Around the world today indigenous ethnic groups are asserting the validity of their own ways of knowing and being, in resistance to the intensifying hegemony of mainstream epistemology from the metropolitan powers. This assertion is not happening only among third-world scholars familiar with the challenges to Anglo-European cosmology and epistemology fro m p o s t m o d e rnists over the past several decades. It is also happening among rural villagers with little or no schooling or awareness of the debates going on internationally in philosophy and the social sciences. More o v e r, the a s s e rtion is not only about ethnic identity and revitalizing culture. Vi l l a gers are also themselves exploring how they construct knowledge: instead of always being the subject of re s e a rch by outsiders, which they often see as exploitation, they are undertaking the re c o rding and writing of their own cultures based on their indigenous epistemologies. Indigenous epistemology refers to a cultural gro u p 's ways of theorizing knowledge, as we discuss later. The Kwara'ae Genealogy Project is just such an assertion by a group of rural villagers in West Kwara'ae, Malaita, Solomon Islands (map 1). Officially constituted in early 1994 by members of several small villages, the p roject has continued to grow and to involve multiple activities. We examine how project members are doing indigenous epistemology as the basis of their re s e a rch. Not only are they discussing, arguing, and re c o rding cult u re, but they are also critiquing and examining in a self-reflexive process their own indigenous strategies for creating knowledge. Indigenous projects like the one examined here offer us Native Pacific Islander scholars a direction for the next stage of decolonization-d e h e g em o n i z a t i o n. 1 To bring decolonization to the level of dehegemonization means that we Native Pacific Islander scholars need to find our own 55

Unless the South learns to harness the forces of modern science and technology, it has no chance of fulfilling its developmental aspirations or its yearning for an effective voice in the management of global interdependence. All its societies must therefore mount a determined effort to absorb, adapt, and assimilate new technological advances as part of their development strategies.Julius Nyerere and others , The Challenge to the South Traditional knowledge has frequently been over-looked in the search by outside professionals to find solutions to the development problems of the poor. . . . However, increased use of t r a d i t i o n a lk n o w l e d ge m a ym a ke d e v e l o p m e n t p ro g r a m s m o re appropriate to local conditions, provide innovative solutions to certain problems, contribute to a sense of self-worth and collective self-esteem among local people, and enhance popular participation and empowerment. [ T h e re f o re] development programs should start with the premise that poor people . . . are knowledgeable and skillful managers of their own environment. John Bro h m a n , Popular Development

Some time ago I submitted an article to a major Pacific Islands studies j o u rnal in which I examined development in the Solomon Islands from the standpoint of Kwara'ae indigenous epistemology. By "indigenous epistemology" I mean a cultural group's ways of theorizing knowledge (Gegeo 1994, 1998; Gegeo and Watson-Gegeo 2001). Kwara'ae and Lau are the two cultural and linguistic groups on Malaita Island to which I belong (my father was Kwara'ae and my mother Lau, and I grew up bilingual and b i c u l t u r a l). I re c e i v ed c o m m e n ts f rom three re v i e w e r s .T he fi r st t wo s e e m e d enthusiastic about my arguments, and strongly recommended the paper for publication. The third reviewer also recommended publication, but rather caustically commented that the paper was déjà vu with regard t o two issues. One was that so much had already been published critiquing development in the third world, yet here was another Native scholar once again describing the failure of development. The other was that anticolonialism was (to paraphrase) an old, tired topic. Indeed, the reviewer complained that only a postmodernist would truly appreciate the article! I was taken somewhat off-guard by the reviewer's comments, because I had written the paper from the standpoint of an Indigenous Pacific Islander, borrowing and applying postmodern discourse where it seemed relevant and appropriate. More specifically, I had written primarily from the perspective of Kwara'ae indigenous epistemology, based on both my own knowledge and experience growing up in Kwara'ae and that of the 150 rural villagers I had interviewed on their indigenous knowledge of development. Growing up in Kwara'ae I had personally witnessed massive, often harmful changes that had taken place there under the rubric of 491

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Less endangered than other languages discussed in this issue, Kwara'ae provides a useful illustration of the early stages of language erosion and the importance of language to cultural survival. We argue that the foundation of a people's identity and cultural authenticity is their culturally shared indigenous epistemology, embodied in and expressed through their heritage language. We examine these points in nonformal adult education workshops aimed at rural villagers.