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Take a swim through Clear Lake, North America鈥檚 oldest (and California鈥檚 largest) natural body of fresh water, and you鈥檒l encounter the outsiders: bass, catfish, crappie, and a dozen other predatory fish with no ecological basis for being there. The fish began arriving in the 1870s when state agents, ignorant of the local ecosystem, recklessly introduced wave after wave of invasive animals that permanently wrecked the lake鈥檚 aquatic balance. These predators drove local extinctions, devastated food webs, and destroyed tribal fishing culture. Four endemic fish species were ultimately wiped out, and a fifth鈥攖he Clear Lake hitch鈥攊s nearly extinct.

For some 150 years, authorities managing the region introduced alien species, never consulting the tribal bands who had successfully managed the lake for millennia. Likewise, scientists studying Clear Lake鈥檚 toxic mercury levels and harmful algal blooms failed to alert Indigenous communities to the looming threat. Local involvement came only when tribal experts began , , and  to protect native species in the lake. Fish kills on Clear Lake are persistent and frequent, but only the tribal EPA office of the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians .

Ignorance of Native science and the centuries of knowledge it represents is hardly limited to Clear Lake. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife鈥檚 historical inability to distinguish among seven separate species of abalone (well known to coastal tribes, including the Chumash, Ohlone, and Yurok) led to successive waves of over-exploitation. All seven species are currently in trouble; the one remaining viable fishery鈥攔ed abalone鈥攚as shut down in 2017 and . In the western United States, which is experiencing the worst drought in 1,200 years, government-mandated fire-suppression plans replaced millennia of Indigenous wildland stewardship that included vegetation management and the intentional burning known as 鈥済ood fire.鈥� Instead, every year, millions of acres burn, homes are annihilated, and people die in catastrophic wildfires that cost billions of dollars.

With climate change escalating superstorms, heat waves, mega-floods, and drought, Indigenous science can no longer be ignored. For almost two millennia, beginning with local inhabitants of the Mediterranean who provided baseline data for the 600 plants described in Dioscorides鈥�  in 77 CE, Indigenous peoples have furnished substantive source material for scientific research. Even the system of scientific nomenclature鈥攃ategorizing living things by using Latin genus and species names, such as Homo sapiens (human) and Canis lupus (wolf)鈥攊s derived from uncredited Indigenous science. The 18th-century Swedish scholar Carl Linnaeus, often referred to as 鈥渢he father of taxonomy鈥� for his work codifying species classifications, based his taxonomic nomenclature on Indigenous knowledge from the Indonesian鈥揗alaysian archipelago documented by 16th- and 17th-century explorers. In other words, Linnaeus plagiarized the Natives鈥� naming systems and claimed them for his own when describing 鈥渘ew鈥� botanical specimens. (Side note: The Linnean Society of London now describes Linnaeus as  because he associated positive character traits, such as wisdom and inventiveness, with the 鈥淓uropaeus鈥� classification of humans, and 鈥渕onstrous鈥� traits, such as sluggishness and greed, with the 鈥淎fricanus鈥� and 鈥淎siaticus鈥� groups.)

As it turns out, Indigenous knowledge is exceptionally nuanced and deep. It is cumulative, place-based, and acquired largely through observation and experimentation on both large and small scales. Indigenous science鈥攊ncluding contributions highlighted in the  and the 鈥攊s crowd-sourced citizen science taken to the next level, constructed over multiple generations in close relationship with the species, habitats, bodies of water, weather patterns, and other natural phenomena surrounding the observers. It is not superstition or isolated observation or pseudoscience, all misinterpretations stemming from the racist and classist assumptions of Western explorers and ethnographers starting in the 17th century and persisting to the present day.

The languages of Native peoples overflow with scientific observations. In Northern California,  place names include regok-o-y奴 u wro, meaning 鈥渢rout run up a creek,鈥� and tskwe鈥�ges-o-rike鈥�n, translated as 鈥渉arbor seal where he sits,鈥� describing a rock in a river. The  term for sea lion is 测颈诲补:肠丑鈥檌苍-迟别鈥檌濒, meaning 鈥渃oming from downstream鈥攖hey swim along.鈥� The Tolowa Dee-ni鈥� name for the California condor translates to 鈥渨hale lifter,鈥� a nod to the fact that condors sometimes feed on the carcasses of humpback whales. However, because academia relegates Indigenous knowledge to ethnic studies or files it under folklore or legend鈥攖hus confining its study to scholars in the humanities鈥攙ast reservoirs of historical expertise have remained untapped by the scientific community, especially in the United States.

