Julia Watson

Through her writing, teaching, and landscape architecture, she amplifies the ancestral knowledge and traditional ecological solutions from around the world that work better than the industrial ones that we more readily turn to.

I'm really excited to chat with you and talk more about your work, uh, with Low Tech and more.

So I thought we could start.

I know that you came up with the term low tech.

I'd love it if you could explain it a little bit more, its origins.

So low tech, L-O dash T-E-K, which was the title of the book and really sort of the philosophy that's, uh, very well known now is to try and create a space of acknowledgment about what these technologies are, that they are really referencing traditional ecological knowledge systems and bring that type of knowledge into the field of sustainability and climate resilient design.

It was a bit of a tongue in cheek play on words, and I wanted to include the term TEK in the phrasing of what these technologies were.

And so TEK itself is a term which is traditional ecological knowledge, and the definition of that is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs.

TEK is a term, one interpretation of that body of knowledge that can be called IK, indigenous knowledge.

There's IRED, indigenous regenerative ecological design.

And so low tech is also just one interpretation of what these are, and there's multiple ways that different people sort of have a nomenclature for what these systems can be.

Yeah.

Amazing.

I so much appreciated you bringing that term into play.

I know that you've mentioned that the low tech solutions focused on water.

Uh, you've talked about them as sort of ins- ancestral infrastructures, that they're living relational kind of understandings of time and place and co-evolutionary.

And despite the colonial narrative that they're obsolete-

Yeah

...

there are so many examples of low tech that are thriving and have been evolving for thousands of years.

Through her writing, teaching, and landscape architecture, she amplifies the ancestral knowledge and traditional ecological solutions from around the world that work better than the industrial ones that we more readily turn to.

I'm really excited to chat with you and talk more about your work, uh, with Low Tech and more.

So I thought we could start.

I know that you came up with the term low tech.

I'd love it if you could explain it a little bit more, its origins.

So low tech, L-O dash T-E-K, which was the title of the book and really sort of the philosophy that's, uh, very well known now is to try and create a space of acknowledgment about what these technologies are, that they are really referencing traditional ecological knowledge systems and bring that type of knowledge into the field of sustainability and climate resilient design.

It was a bit of a tongue in cheek play on words, and I wanted to include the term TEK in the phrasing of what these technologies were.

And so TEK itself is a term which is traditional ecological knowledge, and the definition of that is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs.

TEK is a term, one interpretation of that body of knowledge that can be called IK, indigenous knowledge.

There's IRED, indigenous regenerative ecological design.

And so low tech is also just one interpretation of what these are, and there's multiple ways that different people sort of have a nomenclature for what these systems can be.

Yeah.

Amazing.

I so much appreciated you bringing that term into play.

I know that you've mentioned that the low tech solutions focused on water.

Uh, you've talked about them as sort of ins- ancestral infrastructures, that they're living relational kind of understandings of time and place and co-evolutionary.

And despite the colonial narrative that they're obsolete-

Yeah

...

there are so many examples of low tech that are thriving and have been evolving for thousands of years.