds to collect and analyze data for themselves about themselves, helping them to protect store and disseminate their knowledge as they see fit. Now one fact that we have learned is that no one knows everything about the plants, people know and use, and what people do know often differs. There are knowledges of men of women of children of elders of farmers of cat gatherers of hunters of fishers. So one important role of an ethnobotanist in par is to find ways to get people to share their own knowledge with each other. You can think of great examples Mark Plotkin sorcerer's apprentice in the 1980s and 90s, trying to get children to learn the traditional medicine of their elders. In Sabah we had a project studying ratan and basketry and the, the elders of the community set up workshops to teach their children because they realized that they didn't know about basketry about ratan about the plants and dies that went into it. So we do this through interviewing for instance in focus groups of say only older women or only younger men so they can learn from each other in the process of doing this research. And we do this through community mapping exercises through inventory gardens or interviewing along plant trails. All of these can be done by community members. You can select specimens and seeds for a community herbarium, a garden, or a seed bank, or sit down and write a plant manual in local language for their kids. Or they may choose to record it all on video using what we call participatory video or PV developed by our friends that insight share. I've been associated with several of these projects over the years and our students at Kent have been sort of leading the way with their projects engagements with communities to produce gardens manuals and videos around the world. I'd also like to point up the work done by the Global Diversity Foundation, who emphasize long term commitments to communities to foster, foster capacity building so that communities can document their own knowledges. In India where I've been working recently a tree researchers have helped communities deal with the impacts of invasive species on forest undergrowth by setting up nurseries to grow some of their important wild food and medicinal plants in their own home gardens. In Saba, GDF led a PR project with do soon communities and NGOs to use participatory resource inventory methods to document knowledge and use of plants for the purposes of designing community use zones in the Crocker State Park. All that research and training and their GIS maps that they made themselves became essential and vital when a proposal to dam and flood their valley was dramatically announced. Fortunately, they were successful in killing off this this idea. So there are other examples I can talk about. And I'm interested to hear from the other panel members what they think. But that's all I have to say and thanks very much for listening. Thank you very much. It was brilliant. And we're going to pass over quickly now to Roger Blench. He's going to talk about using S no botany botanical linguistics and anthropology to understand indigenous food systems. Okay, I was ticked off for not having pictures in this slide show. So you'll just have to put up with text story about that. I'm not also going to talk about the advertised topic. So it's a but rather the whole issue of documentation which is a personal obsession. As far as I'm concerned the documentation of basic ethno biological systems remains in a very poor state. And in my view is in fact deteriorated in the last 40 years. I mean, a lot of discussion at this workshop is about activism. And of course that is absolutely crucial. But to my way of thinking, activism has to have an evidential base. In other words, you know, it's easy to say that we must protect xxxxx. But exactly what are we protecting that that's important to understand. So the problem of the making useful older documentation. There's a load of older documentation, often in obscure sources or in problematic languages. These are not easily available to present researchers present activists. So, turning older stuff into useful material also seems to me an important priority. It's accessible. And something I mentioned the other day I've been working on which is turning ethno botanical stuff into Android applications that people can use on their phones. I also mentioned an important thing, which seems to me, people put out ethno botanical databases on the internet. And this is mainly because they get grants, and they have data and they put it up and it's useful it's then, of course, un-maintained, because the grant finishes, and the creator of the project moves on. This goes back, I think, to what FAO was talking about. We have to scrape, if you like, all this documentation which people have worked hard to prepare and put it in a form that's accessible and interlinked with other sources. So there's a lot of stuff to be done on making data available in common formats which can be consulted by NGOs, by activists, by scientists, so it has a sort of multi-use format. There's disciplinary research where we've heard a great deal about that and that's what this section is about. My experience of certain organizations, even those represented in this workshop, is that they speak in forked tongues. In other words, you can certainly have a unit that's interested in local information and local cultural practices and useful plants. At the same time, there are other units in the same body which are interested in promoting hard science and publishing papers in nature and science and so on, for whom all this cultural stuff is a load of hooey, frankly. And of course, that's unfortunately where the money is these days. And we see this in lots of disciplines, not only archaeology as well as ethnobotany. With funders, funders like to support advances in individual disciplines, and this makes plant scientists in particular turn away from economic botany. I've talked to many botanists for whom this is all just, you know, fluff if you like. People publish enormous hardcore botanical surveys of individual countries. We're not a single mention of even whether plants are domestic or non-domestic, let alone anything to do with uses and local names. Similarly, there's a major problem, I think, with the way information is reviewed in journals. In other words, you know, if you do ethnobotanical documentation of a particular group of people, actually publishing it in a journal is really quite hard. I mean, you can put it out there on the web and I think that's what a lot of people do. But I think there are great difficulties in even getting out to basic documentation. I'll give you an example here. I work in Nigeria and I work in Northeast India in those two places, 502 and around 250 languages are spoken. I should say in Nigeria, though, maybe satisfactory ethnobotanical and ethnoseuological documentation for maybe four languages and none, not one in Northeast India. And I don't mean, you know, a list of a couple of plants, but I mean a proper solid documentation such as been undertaken in Central America. So there's a real uphill task. A crucial thing, in my view, is a lack of field guides. Field guides are essential, essential to doing serious ethno science, ethno biology. If you can't even discuss, you can't even discuss the identification of plants and animals with people because you don't have field guide. So even if you are willing, for example, you can't easily get a chance at identification. So I just want to emphasize really this absence of field guides and maybe an absence of a data bank of non-copyright photographs which can be used to compile field guides. So I think all these are issues we have to think about. Okay. Brilliant. Thank you very much. So we're just going to stop quickly for some questions, which reset my clock. We're doing 35, so yeah, if we could just stop for around five minutes of questions, that would be great. Has anyone got any questions that can raise their hand or put a question into the chat box and then afterwards we'll move on to the next round of flash talks. Sorry to have a question for me, but just as nobody raised their hand immediately. Thank you very much all of you. I was really interesting. I wanted to ask a question to Roger. I've worked quite a bit on protecting traditional knowledge and the main route by which biopiracy happens in unauthorized use and commercial use of traditional knowledge is through published databases of traditional knowledge. I was just wondering how you address that issue because obviously this documentation work is important. And as you say, it's really important to have the evidence base to support activism. But the concern is by making it available that anybody could get their hands on it and abuse, use it inappropriately and without benefits for communities. So I'm just wondering how you address that issue. Thanks. Well, obviously the first important thing is that you must get consent for dissemination of knowledge from the people you're working with. I have to say I've never found this a problem in the two areas of the world I work people love the idea that you know their culture is being disseminated more widely in the world. These issues certainly have come up in the Amazon, although I do understand it's become less of a problem in more in more recent times because more companies are less interested in biodiversity chemicals and more interested in in sort of mechanical processes for developing things but remains an issue and I think the only way around this is to ensure that you definitely have the consent of the community for dissemination of knowledge and then what can you do if it's out there it's out there. Nobody can predict what might might be found to be useful. So there's no to what there's no real way around this as far as I can see. His consent is crucial. I have a question here from George McAllister about, could the speaker share our thoughts on how to undertake participatory action research in a time of COVID, perhaps in terms of ethics tools and practices for building trusting and capacity for community like processes. Raj, I think this might be for you. Yeah, thanks. Good question. Very difficult. In fact, we just submitted a grant to the ESRC here in the UK, try and get funding to do just that. When it was shot down as being one of the comment one of the viewers said that they wondered if it was unethical to interview the same family three times in a year. I'll show you perhaps who's reviewing these these proposals but our goal there was to work in pre existing with pre existing relationships we have with a couple of communities in London and Birmingham already so making use of pre existing communities and getting members of the the communities that we were interested in Afro Jamaican Afro Caribbean communities and South Asian communities to do research amongst their own people amongst their own neighbors and families to kind of get a sense of how they were reacting to COVID-19 in terms of their use of a traditional healing methods self care, etc. You know the way to do it really is again through good and close rapport building and close relationships with pre existing networks in the case of COVID-19 starting something brand new might be a bit difficult. We know I was also part of an online survey and we noted that very few members of the South Asian or the African community were answering online surveys about what they were doing during COVID-19. And it was clear that that's why ethnographic research as as much as you could do in terms of face to face interviewing whether it's by zoom or telephone or WhatsApp, or on the doorstep was really important. You know people from minority groups often are just either don't have linguistic or digital capabilities for talents for using those kinds of online surveys. I hope that answered some of your questions. