Indigenous knowledge system is the local knowledge that belongs to a specific society or culture. Although their knowledge belongs to them, we have to be very aware of its dynamism, and the way in which it has developed over time as it has come into contact with knowledge from other cultures such as European colonizers.
The Karamojong live in the southern part of Karamoja region in the north-east of Uganda, occupying an area equivalent to one tenth of the country. The Karamojong are part of a group that migrated from present-day Ethiopia and split into two branches, with one branch moving to Kenya to form the Kalenjin group and Maasai cluster. The other branch, called Ateker, migrated westwards. Ateker further split into several groups, including Turkana in present day Kenya, Iteso, Dodoth, Jie, Karamojong, and Kumam in Uganda, also Jiye and Toposa in southern Sudan all of them together now known as the "Teso Cluster" or "Karamojong Cluster".
Many Karamojong shun western-style clothes and instead wear "traditional" dress of a blanket -like shawl, often in red and black. The women wear elaborate bead work because they believe it is the best outfit to wear when herding the cattle and moving from place to place with them.
Another example comes from a South African colleague who engaged rural indigenous women by means of focused group discussions in her quest to understand the concept of health from an indigenous perspective. She learned that for the rural indigenous women of Southern Africa health
was basically about relationships! They believed that ill health occurred when relationships have broken down. In their indigenous thinking, even when restoration to health is sought through the bio medical approach, wholeness was possible only when broken relationships have been mended and restored because a person is most healthy when she or he is in harmony with others!
