Indigenous knowledge and the microbiome

The paper below was sent to me by a New Zealander who told me that it was an exemplar of how “indigenous knowledge” is touted as a way of advancing modern science by contributing new ideas and perspectives.  It wasn’t that the sender endorsed it, but rather questioned its assertions.  When I saw the title implying that indigenous knowledge could, by connecting with “colonized Western science”, improve scientific understanding of the microbiome. I was dubious, too. After all, the discovery of microbes is an achievement of “colonial science”, for indigenous peoples, be they Inuit, Native American, or, in this case, Māori, simply didn’t know about microbes and had no way to visualize them—ergo no way to study them. How, then, could indigenous knowledge of the microbiome contribute anything to modern science?

The answer, if you read the paper and some of the papers it cites, is that it can’t. What I’m NOT saying is not that indigenous people can’t contribute to scientific understanding in this area, for they can, simply by collaborating with “modern” scientists and also, perhaps, by calling attention to some phenomena that will lead science into new areas of microbial research.  But even there the accomplishments are thin so far, though there are some Māori working in microbial science and collaborating with non-Māori scientists in projects involving microbes.

But that’s not what the authors, two of whom are of Māori ancestry, maintain. Their claim is given in this part of abstract of this paper from Environmental Microbiology (click on screenshot below to read, pdf here):

Indigenous Peoples have a rich and long-standing connection with the environments that they descend from—a connection that has informed a deep and multifaceted understanding of the relationship between human well-being and the environment. Through cultural narratives and practices, much of this knowledge has endured despite the ongoing effects that colonization has had on many Indigenous peoples across the world. These narratives and practices, based on observation, experimentation, and practical application over many generations, have the potential to make compelling contributions to our understanding of the environmental microbiome and its relationship to health.

This is the claim that indigenous knowledge, in this case Mātauranga Māori or Māori “ways of knowing” , will give us insights into the microbiome that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. But how can that be since MM has nothing in it about microorganisms? It turns out those insights don’t seem to exist, but they bury their claim in a number of assertions (some of which are true) about the Māori.

First, what do the authors mean by “microbiome”? There are two construals: the microbial fauna associated with the environment in general, and then the microbial fauna associated with us: in our skin and in our gut. They go back and forth between these two interpretations.

Read for yourself:

Here are the claims that, say the authors, support their assertion:

a.) Māori “ways of knowing” give unique perspectives on life that can further research on the microbiome. Here are two of them:

Inherent in the ancestral interactions with nature came the creation of kōrero tuku iho (traditional teachings and wisdom that is passed down through subsequent generations). These traditional teachings contained and still carry meaningful sources of mātauranga (knowledge) or messages about the structures of nature and how to successfully navigate them. Indigenous narratives are replete with examples connecting the health of individuals and communities with the natural environment. For example, Inyang refers to a proverb from the Ibibio of Kenya—“ke owo aba nte nkankuk omo”—which suggests that a person’s life is “replicated” in their environment (38). Luther Standing Bear of the Sicangu and Oglala Lakota once noted that “we are of the soil and the soil is of us” (39). Whakataukī (Māori proverbs) often refer to the environment as the source of wellbeing.

and (my bolding)

The ability for Indigenous scientists and researchers to articulate, explain, and understand scientific phenomena through their own cultural lens is an important pathway for Indigenous and non-Indigenous success in any field (54). In addition, the success of Indigenous scientists and researchers creates pathways for people from their own culture to relate and aspire to those roles themselves. Instead of assuming that Indigenous approaches weaken the validity of robust science (55), we argue that Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies provide an increased depth to understand the environment-microbiome-health nexus. Indigenous Peoples have long been able to explain the complexities of natural phenomena through stories and narratives where features of the environment are personified or codified. These uniquely Indigenous mechanisms of understanding and explaining the natural world, including the microbiome and its connection to health and the wider ecosystem—mechanisms underpinned by observation, experimentation, and practical application—have enabled Indigenous Peoples to survive and thrive for generations.

This is simply re-interpreting legends and stories to apply to the microbiome, a phenomenon unknown to the creators of those stories. What we have here are analogies that may be interesting, but useless in further understanding of the microbiome. In fact, the authors admit this:

Indigenous narratives may not refer directly to the microbiome, but there are many references to an unseen connection between people and the environment. For example, Indigenous Peoples may talk of the environment “speaking to us,” and similar language is a part of other traditions, including within the many major religious texts.