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. I can contact you outside of this forum. That would be wonderful. Thanks. Oh yeah, pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you. There's a few comments here in the in the chat. I'm just reading Harriet. Okay, so that that might be something that someone else could is anyone could answer answer that question but I think we also need to move on. Christina, what's what's the best way to carry on answering some of the questions here if we need to get going with the talks, would it be good for people to just send a couple of replies into the chat. Yes, I think that would be the best while we move on if you if you could reply to the question in the chat, I think. So we're going to move on. And so the next kind of talk is still talking about more different sort of into multidisciplinary methods. And so we're going to start now with Paul Wilkin from Q, who's going to present our botanical science for conserving orphan crops and indigenous knowledge. Well, that isn't a big enough task for three minutes. I also thought I would say that the comments I'm about to make also cover niche crops and wild, wild exploited plant resources, really across the whole spectrum of domestication. I think what we're talking about in terms of botanical science boils down to four key questions. We've already started to touch on some of those. The first one is what is it? Inventory is a critical part of species, landraces, funds for artists, but also looking at particular trait variation and in current research approaches. We've also want to look at genetics and genomics as ways of describing and understanding the diversity that we're seeing in front of us. And we want to see participatory shared and restored knowledge within that context. The next key question is where is it? We want to geolocate the material we're looking at. And that brings into play a whole load of spatial research methods that I'm not going to talk about today, time. And then once we've done those preliminary steps and those are the two most critical first steps, then we start to think about conservation. Conservation is vital. We are aware of that and the population of the globe is increasingly aware of that. So first we would look at in situ methods of conservation. We'd look at cultivation either in situ or close to in situ. Then once those methods are exhausted, we've moved to ex situ methods, in particular around seed banking or cryo preservation. And all of those are the suite of approaches that are open to us to make sure that we have access to the relevant germ plasm. And then the bit which is often forgotten, the part on the end, is what do we do with the conserved material? How do we regenerate plants from that and how do we get them back where they're needed? So we'd be wanting to look at things like seed germination ecology and the extraction of cryo preserved material and regeneration of it as critical approaches to delivering the plant resources that people need. I think I will leave it at that. Thank you Paul. And I was wondering as well if you could just say something really briefly on maybe how there's different approaches for different categories of crops. So, for example, the seed crops like cereals versus the vegetative, vegetative crops. What's your perspective, you mean, Philippa? For many of the steps one to three really, for the in situ work or characterising it? Evidently, seed bearing crops like cereals are relatively easy to bank. Crops which are based on underground organs which are vegetatively propagated are much harder to conserve. They usually require germ plasm collections which are expensive to maintain and often find it very difficult to retain information associated with the excessions in those collections. So they're often two or three years down the line are often quite worthless. And then you end up resorting to cryo approaches which are extremely expensive and technical and difficult to approach, but maybe the vital way of preserving. So, IITA in Nigeria conserves much of its young diversity through cryo because it's the only approach that works. Okay, thanks. And now we're going to briefly explain what cryo is, a lot of technical jargon coming through. Thank you. Great. Yeah, I forgot tissue culture which is another way to conserve cryo preservation so freezing of embryos down at very low temperatures and then they can then be replants can be regrown from those preserved embryos. Thank you. Hello, we're going to move on to, to Diana Union from Q, who's going to talk about using plant diversity and ethnogotomy to support community livelihoods. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Philip. I'm going to share my screen have a slide. Okay, well, good morning, everybody. And so I'm going here to talk about our research method through the project use to plan project that have been coordinating for several years. This is a project that was developed and carry out in Africa and also Latin America. So, and we, the aim of this project was to basically conserve XC2 indigenous useful plants. Those ones that were important for local community by building actually the local capacity to successfully conserve and use them. So the main components of the project can be summarized as it follows. So we have one part of targeting and prioritizing the species. So by using different methods. So one hand we did the course literature review to see what was already available there. And then being really getting out at Rumbotanica surveys and by working directly with the local community. But at the end, we had really to come up with the short list of most important species where we can we could focus on and on and do really our conservation and sustainable use activity. So workshop participatory workshop. And then another component has been on the city conservation. So she conservation was applied to the priority species and we did the city conservation together with local community and with our collaborators in country by collecting and storing the seats. And then we have been propagating those seats in order to have them available and not only for research but of course for the community. In a way in this way we established community garden but also forestry plots in the case of Kenya where we've been propagating this priority and cultivating the species. And lastly, we have been developing methods and in order to create some income in the community through the selling of plants directly ceiling but also plant product and particularly food product food product. So how did we do all of this. Well we apply a participatory approach as I said by working together with the community from the beginning to the end and and also reaching out to other stakeholders by involving them in our activities and in our products. So our approach was also multidisciplinary as we carry out different kind of research we carry out a tropical search, but also we carry out research on symbiology and ecology to inform both the management of the seeds but also the conservation and the seeds, how to propagate those seeds. And then we develop propagation protocol and we also establish some agricultural plots in order to look at the growth rate and the survival of these species. And so to conclude what did we do with all this information. Well, the one that also regenerate you we give we give it back to the local community through training but also we help announcing the local communities. And also we summarize all our, all our information in the book that you can see on here on on the corner on the right. And we produce this book. So, which is a wild ground for a sustainable future. We compile all the information that we collected from the community, our own information that we generated through the research and try to condense it in this, in this book, where we have in there a botanical information where other sort of botanical information, species description, so that people can identify the species. That's something that came out earlier in the talk, but at the same time how to know how to deal with species from a conservation and sustainable user point of view. So, this is a book that is aimed to practitioners in country and also that they work in development outside with the aim really to help them use the species and conserve them in a way that can help addressing community livelihoods and conservation at the same time. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. So, I'm going to move on to Julian. Julian, Gary, who's going to talk about identifying our cubitannical evidence for plant processing techniques. Over to you. So, basically, I am a PhD student at University College London and I do our cubitannical analysis to understand human plant dynamics in indigenous communities in the Caribbean through archaeological methods. And one of the things that I realize is that through our cubitanny, you know, we can identify many types of plants from the archaeological record, however, at times, we don't understand how to process them. Because as has been said in the, in the workshop that there's indigenous knowledge that gets lost. However, I am here to kind of like control repose and the reality is that it's not lost our ancestors have this information in the in the archaeological records. You know, they are the bearers, the custodians of this information that got lost and we can work using our cubitannical methods to bring it back to the present and this image is just one of the activities that I do to understand the how the different methods of processing Manioc, which is here. And this also helps not just, you know, going through the motions of actually cooking the dish which is cassava bread, which you can see here. But also it helps you understand how those things get to the archaeological record and the way that I do this type of revitalization of indigenous food practices is by using a collection of carbonized plant remains and then from those their fragments which look like food or are especially also Tuber fragments and using scan and electron microscope you can potentially identify those foods but beyond the simple identification of species or what type of food it is you can actually try to assess food taste preferences and actually if this type of research is done on a more larger scale, you can try and start getting a sense of contextualizing the food habits of people. And that's something that I'm trying to work on throughout my work and not to end as I said before revitalizing indigenous food practices which is this image, which is from the New Year celebration in my island of Borgen. Thank you so much for that and really, really great for in love seeing all those images as well. We're all getting hungry already. And now we will talk about long term crop histories, the archaeobotany of crop histories so passing over to Doreen Fuller from UCL. Okay, good. So I'm, I'm an archaeobotanist like Julian who you just heard from archaeobotany is the study of the preserved plants from ancient human sites so the archaeology of plants instead of the archaeology of pottery or some other kind of artifact. And it can inform us about the long term history of crop repertoires within a region so which crops have come into use and out of use over the long term. It can tell us about ancient changes and diversification and crops. It often tells us about within a particular region how much of an impact the post Colombian exchange has been between crops from the new world and old world being shifted around. And we heard, you know, you will find maze and parts of Asia and Africa being very important. And that's of course a change that's happened within recent centuries. It can also tell us about lost crops or what we might call orphaned crops or crops that are disappearing and that's kind of what I wanted to focus on today with a few examples. And I've listed some there in red and I'm going to quickly walk you through walk you through kind of three stories about lost or disappearing crops that archaeology can tell us about that you might not otherwise expect to learn very much about. So it's something that can, in a sense, complement the kind of ethnobotanical documentation that we've been talking about. So the first of those that I'd like to talk about is brown top millet or Brachiaria Ramosa. And this is really the lost staple grain of South India of the Deccan region. Now it's not completely lost there is a region in Northwestern Tamil Nadu and adjacent Karnataka, where it is grown on a very small scale or at least it was still grown in the 1990s on a very small scale. And this documented reference to this I know of is from a paper published in economic botany in the year 2000 by a Japanese scholar and some Indian colleagues, and they documented I think two villages that grew this crop that in the late 1990s. And I have a picture there of a map that shows the region where that modern cultivation was and some of the dishes and breads that were made out of this millet, most of which were kind of ritual food so it was maintained mainly for particular festivals. But the area highlighted in blue broadly speaking is and all those dots are where we have archaeological evidence for this as a grain. And often as the dominant grain the staple grain on many of those sites so for from around four and a half thousand years ago up until maybe 1500 years ago this was in many regions a staple food so it is very much declined as a millet and that's a story that we can only learn about through the archaeological evidence. Which then tells us that it was suitable and much more of much more widespread importance and what remains in recent times is just a, you know, a small sample of its past diversity and cultural use. Another example of crops that are completely lost to us in the ethnographic present are some of the examples of North American domesticates. They're very two very well documented examples are a lost kinepodium this is a pseudo cereal similar to modern Kenawa but a separate North American species. And I also IVA at annual oil seed and I've got pictures there of IVA annual seeds it's distantly related to sunflower. So the archaeological evidence shows that it undergoes domestication so you get a larger seeded variety, so called macro carpa variety now this variety does not exist today there's no living biological versions of it it only exists in the archaeological record. So it's a fairly major crop and oil seeded crop that's cultivated in this Mississippi basin from about from more than 4000 years ago up until at least 1000 years ago, probably later we don't really know when it goes extinct as a crop and I would guess that it's around the time of European contact when you have such a large decimation of native populations due to European diseases. Again it's something that has potential but it's lost to our kind of ethnographic documentation. And then the third case I'd like to give is one that would seem like a crop we know a lot about wheat. But in fact there's a lot of kinds of wheat that we don't really know very much about. And one thing to note is that wheat