Indigenous Issues and Biomimicry: Are They Compatible?
A former colleague of mine just rang me to ask me if I knew about biomimicry (which I do – plus I do have a Bioengineering T-shirt)). She is an Indigenous person who has her children attending an exclusive private school. Today her daughter came home with some homework that linked the discipline of biomimicry under the same heading as the study of Aboriginal people and culture. This raises the question – are these 2 things compatible? Biomimicry is the relatively new discipline of science whose aim is to produce innovative inventions based on the mimicry of nature, for example Velcro which was modeled on the way that stuff sticks to hairy dogs. The Biomimicry website defines the term thus; a new discipline that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. So I believe it is a valid question to ask how a school curriculum may legitimately marry biomimicry with the study of Aboriginal culture. I think that even the definition given by
