The Sustainable Brilliance of Indigenous Design | Manu Peni | TED

I come from one of the most beautiful places in the world,

Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea is wonderful for many reasons.

Our lush vegetation, our seas,

islands, lakes and forests.

Also, our unique and remarkable cultural diversity.

Not to forget our people.

And also, not to mention our climate.

It's basically 27 degrees Celsius,

or 80 degrees Fahrenheit,

every day, all year.

We get enough rain, but not too much rain.

We get enough sun, but not too much sun.

And if you were to live there,

you don't necessarily have to turn your heater on in the winter,

or you don't have to turn your air conditioning on in the summer.

So I grew up in this paradise

until I had to leave home

to attain a modern education away from my home.

After some years, I returned home

to be with my people.

I returned home

importantly, to be with my people

to resist against a mining company that was proposing to extract minerals

in the Frieda River,

which is a major tributary to the Sepik River,

which is the longest river in Papua New Guinea.

The Sepik River is the lifeblood

and is our heritage.

The people living around the area are called Sepik.

Interestingly,

that is our identity

and our existence are intertwined

with this unhurried body of water,

this winding river.

The Sepik is one of the last remaining

intact and pristine freshwater ecosystems in the South Pacific region.

It is a living memory of my ancestors

who arrived on that island 50,000 years ago.

Or more than that.

We are the Indigenous guardians of that river,

and so it is our calling to protect it from harm

for our children

who are yet to arrive from the future.

I went home to be with my people to protect our livelihood

and our heritage.

But here's where the plot twists.

When I returned home,

the first thing I did was I wanted to build myself a house.

People in the villages understood that I was away from home

for a long time,

so they advised me to build a house that was made of traditional materials,

using traditional knowledge and skills.

Many of the houses in my village

still have roof made of thatched sago leaves

held together by cane vines

and other renewable resources from the nearby forest.

The designs continue to change over time

because of climate change,

but I didn’t listen to them.

You see, I went to a modern school.

I know more and I know better.

So I built my house on high steel posts,

iron roofing and all modern materials.

When my house was finished, they came and told me,

"You are wrong."

(Laughter)

And funny enough, they were right.

(Laughter)

So in 2021, we had unusually strong winds,

and my house got blown over,

so it tilted sideways.

And I lost some roof.

Most of the houses in the village only experienced mild effects

of this wind.

I was really angry I didn't listen to them.

(Laughter)

So here I was,

I have to spend more money and more technology

to get my house back on its post.

In the same year, at the end of the year,

I went for a longer holiday from the town I worked in

to stay in this house that I built.

During the day, I found it hard to breathe

because of the heat and the humidity.

So I found myself spending more time at my cousin's place

whose house was built using traditionally designed materials

collected from the nearby forest.

So it had better ventilation, it was cooler,

it was sturdier during the wind,

and it allowed the sound and the smell from the river, the lake and the forest

to go through.

It was really pleasant.

The thing is,

what I know deep down about sustainable development

and about the deep wisdom of my ancestors,

didn't connect with my head.

I was doing what most of us do.

We get educated in the modern world, modern education,

and we think that, for example,

climate change can only be solved by science and technology,

or at least science and technology alone.

Think about it.

The world thrived for centuries

until logging, mining and other extractive

and destructive development

ripped resources from the earth.

And here we are,

looking at experts who advised on that

to advise to us about the solutions for climate change.

Maybe we need to rethink about the definition of experts.

Maybe the experts are the Indigenous people

who've lived lifetimes and centuries and have protected the earth

and who can help heal and save it now.

(Applause)

So I learned the value of my Indigenous knowledge and traditions the hard way.

And I'm not just talking about building, constructing my house, for example.

We have practices we're beginning to understand

that are beneficial to the environment.

For instance,

in my community, we have sacred places which people are prohibited to go to.

Scientists are beginning to find out that these are essential breeding grounds

for vital plants and animals.

We have practices which prohibit certain groups of people

to harvest certain plants and animals at certain times.

Scientists are beginning to understand that this was our ancient way,

which supported the idea of managing sustainably

and harvesting resources sustainably.

We're also beginning to see

that, in our world, where we live,

there is an emphasis on kinship,

relationship and social capital

which underpins an equitable

and connected economy and society.

Which is also the currency which my people still use today.

We have spiritual practices which understand all of this

and echoes the connectivity of all this life.

I don't want to stand here

and romanticize about my cultural practices.

I want to also acknowledge

that we’ve got remarkable wonders of this world created,

for example, wheel, medicine and internet

and many more inventions,

that have affected positively some aspects of our lives.

However, I still want to believe

that my Papua New Guinean cultural traditions

and the Pacific’s Melanesian greater worldview,

based on values such as kinship, relationships,

and connectedness of all life and non-life forms,

could be elevated for solutions for humanity

and for the planet to thrive.

I feel that many cultures and communities around the world

are in such a hurry to alienate themselves from the nature

and treat everything as fragmented bits and pieces

that can or cannot be traded.

While many Indigenous communities

continue to hold and acknowledge the world

as the complex web of connections

in which humans, us, are only a mere part of.

We in Papua New Guinea, for example, continue to honor

and acknowledge our ancestors in our present day, in different forms,

and we want to remain as the best guardians

for our world, for other people,

and our children

who are yet to arrive from future.

We make these decisions

because we want to protect our resources in another form,

in their natural state,

so that it can sustain and help us.

We make this decision because this is who we are,

because this has always been the way we lived.

So it would be against our traditions, which I've talked about,

for a company or a business

to come in and rip all the resources out.

We keep them in the ground

so that everyone benefits and thrives.

These traditions that we have and these philosophies

have guided us for 50,000 years

of sustainable development

and will help us in the wind of change.

So here's my request to you.

Stop thinking of us as underdeveloped,

uneducated, uncivilized.

And stop insulting our home,

which are the rivers, the forests and the lakes,

by saying, “these are also underdeveloped and underutilized.”

In fact, our forests, for example,

are the most sophisticated,

efficient and effective carbon storage facility in the world,

in which no amount of science and technology can beat.

And our ... cultural traditions are so sophisticated,

we've been able to use these to protect our forests

and our resources.

In fact, it's rampant consumerism, greed, imperialism,

often your way of seeing the world and seeing us,

that has hurt the planet.

Stop doing what I did,

stop thinking that the modern way of building our future

is the best.

It probably is a problem too.

Communities closest to the climate crisis

are also communities closest to some solutions.

Learn from us.

Try to understand,

respect and heed Indigenous guardianship.

Or else, like me,

the next great wind will blow us all over.

Thank you.

(Cheers and applause)