comes in lots of different genetic types as several species of wheat really today most of the wheat we eat and most of what's cultivated is either bread wheat, or Durham wheat Durham wheat is you is cultivated to make pasta and couscous, but these are really quite recent phenomena, these two species of wheat that dominate so they start to really become important in the Roman period about 2000 years ago, and places like Britain, maybe only 1000 years ago, and prior to that there's a real diversity of wheat species and I've kind of circled them there with different colors. I'll put quickly for the last 30 seconds more and what the one point I would say is that there's two varieties here, what I've highlighted in two grade nine corner there's a green arrow pointing to it, and this triticum Timofivi there's a purple arrow pointing to it, which are the dominant species in the Neolithic and Bronze Age and have basically gone extinct since then so we can see that the wheat diversity around us today, and use traditionally is not necessarily doesn't necessarily reflect the long term so archeology can reveal these patterns of long term change. And that's what I want to say. Thank you. Cool, so now we're going to present a video from Matthew Davis at UCL, you will be talking about documenting traditional crops, agri systems and temporal changes in Kenya. Many apologies that I cannot be with you today, as I'm teaching and thanks for indulging me in this opportunity to record a short film. My name is Dr. Matthew Davis and I work at the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London. And most of my research has focused on how people manage agricultural landscapes in Eastern Africa. I would also like to introduce a long standing multidisciplinary research project that has examined food systems in Marraquet in Northwest Kenya. This is led by a number of co-investigators including the PI Professor Henrietta Moore, Dr. Wilson Kip Coray from the University of Alderat, Professor Jacqueline Maglade from Strathmore University and from UCL, and Dr. Sam Lund Rockliffe from UCL who should be with you all today. He includes multiple East African partners including the East Africa Herbarium and the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Now Marraquet is a rural area that straddles the eastern side of the Kerrio Valley. It's well known for its extensive pre-colonial irrigation systems and our research project has a deep history led by Professor Moore with some continuity going back into the 1970s including work by Kenyan scholars such as Ben Kip Coray, Jay Senyonga, Esmiticio and Wilson Kip Coray as well as researchers including Bill Adams, Liz Watson and Tom Diaz. Throughout our research has intersected with food systems and has often taken these as the central focus. But it's also important to note that the work has also focused on many other related issues particularly broader development interventions such as this Red Cross Irrigation Scheme and wider processes of ecological management. A key tenant of our research over the last decade has been to develop community-led research through citizen scientists who are community members and who helped determine the research questions, methods and analyses. This citizen science team is led by Mr. Timothy Kipkayo-Kipruto and Ms. Helena Cepto pictured here on the left with one of our key team members Nelson Balilengo on the right. Research into food systems by this team has thus always been embedded in wider social, economic and environmental agenda often defined by the priorities of the citizen scientists and the community itself rather than by strict singular research questions. For example, lines of research have examined failed histories of development interventions many of which have been agricultural in nature but many of which also have not. A primary aim of this work has thus been to build a detailed history of the community, the agricultural landscape, the rural economy and its wider connections to food production which necessarily form a core aspect of this. The methods employed have been diverse but often rooted in different ways of mapping and knowing the wider landscape and embedding analyses of things, plants, animals, pathways, networks, buildings and interventions within this landscape. So this work has included everything from traditional archaeological field survey to surveys of colonial and post-colonial structures and interventions, combined with multiple forms of ethnographic observation and interview, spanning both ethnohistorical and contemporary topics. Particular attention has been paid to physically mapping with GPS and GIS the landscape led by the citizen science team, including mapping contemporary and historic features in relation to food production, settlement patterns, field boundaries, irrigation, terracing, erosion, buildings and other structures. Participant-led mapping has planned individual fields as you can see here, including their boundaries, routes, pathways and allowing for detailed in situ ethnographic interviews of what farmers produce, where, when, how and in what combinations. Repeat mapping of nearly 100 fields over the last eight years in particular has not only provided quantitative data on the types and combinations of crops, both indigenous and hybrid, but also for deeper conversations about decision making and innovative experimentation. Work on ethnobotany has less been extensive, including identifying the complex use of some different 10 varieties of sorghum and 12 landrace varieties of finger millet, but we've always situated these in wider systems of food production through time and always focused on the intersection of both indigenous landraces and more hybrid crops. Most recently we worked on geo-reference smartphone data recording of interviews, features and photographs and have developed with farmers bespoke data collection applications using a software called Sapelli that allows farmers to record cropping practices and associated challenges. Although these data are still being collected and are still under analysis, this has resulted in some 29 major cultivated crops being identified, both new and old, with some 36 wild food plants, and these are used in literally hundreds of unique combinations. Overall then, although this work has documented indigenous food production, the aim has not been to focus solely on the heritage of this, but rather to try to place diverse food production systems within a complex narrative of change and continuity through time and space, and to situate this within contemporary food debates such as those surrounding the notion of an African green revolution. Our aim I think has been particularly to help small holder farmers show how diverse their practices and influences are, and to situate their heritage alongside the dynamic use of modern materials, ideas and experimentation. So in short then, I think this work has been about rethinking the distinctions between traditional and modern practice, between continuity and innovation, and to recenter small holder farmers as sources of rather than as the recipients of innovation. So I hope that this quick talk has not been too brief and too confused, but I thank you all very much for listening and hope to hear feedback and questions through the grapevine. Thank you very much. Really, and thanks. And when we move on to questions after I think you could all see the comment from from Sam here in the chat. And so Sam's with us today so he can address questions and he's also posted a longer version of that video. So now we're going to move on to to Sandeep has a resting from Open University, who's going to talk about oral history as a method for studying the meaning of food waste in India. Thank you. Thank you for the bar. So this this talk is based on recorded and filmed oral history interviews with women small holders in Karnataka, India. In the context of a recent HRC funded collaborative project for changing farming lives in South India, past and present. From this experience and in the context of our discussion of food systems and heritage, all history might provide a particularly amenable entry point for research. This is because oral histories about memory and remembering lived experience. It can therefore document and communicate food traditions and heritage and the meanings and feelings involved in a particularly vivid manner. Secondly, food tends to resonate particularly well with memory in terms of its sensorial ability to trigger rich memories and emotions of food pleasures within home, family and community. This process is known as edible memory. Thirdly, this method offers the capability of generating insights into meanings of food cultures over a significant historical duration. And it is also finally conducive to reclaiming the voices and life experiences of indigenous and subaltern groups, such as women, peasants and farmers who tend to be marginalized in written documents. Oral history essentially involves the process of co-creation between interviewer and narrator in a way that both highlights narrator agency and invites listeners or viewers into her lived experience. Very often in development writings, the voices of subaltern groups tend to be subsumed by the researchers' interpretation, which is what ultimately becomes authoritative. In our project, we began by asking questions that of course were primarily of interest to us as researchers, but participants were encouraged to shape their narratives as much as they wished by talking about food crops, food activities, other subjects and life episodes that they themselves regarded as significant and meaningful. In the process, we discovered that it was foods and diets that the women smallholders were particularly passionate about, especially the beliefs, rituals and knowledges associated with finger millet-based food ways that they were seeking to revive. Rituals involved deities, earth, seeds, animals, birds and other more than human entities, which have the power to affect food and farming outcomes. In contrast, they were much less interested in the economic specificities of crops and livelihoods. So just to conclude, I would say that oral history offers the capacities to understand and change the present in the light of the past, to identify patterns of local social and climate change, to give voice to hidden and alternative narratives, and finally to recall cultural memories as a repository of knowledge and resilience for ongoing innovations. Thank you. Thanks, Sandy. That's brilliant. And so we've just got one last video now from Harriet Kulang. Some of you might remember from Monday, and she's talking about participatory methods for exploring Indigenous food systems, health and wellbeing. Thank you for including me in this segment of the program that you have developed there at Q&I-IED. I'm very happy to be with you to be talking about participatory methods to explore Indigenous peoples' food systems, health and wellbeing. So my experience is through the Centre for Indigenous Peoples Nutrition and Environment at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where I was founding director from 1985 until 2009. I'm still active in promoting the Centre, which is really why I'm here today. So I have to give credit to many, many people who worked through the Centre over the years and our community collaborators, not only for the data that we have provided in the many publications, but also for building the strategies for community consultation. When we started our work with the Centre, we had the Indigenous leaders in Canada guiding us on how to have proper community consultation. And in fact, they even lobbied for funding with the Canadian government to help establish the Centre. So we're very grateful to them, in particular to Chief Bill Erasmus from the Denny Nation. So our work in the Canadian Arctic during that period of time led to many publications. But I want to call your attention to this publication that was requested from the WHO. This was published in 2003 in English and Spanish. It's on the CINE website as well as the WHO website. Indigenous Peoples and Participatory Health Research, Planning, Management and Preparing Research Agreements. So we learned that there is no one single way to build collaboration. Every community is different. But there are a few key principles that I'd like to call your attention to. First of all, you have to listen. You have to learn, know how to carefully listen to your collaborators in the communities for their concerns, for their ideas on how to do things right from their perspective. So that means you have to maintain a respect for the people, and that helps them respect you. You need respect for the food system, the environment, and work to continue to build mutual respect for mutual benefit. So that leads to the important concept of trust. You can't get anywhere in community work with research or development without having mutual trust with your community. So one of those principles means you're working with them. You're not working on them. You're not working on nutrition on the people in X community. You're working with them. So I also call your attention to the 2016 publication from FAO on free prior and informed consent. And please always recognize that you need collective as well as individual consent in the research processes. And along the line, always keep in mind that when we as academics prepare our publications, it is very important for the community partners to know