The first characteristic Castellano describes is the personal nature of indigenous knowledge. And one of the important implications of seeing knowledge as personal is that it's not assumed to be universal. It's not the same for everyone. This introduces the concept that knowledge is highly contextual. So, when assessing a knowledge claim, one of the most important things one needs to know is who is making the knowledge claim. What sort of basis do they have for making this knowledge claim? What is their past experience? How often have they been right before? So when people are thinking about a piece of knowledge someone is sharing, it's important to know who it is that's sharing the knowledge. And what is your relationship with that person? What, what sort of things have they shared with you in the past and how, how correct were they in their knowledge sharing in, in that relationship before. So you, it's a contextual, relationship-bound, sharing of knowledge. And it's, it's one that resides in that person's experience which they are now conveying to you. It's not it's not assumed that's the same for everyone. So, question that often comes up and some anthropologists have, have written about indigenous knowledge as, as having as high amount of personal autonomy an autonomous nature that almost assumes that the knowledge system resides in each individual. Well that, well that would mean there's not a possibility of traditional knowledge being conveyed from one generation to the next. So what is the distinction? And Castellano talks about perception and wisdom. And how perceptions of knowledge can be highly individualized but wisdom is a collective thing. It's the, the amassing of these different perspectives and perceptions that when weighed in relation to one another, those things that seems to be shared across the group become the collective wisdom of the group. And so in this way, while knowledge is personal, there is a collective aspect to it that can be transmitted from generation to generation. And it's often done so in this second characteristic that Castellano describes which is that it's oral transmitted.
