Added: Aug 15, 2021
Last edited: Oct 08, 2021
How can we learn from the indigenous...How can indigenous communities help to achieve full circularity
Why are they an important part to achieve the goal of circular textiles and how can they make fashion make the planet green instead of polluting it.
In her book Lo-Tek - Julia Watson, a designer and an environmentalist, has very strongly emphasised how indigenous communities have been pioneers of technologies and innovation. They have learnt ways of living with nature, preserving it and ethically simultaneously consuming it. Years of experience have made them to create systems.
"There are so many examples," she told Dezeen. "They have increased biodiversity, they're producing food, they're flood mitigating, they're resilient in terms of foreshore conditions, they're cleaning water, they're carbon sequestering." They have used waste and byproducts of their ecology system to develop such textile systems which follow the soil to soil economy and are utilised until it reaches a stage where it cant be upcycled or recycled further. They are the masters of extending the lifetime of a product and using it until they cant think of any other use. They use the neglected silk cocoon to make yarn, cotton was grown as a crop to replenish the soil which they started using to make yarn. For dyeing, they used the local plants and natural materials fallen around them to color. Because of their belief, that they owe everything to nature and worshipped nature, they utilised its resources respectfully...not more than what is needed. if they take, they have to give it back.
Similarly, they have developed circular systems for their clothing where natural waste is used for their clothing. They have integrated their culture and traditions in their textiles as a means of transfer of knowledge.
Each region have their own textile techniques or traditions informing that a similar definition of circular design wont work in all the geographical areas.
For example in hilly areas, there is backstrap loom as the conditions dont allow for a frame loom for weaving. They adjusted their system according to natural conditions... but after industrial revolution we have refused to adjust and changed natural conditions to fit our requirements, we have changed landscapes for our requirement. Example of cotton, the way something is processed or developed makes the difference...design and product process is crititcal.
The Fashion Industry problem
The harsh conditions for indigenous communties, guardians of nature, no rights and respect
Biodiversity is still prevailing only in the areas where majority is the indigenous community
Watson believes that the tech industry is more limited in scope than people realise, based solely on a concept of high-tech that developed after the industrial revolution.
We still have these nature-based technologies out there, although most are threatened and we've lost a lot of them.
The circularity also means preserving our ancestral culture and practices which was uniquely done through the clothes we wore. clothes and textiles communicated the beliefs and knowledge..it was a way of promoting and passing on the knowledge.
On the 50th anniversary of World Earth Day, Eco-Age is launching ‘The Best is Yet to Come’: a new editorial series lending our platform to indigenous, spiritual, and lateral voices to learn from their wisdom. Livia Firth details how the series hopes to inspire a new way of looking at sustainability, with the help of some of the world’s greatest thinkers.
Why have we forgotten that the basic production techniques developed by the indigenous communities were the basis for industrial machine...the principle on which the drop spindle works gave the idea for spinning machine.... we have added speed and efficiency to the existing technical principles, science developed by the ancestors. We take inspiration from these but have forgotten to acknowledge them. Rather we have declared them primitive and us as modern.
As environmental activist Vandana Shiva says, we need to “treat the knowledge systems [of local and tribal communities] as futuristic, not as primitive.”
She calls for this industry to adopt some of the principles of indigenous design, many of which are thousands of years old, to help cities around the world to not only mitigate the impact of climate change, but to be resilient for the future. "We can't really move forward using the same toolkit that got us to the place we are now," she continued. "We can't just keep reusing the high-tech and that type of thinking to solve the problems that created the problems."
in the words of the indigenous leader and activist Ailton Krenak: “When we depersonalise the river, the mountain, when we take their senses out of them. Considering that this is the exclusive attribute of humans, we liberate these places so that they become residues of industrial and extractive activities.”
Prioritise regenerative resources
Stretch the lifetime
Use waste as a resource
Rethink the business model
Design for the future
Industry collaboration
Community collaboration
Strengthen and advance knowledge
Water and Sewage
Waste Management
Home and Office Furnishings
Fashion and Textiles
Construction Materials and Products
Agriculture
indigenous design system and collaboration
Indigenous knowledge
indigenous communities
indigenous technology