Last September, when the Biden administration canceled several oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it cited in its decision the expertise of the Native “original stewards” of the land. The move was the fruit of government-wide guidance issued in late 2022 encouraging the incorporation of what Biden policymakers broadly referred to as “Indigenous Knowledge”—a wide array of observations, oral and written records, innovations, beliefs, and practices of various Native communities—into science-based federal decision-making. The rollout cited ways Indigenous knowledge had already informed federally funded research, including studies on controlled burns, crop yields, and historic fish populations.
The mention soon proved to be another piece of fodder for culture warriors on the right who decry the process as liberal orthodoxy run amok. As the Washington Free Beacon warned , the lease cancellations were just “the latest example of how ‘Indigenous Knowledge,’ a pseudoscience which posits native people possess unique insights into the laws of the universe, has pervaded the federal government.” The Beacon is one of a chorus of conservative outlets—including the Daily Caller , the Daily Wire , Just the News , and the Federalist —that have seized on the policy as an example of woke overreach.
At a moment when right-wing commentators blame everything from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank to Boeing’s accident record on workplace.