This collection of documents from Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)  focuses on the ways in which modernisation is undermining the transmission of ‘indigenous’ or ‘traditional’ knowledge and how education may be both a cause and a remedy.

The Introduction points to the fact that for many indigenous cultures, learning occurs through the process of observing and doing, and by interacting over long periods of time with knowledgeable elders and the natural environment, resulting in knowledge that is bound to experience and being as its context. Thus, as stated here, classroom-style learning is destructive to indigenous knowledge but is a path to the material benefits of the Western world. The keys to urban survival may be antithetical to acquiring indigenous knowledge of how to navigate and survive on the land, and how to use local resources to feed, clothe, and provide for one’s family, which may be of much greater relevance for the contexts in which many indigenous groups continue to live today. The collection includes studies that address both experiential learning in indigenous cultures and efforts to retain language and cultural knowledge within indigenous groups.

The book is organised into three sections:

1. Languages & learning addresses the link between indigenous knowledge and indigenous language, and explores the opportunities this interconnection provides for understanding and countering declines in both. 
2. Classroom learning examines how the loss of indigenous knowledge due to insensitive school programmes may be countered by integrating indigenous knowledge and languages into school curricula.
3.  Learning on the land explores the need for the revitalisation of indigenous ways of learning, generally outside of a classroom environment, and how this may be practically viable in modern contexts.

The articles and authors include the following:

• The indigenous peoples of Venezuela in search of a participative and intercultural education for their survival - Marie-Claude Mattéi Muller
• Sustaining indigenous languages and indigenous knowledge: developing community training approaches for the 21st century - Margaret Florey
• Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and biocultural diversity: a close-up look at linkages, delearning trends, and changing patterns of transmission - Stanford Zent
• Biodiversity regeneration and intercultural knowledge transmission in the Peruvian Andes - Jorge Ishizawa & Grimaldo Rengifo 
• Loss of traditional practices, loss of knowledge, and the sustainability of cultural and natural resources: a case of Urak Lawoi people in the Adang Archipelago, Southwest Thailand - Supin Wongbusarakum
• Transmitting indigenous knowledge through the school curriculum in a diminishing bio-cultural environment: the case of Botswana - Herman M. Batibo
• Learning and Inuit knowledge in Nunavut, Canada - Peter Bates
• African hunter-gatherers: threats and opportunities for maintaining indigenous knowledge systems of biodiversity - Nigel Crawhall

Some of the factors involved in seeking and retaining the viability of indigenous education are noted below, by the titles and author:

The indigenous peoples of Venezuela in search of a participative and intercultural education for their survival - Marie-Claude Mattéi Muller - This piece cites two articles of the 1999 Venezuelan constitution establishing Venezuela as a multiethnic and pluricultural country. Two articles dedicated to the rights of indigenous peoples affect education and language.  The first is Article 121, which recognises the right of indigenous peoples to have their own education, that is to say, the right to maintain and develop their cultural identity (cosmogony, values, spirituality, social organisation, and economic system) generally related to a specific conception and use of nature. In addition, it underlines that the state must promote the cultural manifestations of indigenous peoples and support an intercultural and bilingual educational system, respectful of socio-cultural differences and traditions. The second is Article 9, which declares the official status not only of Spanish but also of all the indigenous languages spoken in Venezuela. Further presidential decrees guarantee the use of indigenous languages as obligatory in public education and set up a mission to promote the restitution of indigenous rights. The author describes the state of Intercultural Bilingual Programmes (IBP). This includes community participation in the creation of the linguistic/cultural niche system to facilitate the direct transmission of knowledge for children (0 to 3 years and 3 to 6 years), led by indigenous women, mothers, grandmothers, or any other indigenous women selected by the community.

Sustaining indigenous languages and indigenous knowledge: developing community training approaches for the 21st century - Margaret Florey - "This paper outlines an approach that has been developed to support indigenous languages and the transmission of indigenous knowledge in small and resource-poor communities in eastern Indonesia." The author discusses processing grief and shame deriving from language and cultural losses as a necessary precursor to stabilising the linguistic ecology and implementing culturally appropriate revitalisation models. She introduces a case study from Indonesia in which restoration of intergenerational respect is a core component of a new training programme and then discusses features and outcomes of the training programme. She cites the language nest model of New Zealand and Hawai’i as taking a holistic approach - "focusing on intergenerational transmission, targeting the parent and child generations in language learning, embedding language learning in culturally appropriate contexts, and drawing on indigenous methods for teaching and learning."

The paper discusses the Endangered Maluku Languages Project, which did a test-style assessment of linguistic abilities among various ages and generations to learn how linguistic ability varies in and between communities. From there, lessons were created by communities and teachers, and elders were taught how to transmit their language knowledge and to teach apprentices how to become language learners. Further, participatory training sessions built groups focused on four topics (agriculture, education, history and literature) with projects of creating the following: an agricultural dictionary, a packet for study, a system to document ritual speech, and a language maintenance programme. This group work resulted in a pool of trained local language activists who are partnering with educational institutions, libraries, museums, and government officials.

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and biocultural diversity: a close-up look at linkages, delearning trends, and changing patterns of transmission - Stanford Zent - This article explores the relationship of biocultural diversity and ecological biodiversity using local and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) as a window for viewing the interrelationship. "...[K]nowledge is often intimately tied, on one hand, to local language, social organisation, economic goals, religious beliefs, aesthetics, ritual observances and material culture, and on the other hand, to resource appropriation and management practices, environmental impacts, variety and distribution of natural species, the structure and functioning of biotic communities and long-term landscape modifications....A brief case study of ethnobotanical knowledge transmission and change among the Jotï group [of Venezuela] is ...presented." The author compares Jotï knowledge transmission to another indigenous group to observe causes of the erosion of knowledge transmission due to contemporary cultural change and modernisation. Through testimonies, the author accounts for the link between cultural participation, language, and transmission of local knowledge.

Biodiversity regeneration and intercultural knowledge transmission in the Peruvian Andes - Jorge Ishizawa & Grimaldo Rengifo - This paper presents two programmes carried out in the Peruvian Andes. One highlights the central role played by children in the regeneration of biodiversity and the other the ritual agriculture practised in the central Andes for millennia and its role in agrobiodiversity conservation. The Andean campesinos (peasants) maintain a "cosmovision" in which diversity is a key aspect of life. The programme called ‘Children and Biodiversity' incorporates local knowledge into the classroom curriculum in 7 communities. The project strategy regarding knowledge transmission adopted an intercultural approach allowing the coexistence and integration of diverse ‘educational cultures’ especially centred on the home and the school. The acceptance of the orality that is characteristic of the indigenous languages in the central Andes has been key. In intercultural bilingual education programmes, indigenous languages have been made instrumental to the transmission of contents alien to the community’s educational culture.