A comparative database for biologists, botanists, and linguists

This project creates an online portal of linguistic information on about indigenous flora, fauna, and material culture (e.g., tools and utensils, fencing and housing, food and fodder). Botanical, biological, and traditional cultural knowledge is rapidly being lost due to easily available mass-produced modern materials and commercially available foodstuffs and medicines.

The loss of this information results in significant knowledge gaps for biologists, botanists, and linguists. This multidisciplinary project records, preserves, and disseminates biological, botanical, cultural, and linguistic knowledge so that it can be used for further research.

The investigators provide interdisciplinary expertise to create a database of indigenous knowledge using Documentary Linguistic methodology (recording, transcribing, translating, lexicographic analysis) along with the analysis and commentary from indigenous scholars, botanists and biologists. A particularly impactful aspect of this project is the co-creation of a database that brings into alignment the naming of plants, animals, and material culture by the participants.

The project plans to make this database available through an open-source content management system that allows for integration of new commentary and information on biological and ethnobiological material.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.