Format: ORAL

Alex C. McAlvay1,Stefanie Ramos Bierge1, Tutupika Carrillo de La Cruz2

1 The New York Botanical Garden, New York, U.S.A 2 Universidad Autónoma de Nayarit, Tepic, Mexico

Ecological knowledge and Indigenous languages are tightly interwoven and have been eroded in tandem in many parts of the world. To bolster or revitalize this cultural heritage, many Indigenous Peoples have worked with linguists and/or ethnobiologists, either from within or outside of their communities. Despite an increase in interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of these fields, there has been limited exchange of best practices, ideas, and resources related to ethical and effective work with communities. One area where linguists and ethnobiologists have innovated in parallel is data sovereignty. While linguists tend to deposit data in large centralized archives with different levels of access depending on community preferences, equivalent archives and graded-access capabilities for ethnobiology are much less common. At the same time, some scholars have been experimenting with Traditional Knowledge Labels and Biocultural Labels as a mechanism to ensure that community preferences for information use accompany the data. Linguistics and ethnobiology share significant overlaps not only related to the classification and encoding of biological knowledge, but also in the need for methodologies that foster ethical engagement with local communities. Cross-communication between the two disciplines on data sovereignty, community engagement, and other areas may lead to mutual benefit. Here we outline approaches taken to address these issues by both fields, examine opportunities for mutual enrichment, and share experiences from our project with Wixrika (Uto-Aztecan) communities in West-Central Mexico.