Indigenous Wisdom of the People Forum: strategies for expanding a web of transnational indigenous interactions

Abstract

Abstract Laura Harris, President of Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO), and one of the facilitators of the Indigenous Wisdom of the People Forum (WOPF) held at the 47th ISSS Conference, discusses why Indigenous people participated in the conference, the development of ILIS TM (the Indigenous Leaders Interactive System, which is the structured dialogue process used to conduct the Indigenous WOPF) and the forum itself. Native American and Maori community members came to the conference to be able to share their Indigeneity on an international platform. Indigeneity is an emerging cluster of concepts (see La Donna Harris's contribution to this same volume) which tries to capture the conceptual contributions Indigenous people have to make to contemporary global discourse in the face of globalization. ILIS TM has played a big role in assisting Indigenous people to ‘re‐cognize’ their ancestral knowledge and to articulate Indigenous systems thinking to the members of contemporary society, both inside and outside Indigenous communities. One outcome of this reflective articulation has been the creation of a new international Indigenous peoples' organization, Advancement of Global Indigeneity (AGI). The task of the Indigenous WOPF held on 7–10 July 2003 was to identify strategies for AGI's further outreach to other Indigenous groups in the world beyond the Native North American and Maori founders of AGI. One of the major reasons that the forum was a success was the ability of ILIS to authentically engage a very diverse set of participants, Indigenous and non‐Indigenous, ranging from people who had had much experience with Indigenous issues as well as those who had had no previous experience, and to enable them to effectively articulate their ideas for AGI's further development and outreach. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.