Indigenous sciences are not pseudosciences

Abstract

Given how difficult it is to define science, it is surprising how readily many people consider Indigenous sciences to be pseudoscience. I review definitions of indigenous science, as well as science and pseudoscience. I then proffer that either western or indigenous science is any broadly Bayesian undertaking, i.e. testing and updating hypotheses (prior and posterior probabilities) based on observed data. Western and indigenous sciences simply have different priors, ask different questions, and sometimes use different data, hence they may make very different predictions about very different phenomena. Indigenous sciences seem to have no more myth than do western sciences. I provide examples of where western and indigenous sciences may provide complementary approaches for understanding ecology and evolution.