Why cultural diversity matters | Michael Gavin | TEDxCSU

thanks it's been an incredible event hasn't it we've got a great theme no better do better I think in a in a lot of ways this theme is an apt motto for the complex and dynamic world that we live in you know increasingly the problems we're facing are being described as wicked problems due to their complexity and how widespread they are but think about the future 25 years from now I think if we're honest with ourselves we really have no idea what kind of challenges we're going to face and so we really need a diverse set of knowledge to be able to cope with the wicked problems of today and the uncertainty of Tomorrow the iron though is that in many ways we already do know better we're just letting so much of that knowledge slip away this is the island of malakula in the South Pacific nation of vanatu vanatu has the highest levels of cultural diversity per capita of anywhere on the planet for now recently a boat left this Bay it was carrying an old old sick man I'll call him David the Seas were rough it was dark and the health clinic was far up the island and unfortunately the boat had left a little too late and the old man was a little too sick and so a few hours later the sound of the motor could be heard coming back across the bay and soon the crying and the Wailing spread across the sand and into the village David had died now those who loved and knew David grieved but of course you didn't know David and 150,000 people die on this planet every day so why should we mourn the loss of this one man of David well David was one of three remaining speakers of an indigenous language and now the two remaining speakers are also old frail men and when they pass away so too will the language for the children and the grandchildren of these men don't speak this language and what's amazing about this story to me is that it's not unique collectively today humans speak approximately 7,000 languages but in the lifetime of my children who today are 6 and N years old as many as half of those languages will disappear just like David's is about to and I think this situation leaves us with three questions that we really need answers to why should we be worried about this loss of cultural diversity why is it happening and what should we do about it before we answer the first of those questions though let's keep in mind that cultural diversity is more than just languages and looking at these languages in detail gives us a little glimpse into that now any of you who speak more than one language already have a feel for this because you know that there are certain Concepts certain ideas certain words that are next to impossible to accurately translate from one language to another why is that let's take an example I had the privilege for many years to work and live in ALA more widely known as New Zealand and the Maui people of aloa speak Tero and in Tero there's a word fena fena means placenta it's the nourishment we get in the womb it's our virtual lifeblood but this same word fena also means land now it's next to impossible to do so but I ask you for one moment to imagine that you grew up mouy what would be your relationship to the land would it be different than your relationship is now and when we think about this we have to remember that this is one concept one word and if we take the totality of all the words the whole language of the whole culture well then we begin to realize that when we're talking about cultural diversity we're talking about thousands of different ways of seeing the world and our place in it and these thousands of World Views they're the foundation of thousands of unique sets of knowledge so let's get back to our first question why should we be worried about the loss of this cultural diversity well I think first we need to realize that culture involves the rights of people it's the rights of indigenous people to determine the future of their cultures rights that have too often been ignored and undermined but let's be cynical for a moment because far too often the policies of governments around the world have been cynical about the rights of indigenous people and so let's ask a different question what value does this cultural diversity have for the rest of humanity and to do so let's look at a disease that has plagued our species for thousands of years in a certain light it's beautiful but malaria affects 200 million people a year now the first WID spread treatment of malaria was quinine quinine was developed from the bark of the chinchona tree by the indigenous people of Peru and then ignoring intellectual property rights the British East India Company took Hine and spread it around the world to do so though they had to realize that people didn't really like Quine it was bitter and so they mixed Quine with something sweet and voila the gin and tonic the tonic contains quinine go to the supermarket it still does and the Gin well people like drinking that and so Quine Sav thousands of lives malaria did not enjoy this party malaria developed resistance and so today the most effective and increasingly widespread treatment for malaria is artemisinin artemisinin comes from a Chinese herbal medicine today it's saving thousands of lives now I ask you for a moment to imagine where we would be without the indigenous people of Peru their World Views and Quine or without the Chinese herbalists and their worldviews and arisin imagine if we just had the British we'd have a whole lot of gin and no tonic so if we accept now that we're going to respect the rights of indigenous people and that there's a value to cultural diversity for all of humanity then our next question is why are we losing this diversity I think here first we need to recognize that culture is not static it's not something we can take and just put in a museum culture belongs to people culture is dynamic and changing the other thing we need to recognize is that contact amongst different cultural groups communication Twitter doesn't automatically lead to the loss of cultural diversity about 15 years ago I was in Peru I was on a tributary of the Amazon River the sun was setting in front of me there was a soccer field there was a game going on and there's a woman standing next to me she had her pet parrot on her shoulder and across the soccer field and above the tropical forest the moon was Rising it's a beautiful scene and the woman turned to me and she asked does the moon shine in your land whoa yes I said the moon does shine in the United States and then she didn't pause she immediately turned and said do you know Monica Lewinsky now what's amazing about this story I think is that that woman spoke an indigenous