Last year, a Bishop Paiute elder named Harry Williams, the last living encyclopedia of ancient Paiute hydrological systems in California鈥檚 Owens Valley, passed away. Understanding local hydrology is essential to solving critical ecological issues in the region, including mitigating the , saving the endangered Owens Valley pupfish, and protecting native plants that once flourished under Paiute irrigation. Prior to belated efforts to document Williams鈥� knowledge, the  had been performed by Julian Steward, an ethnographer who spent  interviewing 13 Paiute people in 1927 and 1928.

The disparity between 12 weeks鈥� research by an outsider and a lifetime of fieldwork by a resident Paiute is immense. Yet a persistent lack of knowledge about鈥攐r partnership with鈥攃ommunities whose lands are studied by scientists is commonplace, running rife through the r茅sum茅s of Euro-American researchers hailed as the founders of science disciplines and conservation programs: , , John Muir. Paraphrasing my colleague and Southeast Asia specialist Roy Ellen, what we now recognize as scientific knowledge of the natural world was constituted largely by researchers absorbing preexisting local folk knowledge while erasing whatever they weren鈥檛 interested in or willing to absorb鈥攁nd, I would add, failing to credit the source of that knowledge.

Indigenous peoples continuously occupying specific ecosystems for centuries or millennia maintain intimate familiarity with how those ecologies function. From the Yanomami in the Amazon to the I帽upiat in the Arctic, Native communities successfully shepherded resources through a combination of deeply held belief systems and sophisticated adaptive management technologies, augmented by the pervasive accumulation, intergenerational transfer, and application of scientific knowledge. This is why Native peoples developed scientific terminology to categorize and characterize species and interspecies relationships鈥攕uch as birds associated with specific fruiting trees, or the migration patterns of walrus and caribou鈥攍ong before Western science invented academic fields like agronomy, animal behavior, ecology, climate science, restoration ecology, soil science, and zoology. Traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK, is a scientific term used to acknowledge this wide-ranging body of nature-based expertise.

But a cultural blitzkrieg has tried to wipe that away. The era that saw invasive fish first introduced to Clear Lake was characterized by government-sanctioned massacres of First Peoples and the species most sacred to them. The devastation included rampant slaughter of apex predators (wolves, bears) and ecosystem engineers (bison, beavers, salmon); the enforced servitude of tribal members and the removal of their children to boarding schools; and the 鈥溾�� that criminalized Native beliefs and practices.

Disdain for, and erasure of, Indigenous peoples and their lifeways and culturally significant species paralleled Western myths that Americans of European descent would tame and improve wilderness and wild peoples. This is why national parks were founded and why Indigenous peoples throughout the world are still forbidden from residing, hunting, fishing, or gathering in their ancestral territories that lie squarely within those parks.

When science is dominated by a cultural subset, , influencing which questions are asked, who gets to ask them, how the questions are asked, and where scientific efforts are focused. For example, when I began graduate school in ecology, mutualisms鈥攊nterspecies relationships in which both species benefit鈥攚ere considered rare, and my assigned readings focused largely on competition and predation. We learned all about resource scarcity and predator鈥損rey cycles, but nothing about trees sharing metabolic resources or belowground biochemical warning systems (鈥�,鈥� which is widely recognized by Indigenous experts).

Twenty years later, the ubiquity of mutualisms in aquatic and terrestrial systems is widely acknowledged. How did scientists overlook such common ecological phenomena? Retrospective meta-analyses of scientific studies provide a clue: 70% of published studies during the past generation concentrated on  or on , in a field where the overwhelming majority of scientists were males of European ancestry  primarily on Europe and the Americas. Because of who decided which questions to ask, we didn鈥檛 investigate the sorts of things, or interact with the sorts of people, that would have enabled us to see and study positive multi-species relationships.

