¶ … 1991 by Eugene Linden, describes how traditional knowledge and expertise are vanishing as tribes die out or are being lured to the technology-rich modern world.
Throughout the centuries, the long-established customs and rituals of indigenous peoples have served them well. They know how to navigate oceans, utilize the medicinal purposes of plants, and understand the ecology of harvesting. Much of this knowledge has already disappeared. Scientists from the western world viewed it as having little value. However, some modern scientists realize the importance of this knowledge and are working to preserve it.
Linden explains it as a voluntary crisis, one brought on, in large part, by the younger tribal members. It is the young tribe members who are entranced by the modern world and view the traditional ways as illegitimate and irrelevant....
These young members are turning away from time-honored methods, thereby breaking the chain of oral traditions. As the young members leave the tribes for the vast fruits of modern society, they quickly forget the ways of their elders. Linden cites language as one example. "If a language disappears," Linden said, "traditional knowledge tends to vanish with it..."
The "price of forgetting," he added, is that the soul of the culture slowly dies and with that goes all the traditional knowledge, leaving behind only a shadow of a culture. This lack of knowledge has led to violence in cities and a population explosion as traditional methods of birth control have been forgotten.
When the young people move away from their tribes, they see a modern world they can't explain to their elders. And as they begin to lose their culture through…