about them to participate in them to be co-authors, and to have these publications return to them so that they can be translated appropriate for the community members. I think that's all I have time for. Thank you very much. Okay, so now we, I think we're doing it perfectly on time, which is amazing. So we can have some 10 minutes for questions. I'm just trying to get my speaker view back on. Great. So has anyone got any questions for anyone? I think you can raise your hand for quick questions in the chat. Excellent. So I see quite a lot of comments in the chat box, but I think there, I haven't been able to follow those doing all the best. I think they're from the previous discussion. So does anyone have any questions for the recent speakers of the flash talks, Lucas. Hello, everyone. My name is Lucas Pavera and I'm a researcher combining ethnobotanical and nutritional approaches. And we have the indigenous partnership and Mr. Frank Roy, who is present. We are working on indigenous food systems in Indonesia, Northeast India and also a bit in Ethiopia and Mexico, Yucatan. I would like to mention the presentation of Dr. Tizia, which was, I think this livelihood aspect is becoming more and more important. And as we can see, many indigenous cultures and also the food systems are under pressure and changing from the intensification livelihood needs and also cash crops coming. So I think the livelihood aspect is really that's something that should be strengthened. But what we found is quite a challenge is how do we balance the trade off between livelihood and commercialization and also on consumption. For example, in Indonesia or Northeast India, our studies are showing that farmers are producing nutritious food groups, such as eggs or fruits, but then they are rather, you know, sell them because of the income opportunities, which a little bit compromise the diets and that are diversity in the end. So, you know, how do we balance this this trade off between livelihood and on consumption. That would be my question. Thank you. Yeah, thank you Lucas for your very interesting question. He's actually a key question and I think, you know, it's very important in terms of development and how to carry out the sustainable development. And as you are mentioning, the problem is that you can support livelihood that you can help commercializing one species, but how can we stop by somehow can bring the benefit into the community. And naturally it needs to be involved into the value chain of that product. And of course, again, this needs to be multidisciplinary and also involved different stakeholders. And it's important to have even some, like at the country level and some legislation that in a way that this needs it's incorporated into the legal framework for the country. Because otherwise you need to protect this product and actually more in the value chain you have a middle dealer and more likely less likely you are going to benefit the local community. And so it's really a big problem. And I think it's something that we're always being aware through our work and through our research. And for this we have been really working directly with the local community and and also with NGO, because NGO somehow they are the voice in general of the local community and they really can help us in bringing the commercialization from the community to the national regional level and national level and potentially at the international level. So this is definitely a key step in order to support livelihood that they need to be addressed and this again, you need to be in the interdisciplinary and design the same time to have a multi participatory approach, not only at the research level but also by linking up with with local government and national government at the same time. Thank you. And so I've got a couple of questions here. Paul's in the chat first and then on to Roger. So how widespread is the pattern of farmers selling production to the detriment of their nutrition. Sandy, do you have any comments on that? I think the women farmers we spoke to actually very keen on the nutritional aspects of the foods they were seeking to revive. They were kind of very aware that it was particularly important to know to grow known foods, and that there was no benefit in consuming foods from the outside as they put it which they did not know. So this issue of knowledge of foods was particularly important. And they were able to tell us in detail in the considerable way the nutritional properties of foods like the various millets which they were growing and the various properties of the seeds they were saving and exchanging as well. That's brilliant. Thanks. I remember something from some of my interviews as well that just things like the qualities of taste could change when certain crops growing for food are growing in different qualities of soils and it's that very sort of precise local knowledge and so sometimes you could have the same crop being grown in some different soils for purposes of selling that crop or for using it for animal fodder. Then the same crop and the same like landrace being grown in a different patch of better quality soils when it was being used to eat at home. And that sort of knowledge is being lost locally as well. So Roger, you had a question as well. I've been a surprise. This conference is sort of entitled Indigenous Food Systems. There's been extraordinary little discussion of cookery itself and actual ways that people think about preparing different foods. Now in Itanagar in the capital of Arunachal Pradesh, one of the fascinating things are the tribal food restaurants. That's what they call themselves. There are many different ethnic groups in 52 in Arunachal Pradesh. Many have their own quite specific cuisines and they have a restaurant system which has grown up to serve people who want to eat those particular foods. This sort of thing also happens a bit in Nigeria and quite a lot in Indonesia where in Indonesia any big city has restaurants which serve people from different islands in Indonesia. I feel these are grossly understudied. In other words, these are some of the institutions, these commercial restaurants which are acting to propagate Indigenous food systems. In other words, they're the people who make money from actually selling people the food they really like to eat. And to my knowledge, I've seen very little on most study of any sort of these these restaurant systems and how they act to promote Indigenous foods. Has anyone else got any comments on that? Well, Raj? Yeah, I was going to say thank you, Roger. That's a very good point. I think recipes and dishes and cookery is extremely important. We've had students looking at the reintroduction of wild plants into these kinds of restaurant cuisines in Malaysia, for instance, in Singapore. And because of COVID-19 here in London in Malaysian restaurants and looking also that these places are also venues to revitalize traditional crops and traditional plants in cooking as also a way to kind of present that traditional food tradition. Yeah. Philip, I also wanted to add on that. Yeah, I think it's extremely important to record the recipe and it's somehow a way to conserve the way in the same way you conserve the recipe or conserving the traditional, you are conserving the species as well. And I wanted to mention that we have recently started a project on the Mediterranean diet in Lebanon and Jordan. And we identify some species that actually you can find in the Lebanese restaurant in London. You know, they really consider delicacy at the country level and really, really appreciate them. So the work we are doing is really trying to bring these other species, some are harvested from the wild, some are cultivated. And we're also looking into the nutritional content of the species, looking at the micronutrients in order to look at the health benefit. And at the same time, by looking at the health benefit, you can, this information can help to promote the species that are minor in the cuisine somehow or what we know outside, but they're still very important at the local level. That's brilliant. Julian, did you have your hand up before? One of the things is that, yes, I agree with Roger Blench and Raj. And the thing is that another dimension I just forgot to mention is that, you know, we've been talking about plant and seed collections and all these other things, but also one of the things that I do in order to be able to inform and like identify foods from the archaeological record is that I have a food library. Not just of the recipes, but actually pieces of the food because, you know, you can have the recipes, you can have all these things, but if you don't know how does the product really look. And that also helps you inform and understanding how these types of like the way that the method conditions the type of behavior that the remain will have. That's another thing that you can actually be doing. You have been, you know, I know that every time you go to the field where you are like, oh, here, eat this, eat that. And then you can just try and build up also a food reference collection, which will be, it's one of the important aspects. And I think it's, I've got one quick comment, like is archaeopotanists were always interested in those stages of processing and think one thing we're looking at changes in the last 50 years that sort of research Sandeep's been doing with looking at finding stones and moving to modern methods and the same in Sudan is that sometimes the changing cooking practices or use of crops is linked to these changing material cultures and so when interested in our project is looking from farm through to play to try and capture all those interconnected processes. So Alex, you had you had a question. Um, yeah, so I, hi, I'm Alex, I'm at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and Archaeopotanist also intern for Q. I grew up on Coastal Miwok lands and northern California and in communication a lot with a lot of native tribes in California through different dialogue groups what Chumash, Serrano, Washu, Miwok, and something that we talk a lot about is reconnecting with traditional communities and how do we support indigenous groups who have been forced out of practicing traditional food systems and the increased rise in this I don't I don't really hear a lot of discussions with traditional Native Americans and North America. I don't know if people are in urban settings or on reservations but there is an increased interest with the rise of like indigenous people's day which was this past Monday as a replacement for Columbus day with a desire to reintegrate traditional food systems, even though the origins of a lot of American food systems are actually like in the narrative like Thanksgiving. How do we support communities of people who are have had broken indigenous conditions traditions because a lot of my friends who are Miwok or Alhoney want to practice these recipes they want to reintegrate a corn flower into the dialogue they want to integrate traditional like you know fishing practices but they don't have any resources to do that and so but there is an increased commercial interest in it like the Sioux cookbook has picked up and is won a national award and so there is like an increasing fascination with Native American cuisines but there's next to no support. So, I don't know I don't know I just wanted to bring this into the dialogue and I wanted to kind of introduce a North American perspective just because they're often not included in the dialogue. Does anyone have any comments on that and there's actually some related comments now in the chat as well. And then we're going to have to move on to a break I think. If you look at Gary Nabhan's work on food networks and food sovereignty in the Southwest and West of the United States food heritage systems and trying to reclaim traditional food, food ways. Can I also mention that way back in the end of the 19th century, the good old Smithsonian used to produce wonderful books about indigenous cookery systems in North America, books which are long out of print. But in my view, you know, people should have a look at these because they they documented food and cookery systems at a time where they were pretty well intact. I've collected a few of these in myself but but you know how are these being distributed to communities, because my, my friends I talked to you don't know these exist. They're often really hesitant to engage with this literature because it was often written by colonists. And so there's an apprehension to engage is their access to resources that have been written by indigenous scholars because that's the biggest comment I get from people I talked to is how do I access modern day resources written by indigenous ecologists or people who have a comprehensive understanding. And it's not through a colonial narrative because I know people who know the Smithsonian stuff but they don't want to read it, because it's automatically comes from a perspective that doesn't have a full appreciation. That's this is just I'm just regurgitating news I've been told to spread from my community so yeah. I think that's really unfair I've read this stuff and and these were, at least you could you need to look at them and read them and see are, are they realistic and so on I mean you know of course maybe there is some colonial perspective, but give them a chance. Don't just throw them out as a pram or automatically. It's something that we have to deal with with a lot