Indigenous Knowledge Sharing in Sarawak: A System-Level View and Its Implications for the Cultural Heritage Sector

This article is written on the premise that indigenous people have their own ways of knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. Using narrative inquiry, stories from three Sarawak-based indigenous groups were analysed to determine the nature of knowledge involved and how this related to transfer methods. The results suggest that a traditional indigenous knowledge system can be presented in a tiered model, in which the kind of knowledge in each tier determines the ways of knowledge sharing. The paper argues that cultural heritage institutions would benefit from understanding indigenous knowledge systems when they design policies and methods for the acquisition of knowledge from indigenous people.