In stark contrast, traditional ecological knowledge and the origin stories of Indigenous peoples are replete with positive multi-species relationships. In Karuk stories, Turtle gave fire to Frog, and Frog took fire underwater before spitting it into willow roots along the river. For Karuk firefighters, this translates into setting up nighttime burns to keep fire in the grasses, protecting turtles nesting in the willows. While the modern world is surprised by  of coyotes and badgers cooperating on hunting expeditions, stories of coyote鈥揵adger collaborations have been circulating among , , , and Klamath tribes (among others) for centuries, possibly millennia.

During my career as a university lecturer, whenever scientists in my field alluded to place-based or experiential knowledge, they described it as 鈥渁necdotal鈥� or derived from an 鈥渋nformant,鈥� downgrading local expertise as nonscientific or ancillary to 鈥渞eal鈥� science. In every natural resource management agency meeting I attend as a consultant, decisions are ostensibly based on the 鈥渂est available science.鈥� Translation? Anything written by someone with degrees accompanying their name, even if it was published decades ago or is the sole article on the topic, will take precedence over the unpublished expertise of a Native or local practitioner.

But when we begin our scientific analyses with place-based expertise and TEK, our theoretical world is expanded, enabling richer and more rigorous science. Researchers working in the Peruvian Amazon with the Matsigenka tribe documented  in the traditional Matsigenka classification system; another Amazonian group, the Mats茅s, recognizes . One team of scientists  that traditional ecological knowledge 鈥渞epresents a vast and underutilized database about habitat diversity, species distributions, ecological interactions among organisms, economically important species and sustainable management practices.鈥�

If we define wealth as the concentration of irreplaceable human and natural capital, then regions with the highest concentrations of languages and species, known as , constitute the richest areas on the planet. Protecting that wealth must be a collaborative effort, beginning with the founders and original cultivators of that wealth, whether we refer to them as First Nations, First Peoples, Aboriginals, Indigenous peoples, or Natives.

As , a Canadian researcher, recently tweeted: 鈥淧rotip for environmental scientists: when writing about gaps, say 鈥榥othing/little is published on this topic鈥� rather than 鈥榥othing/little is known about this topic鈥� because it鈥檚 almost certain that local people and Indigenous people know.鈥� To this pro tip I would add another suggestion: Say, 鈥淲e have yet to connect with local experts,鈥� because in most cases, sadly, my fellow researchers don鈥檛 even think to try.

Why, despite current reckonings with  in the 21st century, does Indigenous science continue to get short shrift? The reason is that what we credit as 鈥渟cience鈥� continues to be embedded within a hierarchy of knowledge produced in the English language by university-educated and -affiliated academics. Anything produced by a European or an American of European descent is automatically awarded a higher status, despite that preference being biased and therefore unscientific.

The world is waking up to the need for change, and the tide is slowly turning. My own doctoral thesis, completed in 2004, focused on Indigenous Indonesian communities with encyclopedic knowledge of thousands of species and farmers who incorporate sophisticated understanding of variations in microclimates, soils, wildlife behavior patterns, and rice genetics to . On the other side of the Pacific, thanks to expert testimony from myself and  before the California Fish and Game Commission, Native science informed the  of marine protected areas and led to the appointment of  at every level of the California Natural Resources Agency.

These examples, alongside the increasing recruitment of Indigenous scholars in universities and research institutions, are spurring paradigm shifts in conservation policies. With the help of tribal co-management, Indigenous conservation practices are now being applied across a  of national, state, and county wildlands, including Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, Grand Portage National Monument in Minnesota, Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida, and Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. The same input is helping to conserve culturally significant species, such as .

The natural world is best understood through long-term, repeated, intimate contact with ecosystems and their associated experts, a practice that remains in short supply among most scientists. Local communities and Indigenous peoples, on the other hand, have accumulated generations鈥� worth of scientific data and expertise, much of it overlooked as ; elders die; ; historical documents languish in rarely consulted microfiche files or white papers; and local experts, fed up with being excluded and ignored, boycott agency meetings.

Environmental problems that took generations to become entrenched cannot be resolved by transient researchers or long-distance government staff. Now is the time for all hands on deck, especially the expert hands (and minds) of Native peoples whose lifeways, cultures, and identities are irrevocably intertwined with their ancestral territories. Enrolling local tribal experts as science advisers, partners, and co-managers in addressing biodiversity loss, climate change, legacy pollutants, and other pernicious issues not only makes sense, but is the only way to effectively turn things around.

This story , a digital magazine tackling science controversies and deceptions. It has been published here with permission.

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