Static and dynamic knowledge

Today we had our discussion groups, our triads, about this issue:
"Indigenous knowledge is making sense of the world', it is a living knowledge and its very nature demands that it remains in a state of becoming to maintain the vitality of our learning together." - Michael Williams, 2000

Here is my first free write after our triad's discussion of this issue.

We talked about dynamic vs. static knowledge, first explored the idea that written knowledge was static, and oral traditions were, in their nature, dynamic. But then it seems that even written knowledge is dynamic: people are always reinterpreting something that is written, so even that changes. I'm thinking now about how differently the Bible is read by right wing fundamentalist Christians in the US, compared to how it was read by Christians in the 5th century who read it in Aramaic. The words may be somewhat the same, but the way they're interpreted is vastly different. People take out what they want to take out of it, and warp it to suit their purposes, rather than relying literally on what’s there.

So perhaps writing something down does not reify it.

Then we also talked about memory, and the nature of memory. Is memory really an exact record of something that has occurred in the past? One person's memory of an event will differ from another person's, even if it's the same event, and memory is always reconstructed. We also talked about how memory might be very different in people who rely on written texts, compared to people who work in an oral tradition. Memory can be improved by having to exercise it, having to use it, and in an oral tradition, that's what you've got, is memory alone. So maybe the "memory muscle" is stronger in an oral tradition.

We also talked about law changing and being dynamic, vs. having been stable for thousands of generations. Aboriginal people say that their law is from their ancestors, from the land, and is unchanging, where white man's law is always changing. So how can it be unchanging if it relies on a dynamic knowledge tradition? Knowledge changes, law doesn't. It seems like a paradox, but often there is a real wisdom in paradoxes, so … could be something.

We also talked about notions of time. When someone gives a story, and the knowledge in that story, no one asks, "How old is that story? What was the date and time when that knowledge started?" Though we do in science, and maybe other academic disciplines too. You give the exact source of the knowledge, and in my field, if it's really old, it's kind of looked down on, like, surely that's been overturned by now. But more deeply, the question arises about time, who's to say what's a long time and what's a short time? Who's to say what is young and what is old?

We also talked about the social nature of knowledge in an oral tradition. That you hear a story, and then re-tell it to others. When one person tells a story, others can say, hey, that's not how that happened. I was there, or that's my story, and here's how it goes. It can be fiercely contested publicly. Someone might be the boss for knowledge, for a story, and have the authority to say, this is how it is. So there's a corrective process for how stories get expressed. Hannah pointed out that knowledge isn't just in stories but also is expressed in other forms, painting, dance. And I pointed out that the knowledge isn't just in the people, but also in the land.

We also talked about different meanings of the word know. Knowledge that you have from your own experience is deep in your body and your senses; something you've read or heard is more external to you. So does it make sense to use the same word, knowledge, to refer to both kinds of things? Aren't they different kinds of knowing?

Stories also get known deeply because you hear them and then re-tell them. You are in the role of expresser, not just receiver. With written things, you don't tend to re-express it, you just read it, but you don't go re-telling the book you read to your friends. You can, or at least parts of it you can. And there is the chance to publicly give feedback on something you've read, to contest it. But the media, like TV, is very much a one-way street. You don't get to go back to the source and then contest it in a way that all the public can see. You can't say, hey that's my story, or that's not how it happened. Only those with sufficient power and money get access to publicly contesting what's in the media in a way that the public can see. In indigenous knowledge, that self-correcting feature, or rather, that socially correcting feature is there in knowledge.

Isn't it interesting how I keep coming back to the media as a course of knowledge (there I typed "course" instead of "source" when I meant to type "source") in my culture, and always in stark contrast to forms of indigenous knowledge?

We talked about school as being a place that didn't recognize the value of oral tradition, and that form of knowledge. The white western education system as being one that tries to treat knowledge as if it's not dynamic. As if it's not always shifting. But that might be more true of primary and secondary school. It seems in the academy, once you get to a uni, it is more dynamic and shifting.

We keep running onto the issue of language, and not knowing the Aboriginal languages, and in today's discussion, talked about not knowing what their words for "know" are. As well as how it affects schooling in knowledge when it's conducted in one language vs. another.