of archival material from from these periods and that historical research methods take, take those sorts of biases into consideration so you can try and abstract information but in the context of those materials that Sandy could be able to better comment on whether I've got that sort of correctly praised. Well, yeah, yes, if. If you're looking for kind of indigenous or supports and voices within within the within the archive, especially the colonial archive. You're likely to to look in vain, but nonetheless within that they are. Even the colonial archive required reliance on native and indigenous informants. So, kind of a way of reading the archives. What has been called against the grain will kind of give you some perspective from the people who provided the colonialist with the information so it's kind of fine reading the archives and being alive to kind of the silences the dissonances, the information that is coming to the colonial author. And which is sometimes actually acknowledged so, yes, you would not get kind of a clear, a clear outline of views directly by indigenous or subaltern groups but there is a way of making sense of the archives, they're not completely, I would say useless. And maybe that's the role of modern day. I have to stop now, I'm really sorry, but please do continue. Sorry, I'm afraid we're going to have to stop now because we've run out of time. And we, we scheduled a break from 1230 to quarter to to one which was only 15 minutes and I think people will need some lunch before the next session. I've been really fascinating and I'm really glad Roger brought up the issue of food because it's such a critical issue and I've really enjoyed all the presentations and all the discussion so thank you really very much Philippa and everybody. And please come back in 15 minutes. Right, welcome back everyone. I hope you managed to get some, some lunch. We're now going to have a panel on the colonizing and indigenous research methods. I just want to thank you all for your presentations earlier, they were so interesting. I think just a brief comment while we wait for people to come back. Thank you so much for all of the most intellectual property rights that came up. I think what Harriet Kuhnline said in her video about collective free prior informed consent is really, really critical for ensuring that communities know fully the risks of commercialization and before they agree to publish or to disseminate their knowledge. They're not publishing and then building a knowledge base within communities and that's something we'll hear about in this session. I also was really enjoyed listening about oral histories and I think they have huge potential at the moment because the loss of traditional knowledge that's going on is often just the elders who have the knowledge and so oral histories are really important to bring back and revitalize by a cultural heritage in in the areas we're working to try and establish by a cultural heritage territories. I think archaeo botany, you know might also help on that if it can help with the recent past, which is kind of more relevant and immediate to communities and might still have remnants in the memories of the elders. The session now is is a panel of indigenous people on a topic which I think is really important. And as a researcher, I think that the best way to help indigenous peoples is to ensure research is led by them that it empowers indigenous peoples and that addresses their needs and priorities. And this type of research can have a lot more impact in terms of development and environment impact than externally led research. And also there are ethical issues I think with this externally led research. You know you're asking indigenous peoples to contribute to a process, which generally doesn't give them much benefit in return so in my view that's unethical. And this issue of decolonizing research methods is really, really important. And I would like to introduce Professor Chi Baghele Chilisa, I hope you're here with us. So, she is a professor at the University of Botswana. She is focused on culturally and contextually responsive research and evaluation and she's written a brilliant book on indigenous research methodologies. So welcome and thank you so much, Baghele, you have 10 minutes. Oh, 10. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This has been a wonderful time for me. I've had a lot of interesting things from all the presenters, and now in these 10 minutes I'm going to share with you what I have. So, my focus is going to be on indigenous research methodologies and what they are and their benefit to doing research on indigenous food. So, indigenous research methodologies is about the right of those whose voices have been silenced by Western knowledge to know, to talk, and to be heard. While, for example, in academics may use historical data as you have heard over the last two days. Indigenous people can talk and be heard by using, for example, folk laws, stories, taboos about food, oral traditions about food, names of food, songs about food. That is a way to give the indigenous people voice. Of course, the scientists can always do archival data, I mean, archaeological data and do all the sciences, but indigenous people also have the right to know, and they know, and they know through those methods. It is about indigenous people's right to know, to produce knowledge, and own knowledge. In Botswana, when we fry potatoes, we call them French fries, and I think the world over, they are called French fries, even when they are fried in the US. That talks about an indigenous French recipe. Indigenous research methodologies is about bringing indigenous knowledge to the global market, bringing those indigenous recipes to the global market so that they can compete with other recipes. It is about the right to place indigenous ways of knowing and values at equal footing with other knowledge systems. When we talk indigenous research methodologies, we are therefore talking about mixed methods. When mixed methods is not only about combining quantitative and qualitative data, but it is also about combining indigenous knowledge, indigenous methods with other conventional methods. So that when we talk of indigenous research methodologies, we're talking about collaborative research. We are talking about multiple methods that recognize indigenous methods. Indigenous research methodologies is about the right of indigenous people to prioritize the research agenda and participate in what is recess and to be recognized as core knowledge producers. When you talk about prioritizing, we are talking about relevant research. Of course, Western researchers have the luxury just to research for curiosity's sake. We indigenous people don't have that. We need research that can benefit us, and it is us who can prioritize what is relevant. Indigenous research is about the resistance to stereotypes and difficulty theorizing perpetuated by Western knowledge, Western research, colonial research, the archived knowledge that continue to perpetuate stereotypes. I can understand when indigenous people say, but who wrote those reports? Who wrote those recipes in those books that talk about indigenous people? From what perspective did they write them? Did they write about those recipes as recipes and food? That is not only for eating, but it is also for spirituality. It's also for well-being. It is also for connecting people with the environment. When they refuse to say no, not those, you have to understand that they're probably talking from a point of the world views, a point of their own world views. Indigenous research methodologies is not about replacing conventional methods with indigenous research methodologies. It is about a coalition of knowledge systems, a coalition that recognizes other knowledge systems on equal footing. It is about decolonizing the minds of them indigenous people. You know, indigenous people, they have been brainwashed to think that their foods are inferior. It is therefore about indigenous people appreciating their own heritage. Where, for example, they recognize indigenous recipes, indigenous foods as food that can compete in the global market. Indigenous research methodologies is about carrying out research informed by indigenous world views, ways of perceiving reality and value systems. Those marginalized by Western knowledge, for example, can begin by valuing the indigenous food, conducting community research to remind the people about the nutritional value of their foods. And that's the spiritual healing of the foods. I happen to listen to a presentation by one of the students who was talking about food security in part of the country. And one of the things that came out was that there were some indigenous foods that could stand the vagaries of the climate much, much better than those crops that have been borrowed from the West. However, the people were not willing to grow indigenous crops because they've been brainwashed to think that eating rice is better than eating local food. In research on indigenous foods that use an indigenous perspective, indigenous methodologies, as I said before, it appreciates the value of food, not only for quenching hunger, but also for spirituality purposes, for connection with the land. An indigenous research world view recognizes spirituality that is not talked about in Western research. And for you, therefore, it will be appropriate to research on indigenous food using an indigenous world view that goes beyond Western ways of perceiving reality to indigenous ways of seeing reality, spirituality, also as reality. To say that research has to respect indigenous values is to talk about eight R's that is the R of relationality. This is ethics. The ethics of research includes relationality, which is doing research that is long lasting, you build relationships with the people, not helicopter research where you get in and get out as quickly as possible. It's about respect that is respecting the values of the people, respecting their voices, giving them a chance to participate. It's about reciprocity. What is it? What is this research giving back? This documentation and databases, what are they giving back to the communities? Is it okay to archive those in the form of documents, knowledge that the researcher got from the communities while the communities are hungry? Researchers can build their names with the research, this and that. But what are you giving back to the communities? It's about responsible research. Responsible research is to say whose research is it? Who am I for? As a researcher, you always come up with a point of view. You come into the research with a world view. Whose world view are you using? Are you looking at the researcher as somebody who doesn't know who you are helping because you can get funding from some sponsor elsewhere? Or are you getting funds so that you can work with the researchers, not for curiosity, not to do research for curiosity, but to do research that is relevant. For us, there is an urgent need for research that addresses our problems, not research for curiosity. Rise of the people to prioritize their research agenda. When you now say you are coming up with this and that, is that your priority as a researcher or is that the priority of the people? Reference. Indigenous people are very spiritual. Do you respect their spirituality? Responsiveness. As you do research, are you able to respond to the immediate needs, to the changes as you go along and do the research? Or do you use book research where you say according to this author, this is how it has to be done, therefore I can't change, I can't do that, I can't do that. Reflectivity. As you do research, do you reflect upon yourself and say what are the kind of stereotypes and prejudices that I bring into this community? Do you reflect? And lastly, decolonization. The ethics is an ethics when it also decolonizes research and to decolonize research is to allow other people to speak from their own point of view, their own world views. Thank you very much. Oh, thank you so much, Professor Chilisa, that was brilliant. Those eight Rs, I think are really useful principles for all research. Does anybody have any questions because we have just a couple of minutes and then we'll move on to the next one. I can't see any questions. Just a quick thing, I think, you know, she hit the nail on the, there needs to be a reverence to the knowledge that it's being produced, because at times, you know, this is something that also I kind of like talk about that there's food that it's of nutritional value that is good for you but there's like good for your well being and that's important that at times get get doesn't come through the research. And especially with at least I work in the Caribbean and the indigenous communities are not recognized. So, and there's all these ideas of they were all exterminated during the colonial times. So, there are practices and spiritualists that are still active, and also by recognizing them from a research point of view. We're also giving them the agency and the recognition that they deserve outside of their own circles. Thank you so much. I have one question. I am missing one of the Rs. Could we have a list. Is relationality, respect, responsibility, responsibility, rights, reverence, responsiveness, reflectivity and decolonization. Thank you so much. I think, you know, you remind us that we all have our own world view researchers they see what what they see through their own lens. They