Who are scholars?

In academia, when one gets a sabbatical, one is often expected to go visit other researchers at other universities. I've asked to do something quite different with my sabbatical: to go to Peru and meet with indigenous elders (Ashaninka and Shipibo) and talk about indigenous knowledge and science. It has suddenly dawned on me that I am going to go visit other scholars. The elders and healers in their cultures are the scholars, the researchers, those who seek after knowledge. Just because they don't have PhD's and aren't in universities doesn't mean they aren't experts and scholars within their own intellectual traditions.

For scientists to engage in mutually respectful dialogue with indigenous scholars probably means we have to give up the idea that universities are the only repositories of knowledge, scholarship, and expertise. The indigenous equivalent of an Oxford don may be an old man or woman sitting out in a rainforest or desert somewhere. Or living in a city, but keeping alive indigenous knowledge. These are the holders of knowledge and expertise within indigenous people's intellectual traditions.

My friend Jeremy has said that some of the elders of certain tribes in the Amazon are revered throughout the Amazon region for their knowledge, that studying healing with one of those elders is the Amazonian equivalent of studying at Oxford or Cambridge. I'm just now "getting" that idea - it has just now truly sunk in.