language she used indigenous science to manage her natural resources by so many different measures her culture wasn't necessarily threatened even though she knew about Miss Lewinsky so if it's not contact between cultures that is driving the loss of cultural diversity well then what is here I think we need to recognize that increasingly fewer and fewer cultural groups a small number of cultural groups is determining the shape and fabric of society these groups are determining the systems of law of Education of economies of natural resource management and it is this imbalance of power that exists within society that is driving the loss of cultural diversity I ask you think back to David back on malula not right before he died but when he's raising his children he's got a decision to make and ultimately the future of culture is about decisions about choice and he looks out at the systems around him and he looks at the schools where he's going to send his kids he looks at the markets where his family's going to find the goods that they desire at the laws of the land and he sees that all of these systems are shaped by other cultural groups speaking other languages and now David's going to base this decision on one main thing the thing that all parents base their decisions on he wants to ensure that his children have the best chance to Survive and Thrive and so for this decision David really doesn't have a freedom of choice when it comes to his culture so what does he do he leaves the culture behind he leaves the language behind and he sends his kids off into the society that's dominated by this other culture and it's in this way in this imbalance of power in the systems of our society that we lose cultural diversity so our last question what do we do about it I think first and foremost we need to realize how how unlevel the playing field actually is how imbalanced the power actually is in society to do so let's look at one system within Society let's look at the school and let's look at the schools where David was going to send his children school there is taught in English the textbooks the examples in those textbooks are from some far off land where David's children have never been and in all likelihood never will go this same inbalance in power inbalance in culture exists in our own schools I'm lucky and that I get to volunteer in my kids school and not that long ago I was in a Kindergarten class what you realize when you're in a Kindergarten class is how amazing kindergarten teachers are you know they're incredibly creative super dedicated and these have to be some of the most patient human beings on the planet right and importantly we don't pay them nearly enough money the other thing you realize is that the systems con strain these kindergarten teachers even the very materials that they're provided so I was sitting around a table and there was a kid from Vietnam and two kids from Libya and a whole bunch of kids from Colorado and we're learning about prepositions you might remember the these words on under over prepositions okay now they're in kindergarten so they have two pictures and they have to match the preposition to this pair of pictures so there's a table and there's a cat the cat is under the table and we go learning our prepositions and we get to this pair and the girl from Colorado she jumps up over the cow jumps over the moon she's excited she's got it right and those two kids from Libya over here with huge eyes what right I mean imagine they go home that night right and they're around the dinner table and they're saying you know Mom and Dad we thought it was a little weird the people strap the boards on their feet and they go swooshing down the snowy slopes but that's nothing here in the United States cows jump over the moon because they were learning more than prepositions weren't they the lesson was embedded in culture and that in and of itself is a good thing the challenge we face is that the lessons in our schools here and all around the world are increasingly embedded in one culture everywhere cows are jumping over the moon an English nursery rhyme so what are we going to do we can't be naive we can't assume that we're going to evenly spread power and control of the systems of society equally across 7,000 different cultural groups it's not going to happen but we can take small steps we can begin to level the playing field and inspiration comes from where we started back on malakula in vanatu the communities on this island decided to begin to level that playing field and they let's take an example the schools they talked to the heads of the schools and they said look we're going to give you 4 days a week but we're taking one day back and they use indigenous architecture and they built a building and one day a week the kids go to that building and they learn from the Elders of that community in their indigenous language about the skills they need to live in that community and just as importantly they learn to be proud of who they are to be proud of their culture to be proud of their language and these communities argue and I wholeheartedly agree that those kids are going to be better prepared because now they're able to draw from the world viw and the knowledge base that has been developed across Generations in that place and they're also able to draw from the world view and the knowledge systems that come down from the conventional school system and so those kids become better prepared to deal with the wicked problems of today and the uncertainty of tomorrow so I think we have answers to our three key questions we absolutely need to be worried about the loss of cultural diversity we need to respect and uphold the rights of indigenous people and we need to recognize the value that cultural diversity has for all of humanity but to face this challenge we must also realize how uneven ly power is spread across our societies and we must take these examples from vanatu and elsewhere and we must begin to create systems which celebrate cultural diversity which explore our differences and which Embrace multiple ways of thinking and if we can do that we'll be better prepared for tomorrow but if we don't do that now if we don't do that then our grandchildren are going to grow up in a world that is far less diverse and they won't even know it know better do better thank [Applause] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 615,659

Keywords: Lifestyle, Culture, English, United States, Sociology, ted, Social Science, Anthropology, TEDxTalks, tedx talk, ted x, ted talks, tedx talks, ted talk, tedx

Id: 48RoRi0ddRU

Length: 17min 53sec (1073 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 07 2014