Multiple terms have been used to describe the environmental knowledge and cultural resource practices of indigenous peoples, including indigenous environmental knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, indigenous technical knowledge, and ethnoecology. The Western study of indigenous environmental knowledge is centuries old (e.g., Carl Linnaeus's 1732 publication, Iter Lapponicus, included extensive descriptions of Sami indigenous environmental knowledge from Northern Scandinavia). There is a central paradox in the description and analysis of one knowledge and belief system from within the context of another, and the Western study of indigenous knowledge has been critiqued and challenged by numerous indigenous writers, in part because of the common assumption of the superiority of the Western tradition.

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues states that there are around 370 million indigenous people ...