But statements about the environment “speaking to us”, even under the most liberal interpretation, don’t forge a connection between modern science and indigenous knowledge.  Here’s one more:

Indigenous epistemologies and frames of knowing repeatedly recognize the influence of unseen (or microscopic) forces upon health. Studies of the microbiome can be viewed similarly, as a way of coming to understand those unseen entities that are essential to good health. Some non-Indigenous scientists may be uncomfortable with the “spiritual” connotations associated with Indigenous knowledge systems of the unseen, but for Indigenous peoples, the spiritual and physical worlds are intertwined so that they cannot be fully understood separately (40). Because of this, Indigenous ways of understanding the unseen could provide a culturally relevant framework for the study of the microbiome.

This again is an analogy, and while it may help explain to people steeped in legends that those “unseen forces” are tiny microorganisms connected with health and disease, wouldn’t it just be better to dispense with the numinous stuff? And to what extent do we really nee a “culturally relevant framework” to study microbiomes? Perhaps we need it to communicate with indigenous people, but that’s communication, not scientific research.

Then come are several claims about the Māori that, while the claims deal with people interacting with the environment (including microbes), involve microbiomes only tangentially—and again don’t open a path to deeper understanding of the phenomenon.

b.) By being forced via colonization away from nature into the cities, the Māori have become more prone to “diseases of civilization,” have been removed from the healthy microbes in the natural environment, and have adopted unhealthy diets that foster non-optimal internal microbes.

In addition to suffering from inequities in access to health services, healthy foods, and adequate housing (5–7), it is also likely that Indigenous Peoples have reduced access and exposure to health-promoting microbiota. As a result of urban drift and the impacts of urbanization on the environmental microbiome (8, 9), many Indigenous People now live in cities that are far from their ancestral lands and the diversity of potentially beneficial exposures they possess (10). What’s more, Indigenous Peoples, like many minority groups, are more likely to have reduced access to high quality and/or biodiverse green and blue spaces in urban areas due to their greater representation in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods (11, 12) and the general impacts of urbanization on ecosystem integrity and biodiversity (9). On the other hand, eating more traditional diets is associated with increased diet quality (13) and improved cardiovascular health (14) among Indigenous Peoples and a traditional Indigenous lifestyle has been associated with more diverse and abundant commensal microbiota (15).

Much of this is surely true, but you can see that they throw in the microbiome as something associated with the deleterious effects of past bigotry and colonization. What we see here is the result of poverty, and one’s gut biota is among the least important of all those problems mentioned. Here’s another tangential connection:

In New Zealand, Māori are disproportionately affected by non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancers, diabetes, metabolic illness, and heart disease, like many Indigenous Peoples globally (18). Interestingly, recent research has shown that many NCDs are associated with and influenced by the microbiome (19–22). For example, dysbiosis of gut microbiota was present in stroke and transient ischemic attack patients, compared with controls (23), and reduced diversity of the gut microbiome was associated with obesity and insulin resistance (24).

Again, this shows the effect of a genome unaccustomed to foreign environments suffering from their effects. Although cancer and heart disease are more frequent among Māori than among descendants of colonists, that’s not a connection between indigenous knowledge and microbes, nor a way to help understand the microbiomes. These facts are of course important in public health considerations, but they don’t speak to the paper’s main point.

Below the paper again brings up traditional knowledge and sayings, but to no scientific use:

Inherent in the ancestral interactions with nature came the creation of kōrero tuku iho (traditional teachings and wisdom that is passed down through subsequent generations). These traditional teachings contained and still carry meaningful sources of mātauranga (knowledge) or messages about the structures of nature and how to successfully navigate them. Indigenous narratives are replete with examples connecting the health of individuals and communities with the natural environment. For example, Inyang refers to a proverb from the Ibibio of Kenya—“ke owo aba nte nkankuk omo”—which suggests that a person’s life is “replicated” in their environment (38) Luther Standing Bear of the Sicangu and Oglala Lakota once noted that “we are of the soil and the soil is of us” (39)

References to the environment, which are surely part of every indigenous culture, don’t point an obvious way forward in microbial research, even if they do say “we are of the soil and the soil is of us.” Again, we have a proverb that doesn’t help either science or the health of the Māori. It is merely an analogy that has been snuck into a discussion of scientific research.