don't document the spirituality because it's not part of their own culture. So we need to leave our culture behind and step into and see things and be guided by your world view so that we can do the research properly. Anyway, thank you so much. And we'll have hopefully a bit more time for discussion later, but that was wonderful. I'd like now to pass on to Florence Dagitan. She's from the Philippines and briefly introduce. She is a Meo Kyok Dagitan. Sorry Florence Meo Kyok Dagitan belongs to the Can Can I is one of the seven ethnolinguistic groups known as the Igorots in the Cordillera of the northern Philippines. And she's going to talk about Indigenous methods for research on agri-food systems in the Philippines. She's also working at Tebteba. Good evening everyone. It's I think eight o'clock in our area. So I say good evening or good noon. Good afternoon. I'm happy to be here. And I thank I thank also the opportunity for me to speak on our experience. Speaking as an Indigenous person who has also gone to the academic world, but my involvement in the research in the search for appropriate research methodologies comes from a being part of a people's movement. First, from the advocates of the organic agriculture, sustainable farming, ecological agriculture, agroecology, things like that. And then second, as an advocate for the promotion of Indigenous people's rights for its fulfillment and respect. So, from the very start of my work, just upon my college days, because that was so much activism in the Philippines, that was the time of March alone. We were fortunate enough to be given the correct orientation of working for the people and with the people. So, so we were taught that our people, Indigenous peoples in the Cordillera, or Indigenous peoples of the world, create and produce knowledge from their day to day life as they relate with their nature and the land. They monitor changes, events, places. They closely observe what is in their surroundings and discover new ways of doing things. Whatever they discover, they share to whoever is interested in the community, like a better way of storing the seeds, the part of the forest where such trees can be found and others. This knowledge are shared in various ways, in different venues, and these are stored in stories, epics, songs, chants, in the memories of our people, but they are shared very orally. And this, we have this in at present today. So, we see that people have been creating knowledge and producing knowledge. Yet, when we go to the communities and invite some group to do a research, or because we were also told that to work in the community, we have to start where the people are. So, we have to do the research. But if we invite some groups to do that research with us, then they will say, oh, if it's research, it's not for us. It's for the school, people, those who come from the academic or those who went to the universities. So, we see a manifestation of the colonized research in our lands also, even at this time. So, the first challenge that we need to transcend is to reiterate that people themselves are doing their own research and creation of knowledge in their day-to-day life. In this event, I would like to share some of the effective indigenous research methods that we have, that we do, especially in doing research in agri-food systems. And when I was writing this, it seems they are very much, I think all of you know this, it's just a matter of saying it. So, one is the mapping or walking through our territory, which is the sense of place and identity for us. So, in the mapping, some of the many things that we can draw or generate from the mapping exercise or walking through our territories are the diversity of the food crops, the different kinds of food crops in the cultivated area. We can list as many as 40 kinds with each kinds of different varieties, so you see hundreds of varieties of food crops in our cultivated crops. But we can also see the location of the naturally occurring wild plants and animals that are part of the people's diet, how the whole territory contributes to the community's diet. We can also locate the abode of the unseen because these are very important to us. They have to have a share of the food, but when you look deeper into it, it has so much a lot to do with the conservation of the species or the regeneration of the species. Like one belief is that if there is one bamboo shoot, you should not be taking it because it's for the spirits or it's for the unseen. And if you look at that in the scientific language, then you will say that's for the regeneration so that something will come out again and reproduce itself. And in the sacred sites, where are also the abode of our spirits, you cannot go and hunt there, so it's a sanctuary for the science also. For us, it's abode of the unseen who are our companions in our territory, but I think for scientists, it's the sanctuary of fauna and flora. So they appreciate it very much, but they will say we are superstitious if we say we do not go there because it's the abode of the spirit. And in the mapping, we did some upgrading. So we also build their capacity to use the GPS and also to build a 3D map so that then they can always come back to the map and talk about the things that we'd like to talk. The second methodology is the use of traditional calendar. It shows the availability of the food at what time of the year. The time to plant and the time to harvest. The time not to disturb the wild animals in the forest, the fishes in the rice land, the fishes in the rivers, because this is the time for them to mate and reproduce again. And the indicators of changes in the weather. The third methodology is storytelling. It can show how certain food are valued and why. It can show changes in the consumption and production pattern of our people. How the wilds are protected and how seeds are conserved and how seeds are exchanged. It can show also why we do certain rituals, especially in our rice land. Every step of our, every stage of the production cycle of the rice land, we do rituals. So then our elders will explain why we have to do those rituals. And then the compare and contrast method. How community elders and leaders are more proactive in the past than in the present because of the assimilation that is ongoing to us. And how they were able to cope with food scarcity and farming. The other is, but now we rely on the government. Sometimes we forget that we have our own ways of our own self reliance. The other is, the other method is the learning by doing when we do innovations in our farming system, like production of organic farm inputs. And this is the, these are the times that we call, sometimes we call on scientists to help us here. Like soil testing of soil test. If we do a production of, we use our resources to produce fertilizers and we also use modern technology and to face and composition, things like that. We call on the scientists to help us with the laboratory work of if our soil is improving if the insects are more diverse insect population. And then we also test the traditional indicators, like for alkaline soil they say that sour and for acidic they say it's, they taste it as bitter. We can test that in the laboratory. It's not validation, but I think it's also in between. And then one of the actual things too is the cooking of traditional crops. Results and outcomes comes even as early as it depends on what you are researching or studying. But the most, the most essential part is the collective analysis. It's one of the most essential process which may lead to policy formulation, like comparing and contrasting the food of the past and the present and the health of the children. And then they will say, oh, let's ban the junk food. But it will also have to have a commitment from the women to retrieve the traditional food that they used to have as a snacks, things like that. Yeah, and then it can also lead to action like reviving our backyard gardens, things like that. For those are the things that we do and then for recommendation. Yeah, of course, full and effect if it's an outsider who is coming to our communities, the full and effective participation of the community should be first ensured. And then, yeah, also indigenous peoples have also come to do their community research and they should be supported. And to also build our capacities. And more important is to, I think more important is that research should be an educational process for the facilitator and the communities. And that the output of research like the knowledge could use should be first, should first benefit the community. For me also, I still find it an internal conflict on publishing. Yeah, because sometimes funders would like publishing. But for me, it will not matter if you publish or not, but it matters very much that what has the community learned and what actual what awareness has been created and what actions have been done because of that research process. And of course, I know also that we indigenous while we have this, so I have profound visa down things like that, but we also have to work with other collaborators. Thank you very much. Oh, thank you so much Florence, that was really great. And it was really interesting to learn about your methods about the mapping and so on storytelling. We have a little bit of time if anybody would like to ask a question, or make a comment. This is Sanjukta Ghosh from the South Asia Institute. I'm a historian and researcher on agricultural knowledge. And this is really related to the methods in indigenous knowledge that we just heard. And I was curious to know, you know, who guards these agricultural calendars that you're talking about, is it still with the elders, or is it also something that the young and the women are involved in. And how is in an agricultural calendar is again very based on a very long term understanding of how seasons work and how crops and animals behave. So, I'm just curious how you're building in this whole notion of climate change with a more traditional agricultural calendar that is in place. And are these things taken into account when you're changing practices or when you're creating new calendars. That's just something I had in mind. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Thank you for the question. At present, actually in the areas that I have gone, climate change is actually in, it does not fit in their calendar. So it's for them also for our elders. There's also, because when they follow the rice cycle, they have indicators like the coming of certain birds, the flowering of certain crops. And they cannot, many, many times they cannot see it anymore. And so, and then also the coming of varieties that those are also taken into consideration. But so, so they say, how do how do we deal? How do they deal with that? But from from the stories that I heard, it says they more and more, they do not rely on the indicators on the changing season, but more and more they rely on dreams. So, but, but then also if, because the calendar also synchronizes the activities, right. And it has a lot of to do with labor allocation, pest control management. So our elders are actually grappling with this change, erotic changes in weather and season. Yeah. That's, that's one of the challenge that we need also to have collaborative work with scientists. Great. Thank you so much. Is there any other question for Florence or comments? Or other sharing from others. I mean, I have to say Florence, and both and Baghele, it, so much of what you said resonated with what I know from indigenous research methods in, in the Andes in the potato park and maize park. And there's, there's a lot of similarity, because I didn't know about, you know, the ones Florence and the Philippines and, but the mapping by walking through the landscape, through the territory, and, and storytelling. And, and many of the principles that both of you talked about, I seem to be quite universal in terms of, you know, being important for indigenous communities, being useful, something that's useful directly to you, and was emphasized by both of you. Right, so I don't know if anybody else wants to make any comment, feel free to jump in and just share your thoughts or reactions. But that also question when I was talking and now I think also the elders are triangulating like their dreams there. And that changes the indicators of seasons, and then where the sun strikes in the morning. Yeah, because these are the things that lead them to declare this is the, we start the season of planting. Thank you so much Florence was really brilliant. Okay, well, in that case, we should probably jump to Alejandro's presentation. Alejandro, are you with us. I think I just saw you. Good morning. Good morning. So to introduce Alejandro. He is the person who did all the translation for the potato park session from catcher to English he's director of programs at the swift foundation. And he's a board member of association and is and an indigenous catcher leader and advisor to the potato park and coordinator of in mit the international network of mountain indigenous peoples. And he's going to talk about the decolonizing methodologies that the NGO and is has developed with the potato park and the maze park communities. Thank you Christina and good morning everyone from my side. It's, it's a pleasure and honor to participate in this panel with so distinguished practitioners and activists and intellectuals. So my feelings. I wanted to share a few slides