Indian tribal ethnozoology research funded: systemic erasure or decolonial knowledge revival?
Original framing: “FM university gets nod for tribal ethnozoology research” — bing news
The trickster here is Anansi, the West African spider-trickster, who outwits those who seek to exploit his knowledge by turning their traps against them. Anansi’s cunning exposes the absurdity of state-led 'preservation' that claims to honor Indigenous knowledge while centralizing control in elite institutions. The project’s framing—'tribal ethnozoology research'—invites satire: who is the 'tribe' here, and who gets to define the terms of 'research'? The solemnity of institutional approval masks the farce of extractive good intentions.
This project sits at the nexus of decolonial potential and epistemic extractivism, where the language of 'preservation' obscures the continuation of colonial knowledge governance.
The funding by India’s IKS—a state apparatus—reveals how nationalist narratives co-opt Indigenous knowledge to bolster legitimacy while failing to address structural inequalities that marginalize tribal communities. Historically, such projects have been tools of dispossession, from British-era surveys to postcolonial 'development' projects, and this initiative risks repeating those patterns unless Indigenous communities control the agenda. Cross-culturally, alternatives exist: Māori and Aboriginal models demonstrate that knowledge thrives when custodianship remains with communities, not institutions. The solution lies not in more documentation, but in dismantling the hierarchies that frame Indigenous knowledge as a resource to be managed, and instead treating it as a sovereign right to be exercised.