c.) Māori are more susceptible to global warming because many have been forced into cities. The connection to the “microbiome”, I suppose is that the Māori have been forced away from their environment, part of which includes microbes:

Indigenous Peoples are particularly vulnerable to climate change, and the climate crisis will likely compound health inequities experienced by Indigenous People (31, 32). Contemporary climate change is also directly impacting the ability of Indigenous People to interact with ancestral lands. For example, Maldonado et al. (33) highlighted the case of the Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana, where intense coastal erosion has reduced the island that has been a home and refuge to Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw since they were forced to relocate there by early settlers. Accordingly, microbiota also respond directly to changes in climate but also indirectly via the degrading effect of climate change on ecosystems (34)

This is what’s called a “stretch”.  The problem here is one of people living in unhealthy environments because of bigotry in the past, and you don’t need to know much about microbiomes to deal with that issue.

d.) Māori are underrepresented in microbiological research. This is true of nearly all indigenous people, who show “inequity” of representation in science. I do think that casting as wide a net as possible is the best way to beef up the talent pool in science, so the more people competing for positions and slots in graduate school, the better.  Surely indigenous people should be given equal opportunity to study science and become scientists! But this has nothing to do with the different “perspectives” that different groups bring to science, for, as we have seen, Māori “ways of knowing” offer little to understanding microbiomes. I’ve always been deeply dubious about the claim that different identity groups will have different ways of producing scientific knowledge, for I haven’t seen many examples. (One I sometimes cite is that women evolutionists have promoted more research into female preference in the study of sexual selection, but that’s the only one I’ve thought of.)

e). It’s essential to collaborate with Indigenous people if you’re doing science that affects them or their environments.  On this I wholly agree, for you can’t just go imposing environmental or medical changes on people without their assent and collaboration. One example is the collaboration between Māori and non-Māori scientists in helping save the famous endemic kauri trees of New Zealand, magnificent trees that require protection from logging and from “kauri dieback” a serious microbial disease. In this case, scientists identified the causal organism and are testing different treatments (without much luck), and the Māori sequester the endangered trees and their environs, for incursions by tourists and strangers help spread the disease.

Here’s one more example of how cultural sensitivity is important in cases involving microbiology, but again, this has nothing to do with indigenous knowledge advancing the microbiome. In fact, in this case modern science can help both indigenous and non-indigenous people:

There are also ethical and cultural challenges unique to microbiology that require Indigenous perspectives and leadership (49). Treatment or experimental procedures, such as fecal transplant, may have significant “health” benefits (57), but acceptance and uptake of such procedures among Indigenous Peoples will likely be low without significant Indigenous input. In Māori cultural practice there already exist concepts that govern societal, practical, and hygienic practices. The concept of tapu (state of restriction), for example, provides a uniquely Indigenous way of thinking about cross contamination, and restrictions relating to human waste and food (58). Māori have also developed contemporary ethical guidelines based on cultural values (tikanga), as in Te Ara Tika, a set of guidelines for conducting ethical research with Māori (59); and Te Mata Ira, Guidelines for Genomic Research with Māori, developed to ensure that Māori perspectives and values are reflected in genetic/genomic research.

Of course one has to recognize cultural sensitivities and strictures, and perhaps even incorporate then in doing research affecting indigenous people, but again, this is a matter of cross-cultural understanding, not cross-cultural scientific fertilization.

I’ve written way too much, I see, but I hope you’ve gotten the point that the authors are stretching like Gumby to try to show how indigenous (especially Māori) knowledge can advance our knowledge of the human and environmental microbiome. In the case of microbial studies, that possibility is especially unlikely because indigenous knowledge has nothing to say about microbes, except by analogy to legend and traditions. That doesn’t mean that indigenous researchers can’t make contributions to understanding microbiomes—only that they will have to do so by digging into the toolkit of modern science.

It’s ironic that the one solid finding about microbiomes mentioned in the entire paper comes not from indigenous knowledge, but from studies in Finland using the methods of modern science:

Being outdoors also increases exposure to (28) and transfer of environmental microbiomes onto the skin (29), via the aerobiome (30), the respiratory tract (29) and into the gut (19). For example, a placebo-controlled double-blinded study in Finland showed that the intervention group that engaged with microbially rich soil brought into playground sand experienced colonization of these microbiota to the skin with subsequent promotion of immunomodulation (interleukin-10 and T cell frequencies) (19).