because for us, visuals, dreaming, imagining visioning captures this very intimate relationship that we have with time with a space. And it encapsulates those dreams that we continue to cut and the picture you see is well known as much picture. But it epitomizes what individual research can do. This is the unexpression of a holistic approach to how ontologies and epistemologies come to do. What we call sumac cows say or when we beer holistic living. But you picture is a very intricate or shows a very intricate relationship between, you know, what a management so high knowledge of hydraulics, engineering, architecture, mechanics, physics. But above all, it shows this relationship with. Big respect for the environment and I think in a current crisis and all these pressing socio economical political and ecological challenges that we are facing this type of knowledge. It has become very important in terms of how we can we need morals. So, in our part of the world, we are a product of, like you see much, much picture is a product of indigenous scholars. Looking for a reaching this goal of when we beer. So this embodies a spirituality, a relationship to the natural world, which is the cornerstone of this conceptions of knowledge, and therefore the purpose of research is established there. Expressing principles and values. We see in our past. How this ontological and epistemic principles are embedded on how our ancestors have passed on knowledge to us. And our responsibility to keep evolving to keep using this knowledge and evolving to respond to challenges of the future. The principles here are relationality in each result research methodologies is about accountability with the rest of our relations. So it is not just about humans. It's about reciprocity that reflects with the relationship that we have among all the living elements that are living beings, including rocks or air or water and that live within this universe of us. Also, reciprocity we call it, I mean, it's important in terms of research because the questions this positivistic colonial worldview that research is neutral that we have to only provide trying for consent. As a matter of establishing consensual relationship when the relationship is not between humans only. And finally balance, which is key to sustainability and how we see to create a balance world within the natural and the human world. Within this, as I said, we have a taxonomy that characterized this where we have three communities three I use and our goal is when we bear. In terms of research methods and learning approaches. I just want to highlight three of them, which are key to all the research activities we do. Yache, which means learning with a mind young guy, which means doing and learning with your hands and moon I, which means learning and doing with a heart. Any type of action has to be carry out or develop within those three tools of learning and action. Now, in terms of decolonizing methods. That we apply participation base in this reciprocal relationship between people and the environment is key to it with a leadership of elders. Where the knowledge transmission and the participation of you is key to it. Within this, we continue to create tools that go beyond or challenges. The colonial view that works is in digital research methods and tools within the format more less or convention conventional qualitative research, we are supposed according to a view, only able to use storytelling community mapping, legends, oral tools that are key to one part of the research. But in our case, in our case, we also use tools that provide the metrics to create data, which after can be used to measure and provide numerical and results that creates a better approaches to solving local problems. Here you have an old drawing of an in command using the key pool, which in this side of the picture, we have translated into a molecular key, which is the same approach the same format, but it reflects what is what is within each one of the high two potatoes, like in these case, or this type of a ranking different types of values, which we call you panel continues to be used by women to rank and give numerical value to different uses of medicinal plants or other crops. This also is applied in assessing climate change for instance here, where we create hubs every 100 meters up in the mountain to assess population dynamics, how pests or crops are moving up because of climate change. This provides again using the same type of metals and tools numerical results that then we can use to create solutions. This has allowed us to have or in the case of the potato park, a large number, one of the largest in the world of potato collection, keep those potatoes continue to do research in terms of participatory plant breeding, or the collection of this varieties that are in dangers of disappearing and each multiplication and transfer to other communities. So the focus of this as well as the focus in the Inca time continue to be how do we create solutions through food. Also, we applied to policy. No matter how supposedly complicated it is. This is an example of how we come into conclusions on an evaluation on CRISPR. This new technology that's floating many research institutions of the world and being again the, you know, the silver bullet that's going to create all these changes when we believe that what we have within us can be the doors to the future. So to finish I know I'm passing my time. This type of research can be perhaps better beyond it's is the colonizing focus. Also, it can be conceptualized as some type of indigenous mixed method of strategy that combines qualitative and quantitative research practices and responds to this main objective of sumac cause I, which is the aspiration of our communities in this. As we see in the case of the Kipu or the Yupana, we use the appropriate theoretical frameworks to transform those old tools into new ways of keep learning and keep creating new knowledge. So while our research strategy and metals are framed within a colonial and a biocultural history, I think that the principles and values that are inherent to this practice creates also the possibility of new tomorrows and decolonize research practice. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alejandro. That was fascinating. It's, it's wonderful to hear about the how your research combines a qualitative and quantitative but all within the use of indigenous principles and this world views and for the goal of sumac cause I, which is holistic well being or when be viewed. I don't know if anybody would like to ask a question. I realize we have one for the previous Florence as well. We can go back to it in a minute. But Alejandro, does anyone have any questions or comments? I will then ask one if that's okay. The diagram you showed at the beginning Alejandro with the principles that you were talking about, maybe you could explain a little bit where that diagram, what it is and where it's from. I think that's fascinating to learn about it for others who don't know. Which one Christina? Santa Cruz Pachacuti. Oh, this is the diagram that was that captured what was expressed as an art and a holistic art expression in the most sacred temple of Cusco, the Corricanto, the Golden Temple. And this conceptual graphic this drawing came from an Indian chronic who was able to translate it into this conceptual graphic in the mid 1500s after you know, you're I mean the Europeans arrived in Cusco. And it basically captures our space, our quality, our universe where we conceptualize three communities that interact, reciprocate and try to work together towards achieving suma kaosai. And those communities are the human community or the runa which includes everything that is a natural human and human's nature and reciprocity. So domesticated crops, animals, water anything that lives around humans is considered runa. The other realm is the salcha or the wild. So anything that has its own world like a wild biodiversity, wild water, wild wind whatever humans don't have control it has its own community. And the third one which is the critical one is the auki which reflects our connection with the sacred. That's where our ancestors and the sacred principles that define the epistemological architecture of knowledge are embedded. So these three communities have to work together and the way of communicating and seeking balances through the sacred principle of reciprocity and once that balance is achieved we have reached suma kaosai. Let's go to us briefly so people know which one you're talking about please. I was referring to this to this where you have this old drawing of Santa Cruz Pachacuti and if you see the middle star that's the southern cross most indigenous traditions is a sacred symbol because it connects the sacred with the human world. It connects the we call it chakana. It's like a bridge all types of epistemologies and generations and different types of conceiving the world is the key of diversity and with that we have the auki aiu which is the sacred aiu which is the wild and the runa aiu the human realm and when there is reciprocity as I said we achieve suma kaosai. So this paradigm this concept of suma kaosai of course go beyond this idea of sustainability where you know the economical interest or its view upon an architecture that keeps pushing this capitalist world view of the western world to the infinite how we keep destroying nature without destroying. That's what sustainability means in terms of I think western mind. So we kind of challenged that with this paradigm where the ethical aspects of research which are embedded in the spiritual values of indigenous peoples are strongly reflected in the auki aiu. Thank you. Thanks a lot for explaining that. So the old diagram from this chronicle in the 1500s now guides their research which is led by community researchers from each community in the potato park and it's very much about traditional knowledge, indigenous knowledge transmission, transmitting the values and transmitting the knowledge between elders and youth through the research process as Alejandro mentioned at the beginning. So it's a way of really revitalizing these cultural values and biocultural heritage using these ancient principles from the Incas which I think is a really nice example which I haven't seen others do but I would love to find similar graphics and principles and concepts for other indigenous peoples. I think it would really help in revitalizing biocultural heritage. Would anybody like to share any reflections with Alejandro? If not we can go back to Florence's question. So if people want to continue your presentation, anybody want to? Don't be shy. Okay we can always come back to Alejandro and to Baghele in the conversation but for now I'm going to look at this question for Florence. Penilla would you like to say your question? Are you still with us? Okay I'll read it out. Thank you Florence for the rich presentation. When you refer to the elders triangulation I also see we can add the very long timeline they have to build their experiences on. They have observed and interacting with their landscape for so long and with so many perspectives so it can never be compensated with other methods from science which is in the best case study one factor in long time series but many times represents a snapshot in one dimension. Okay so it's a comment and Penilla would you please explain that if you're still with us because I didn't fully understand it. But I think Penilla is trying to say that because I mentioned that in the age of yeah on the triangulation I will start first with that because in our when we do our research we found out that when they declare the season to one season to start they make use of when there are places where at the first break of the sunrise the sun strikes somewhere and another is the indicators in the change in weather around the surroundings and another is their dream so that now we only hear that or rely on dreams because changes are happening and some of the indicators have disappeared and also that of course yeah something like that but what I understood from Penilla is that because I mentioned that with the age of this change in climate and erratic weather condition we may need also support to hasten the knowledge development on how we are going to appropriate our calendar in the changing times and so I think Penilla is saying that we may not be needing other knowledge system because our elders are there that's what I got from her comment right. Okay thank you very much. I thought might be really relevant to others is to understand a bit better more specifically your methods of research Alejandro so the capacity building workshop workshops for the indigenous research experts and then the app that you use for them to collect the data and that goes straight to a database and you can explain all this much better but we've been talking a little bit about documenting knowledge and databases and how to build a knowledge base in communities then maybe you could explain your methodology on that aspect please. How to integrate metrics and make measurements that reflect better or more accurate how we conceptualize our own universe in terms of its relationality everything is connected to everything so you cannot do research which is books and some type of speciality how the results of this type of holistic approach or integrative approach where you have mixed methods working all the time can be captured and stored so we had developed a process by which we tried in the first instance to combine collection methods in terms of the qualitative and quantitative approaches without making this type of distinctions but rather looking the needs of particular phenomena that we may be interested in learning or solving. Once we have the tools that are decided to gather information then we have created ways, visual ways of capturing that type of information which includes the use now of an application that we have developed in-house that takes advantage of the visuals that a phone or a tablet these days may offer like video, photograph GPS for mapping and voice recording so those are also tools that you would use in traditional knowledge transmission within this context so we use those but frame within an app for a tablet by which we start gathering information and then selecting them in what we call a biocultural database. Once database is when this is stored in the database then as you've seen in the pictures our elders get together in knowledge circles and they start analyzing the data by use of graphics. This is then tabulated into boxes as you see in the U-Pana which is kind of a Chinese abacus the way we use these boxes a matrix and the ranking by using grains of mice. It provides the numerical data that we are looking at which is then translated into back into the database and then we mix it with the help of testing programs for research like eye survey or orders from which we have borrowed the methodology and we can do the analytical measurements and arrive to some conclusions those conclusions go into another meeting of elders and youth who can analyze the resulting information to take the best decisions in terms of which of those or how to apply that information in solving problems. It could be pest or disease in a crop it could be soil fertility, it could be water management, it could be policy the matrix idea that our ancestors used the matrix tool that our ancestors used to use of course they allow us to create this type of approach of process and then once it's the decision is made then the community assembly sanctions and became part of a live plan so it's included in a long term plan which the local authorities have the obligation to implement so that's more or less how we combine our old tools more often from modern tools the mechanics of doing it and produce results that can be useful to particular situations or problem solving that are more localized I don't know if that answers the question Yes, thank you very much maybe I'll just add to clarify because I know about the transect use and in the maze park they've been doing transects walking through the landscape using smart phones with this app and the elder or community researcher maybe a staff from the local NGO a scientist they walk together and there's probably more people from the communities and in that way they can do a transect looking at the plants with the elders talking about their uses and the knowledge being transferred to the youth and the plant being having a botanical name and that goes in as they walk to see each plant and they take a picture and they put the information in and they collect information about medicinal and nutritious wild plants and that's all gone straight into their community database so anyway I just thought trying to give it some practical example of how it's used Right, so we're coming close to the end we still have a few minutes of discussion I put a question in the agenda how can interdisciplinary methods be used in a decolonizing participatory action research framework I don't know if anybody wants to comment on that I guess we've heard about lots of interdisciplinary methods ethnobotany, we've heard about archaeobotany and we've heard about oral histories and I don't know if anyone wants to reflect or comment on their usefulness for indigenous lead research Christina, if I may, can you allow me? Yes, go ahead please I think what you have said is very important but it's part of the whole picture you know we are reducing this discussion to the practice of research in the field where you have to be respectful you have to follow primary informed consent and try to support the local movement in terms of decolonizing processes but decolonizing must also happen with institutions if you see many of the institutions out there that do this type of research they don't have any indigenous academic or researchers in their staff or research is done in a way that to hire indigenous researchers in the country of origin and do this and present it as a participatory I hope the participatory also can include the salaries so that this is the same type of recognition goes to researchers indigenous researchers you know balancing with those of academics also the lack of indigenous researchers to actually guide this transformative approach decolonizing approach in these institutions everywhere in the world it needs to be complemented with the devolution of genetic material cultural material that was misappropriated that was pillaged from indigenous lands in colonial times and is overdue that seeds medicinal plants ornamental trees go back to the communities of origin and stop being misused and utilized through patents and all types of commodifying methods in western institutions or what we feel it's sacred and it's exhibit as a trophies in museums and other institutions must be the world of indigenous quarters so I think that this discussion decolonizing research also takes into account this other side of the coin where colonial race is white supremacy and research continues to be very strong and it's not changing so it's just like a reflection on your previous comment thank you thank you very much Alejandro I have two questions would you like to say something so it actually was a question on this aspect of decolonizing for Alejandro because I see that there's a use of historical text of European colonial text and of the colonization and I wonder because we have also a lot of further Caribbean but the question is how do you make the decision of actually what decolonizing that narrative from those texts what is the process that the community makes to actually like this is what we're going to take from this I think that's defined by the specificity of what the community considers to be priority in terms of solving problems you know it could be as in our case climate change particularly in mountain ecosystems in the Andes is one of the existential paths that we have all the crops are moving very fast up in the mountain our crops are just at the top and we are very sure that we're going to lose not just the crop but also complete seed and food systems so in that case everybody agrees that whatever effort we make into learning, creating knowledge organizing information to solve those problems must be focused on that type of on that type of problem solving and then once we have the objective of what we want to do then we go into what we have and I think in our case because we have a long history of having created a relationship with environment and tribe own it in a very organic manner that means that we have applied science and technology in the past you know for the benefit of all relations the benefit not just of humans but the benefit of all we use to keep focusing on that focusing on that focusing on that type of balance and interaction that we create a new tomorrow so then we choose the different tools be it from the past or present or combine and that's where we resolve the question so I guess in each context it's going to be different thank you Alejandra I'm afraid we've got well we're meant to be finishing in two minutes but if it's okay we could stay for another five minutes as people want to ask questions, Yuching Song wants to say something go ahead Yuching Yes, thank you Thank you for all the contributors Alejandra's presentation about by cultural heritage framework really remind me of our spiritual leader Ji Xianhe he attended the day before yesterday that he presented about the communities by cultural part forming into four part culture, physical which is an eco-biodiversity part and the community part and he described that exactly like Alejandro described it is a culture spiritual as a base as a core and it is a live and organic process interactive within the community other communities end with the outside world and it's a live process evolution process so I think that if we're talking about the colonizing research the first thing we need to do is that we really need to understand them, learning from them in order to realize that we really need to be follow the community-based action research to the ground, working together with them and rather otherwise we cannot understand the whole it's a whole world, it's a whole complex complexity, a live, organic world it's not like a science, it's just a part and a piece one specialty in one part we really need to understand the linkage, the whole systems if we're not with them, we have no idea so that's what I want to add up, thank you great, thank you very much Zheji, you wanted to make a comment please go ahead yes, there is a thread in the discussion about what can be recovered for example from colonial archives or history and material written by the outsider, right now in the Cordillera we have our own history because the books that are used in the schools were all colonial history however we had a very strong supporter who was a historian and he's an American scholar actually and he wrote cracks through the parchment curtain and what he did was to actually use all of the historical archives but using historical research to understand and interpret what was actually happening on the land at that time and that material that he has written including his other historical writing supplemented a lot the material that the students and the researchers the indigenous researchers used to write our own history of the Cordillera so there really is a lot of material that can be interpreted in our own way that is in the colonial archives for example when even in this is not just in the Philippines for example in Moluccas when they needed their maps to record their customary systems they had to go back to the Dutch libraries to get that right so there is a way of there is another aspect of the colonization of those colonial institutions and I think they are starting to take the steps we're in that history is understood and owned and appropriated for us to make our own story and I think this is one of the strands that has gone through the discussion thank you I'm afraid we're out of time now it's been great discussion thank you so much everybody I'm not going to summarize everything but just to say I think this issue that Alejandro raised about the repatriation is a really important one and we've seen how in the potato park repatriation of native potatoes has brought back revived indigenous knowledge and culture and created a genetic reserve that's important for the whole world and there's a lot of seeds that indigenous communities have lost and are sitting in gene banks being used and used for climate adaptation and being protected in nature so that's a really important issue I wanted to say thank you so much to Alejandro and to Baghele Chilisa and to Florence Dagitan for your great presentations I've learnt so much from you thank you very much and thank you to the presenters this morning and just to close really a few things that we've learnt in the last four webinars we've learnt that indigenous food systems play a critical role in achieving SDG2 and in feeding humanity in a sustainable way in future in the longer term and in a resilient way not only to climate change but to COVID-19 and also in a compassionate way because of the solidarity values whereas under the current food system we're seeing growing food insecurity and hunger and so indigenous food systems provide critical lessons for transitions to more sustainable and equitable food systems we've heard very strongly today that research must address indigenous people's priorities and the many challenges facing indigenous food systems and this is urgent because we are losing traditional knowledge we're losing crops, we're losing culture very fast and research must also address the unequal power relations between researchers and indigenous peoples and be empowering towards indigenous peoples and give them a voice and recognise them as experts who have ancestral wisdom that offers valuable pathways towards sustainable and equitable development so finally on terms of the next steps we're going to circulate the workshop report and use the outputs to inform various policy meetings I know this hasn't been a perfect forum for networking but I hope you will follow up on contacts that you've made I'm really grateful for all of your inputs all of the indigenous peoples, all of the universities the FAO and IID partners we need to continue working together and finally a huge thanks to all the indigenous experts and speakers from universities and a huge thanks to Philippa Ryan from Q who we are doing this workshop with and the AHRC project and a huge thanks to the IID support team to Matt Wright and Alistair who have provided great technical support and to Beth Down at IID I've really enjoyed it, I've learnt so much from you I hope we can continue the conversation we'll probably send a short survey if you wouldn't mind anyway, I'm sorry about the distance and that we can't actually see each other but thanks a lot for all the learning goodbye