— Feature
Lo-Tek
Julia Watson: Reclaiming Indigenous Wisdom for a Climate-Changed Future
By the time Julia Watson stepped up to the podium to speak about Lo — TEK in 2020, wildfires had consumed millions of acres of her native Australia.
As she told the audience, observing the Exxon Valdez oil spill as a child in the 1980s was the first moment Watson asked herself: Who is protecting the Earth? Decades later, she sees climate change and its catastrophes as intertwined with a deeper story — one about how our civilization has turned away from ancestral ecological intelligence.
Watson’s work, from her book Lo — TEK to her teaching at Harvard and Columbia, is about radically rethinking design. Not as the triumph of human technology over nature, but as a collaboration with it. “Climate change is the biggest existential crisis of our time,” she told Dezeen in a 2020 interview. “We already have the knowledge systems to address it — they’ve just been ignored for centuries.”
Watson coined the term “Lo — TEK” from Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) — the sophisticated, place-based innovations developed by Indigenous cultures over millennia. These aren’t “primitive” methods, she argues, but refined technologies that manage fire, water, food, and settlement in ways deeply attuned to ecosystems.
Take Australia’s Aboriginal firestick farming, which reduces wildfire intensity through carefully timed, low-temperature burns — a practice ignored until recently, even as modern firefighting failed to prevent devastating blazes. Or the Subak irrigation system in Bali, which dates back to the 9th century. This cooperative network combines terraced rice fields with temple-based rituals to coordinate planting and water-sharing schedules. Rooted in the Balinese philosophy of Tri Hita Karana—harmony between people, nature, and the divine — the rituals aren’t mere ceremony; they maintain ecological balance, reduce pests naturally, and ensure that water, a sacred resource, is distributed equitably. Still in use today and recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site, Subak represents the kind of ancient-yet-enduring technology Watson sees as essential for the future.
Photo courtesy of Taschen, © David Lazaro
“Western engineers build single-purpose infrastructures,” Watson said at her talk, “but Indigenous technologies are multifunctional — they clean water, grow food, create habitat, and protect against floods all at once.”
Watson often cites the concept of original instructions, guiding principles from many Native traditions that describe humanity as stewards, not conquerors, of the Earth. Her call is not nostalgic primitivism but radical indigenism—a design philosophy that sees biodiversity, myth, and ritual as part of engineering resilience for the Anthropocene.
In Lo — TEK she documents living technologies from the Amazon to the Mekong Delta: floating islands, bamboo aqueducts, and mangrove seawalls — knowledge systems evolving through observation, storytelling, and spiritual practice. These are not artifacts of the past, she stresses, but blueprints for survival in a warming world.
“When you look at these Indigenous technologies, you realize they are already hybrid, already modern in their own way,” she said in an interview. “The real question is whether we are humble enough to learn from them.”
Watson’s critique is aimed as much at Silicon Valley as at climate denialists. In a world obsessed with solar geoengineering, floating cities, and “smart” everything, she sees a blindness being shown towards solutions that do not look like the technologies we valorize.
“Are we drowning in information while starving for wisdom?” she asked the audience in her talk. It’s a rhetorical question — but one that cuts deep. In place of high-tech monocultures, she imagines urban wetlands in New York, agroforestry in California, and hybrid infrastructures that merge ecology with design.
Julia Watson’s work stands at the intersection of climate science, design innovation, and cultural decolonization. It asks us to look at a Kayapo village in Brazil, a Javanese rice paddy, or a Balinese water temple — and see not folklore but infrastructure, not relics but prototypes.
As fires rage, seas rise, and cities overheat, Watson offers not just critique but a vision: a design revolution rooted in reciprocity, biodiversity, and the long memory of the Earth.
By the time Julia Watson stepped up to the podium to speak about Lo — TEK in 2020, wildfires had consumed millions of acres of her native Australia.
As she told the audience, observing the Exxon Valdez oil spill as a child in the 1980s was the first moment Watson asked herself: Who is protecting the Earth? Decades later, she sees climate change and its catastrophes as intertwined with a deeper story — one about how our civilization has turned away from ancestral ecological intelligence.
Watson’s work, from her book Lo — TEK to her teaching at Harvard and Columbia, is about radically rethinking design. Not as the triumph of human technology over nature, but as a collaboration with it. “Climate change is the biggest existential crisis of our time,” she told Dezeen in a 2020 interview. “We already have the knowledge systems to address it — they’ve just been ignored for centuries.”
Watson coined the term “Lo — TEK” from Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) — the sophisticated, place-based innovations developed by Indigenous cultures over millennia. These aren’t “primitive” methods, she argues, but refined technologies that manage fire, water, food, and settlement in ways deeply attuned to ecosystems.
Take Australia’s Aboriginal firestick farming, which reduces wildfire intensity through carefully timed, low-temperature burns — a practice ignored until recently, even as modern firefighting failed to prevent devastating blazes. Or the Subak irrigation system in Bali, which dates back to the 9th century. This cooperative network combines terraced rice fields with temple-based rituals to coordinate planting and water-sharing schedules. Rooted in the Balinese philosophy of Tri Hita Karana—harmony between people, nature, and the divine — the rituals aren’t mere ceremony; they maintain ecological balance, reduce pests naturally, and ensure that water, a sacred resource, is distributed equitably. Still in use today and recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site, Subak represents the kind of ancient-yet-enduring technology Watson sees as essential for the future.
Photo courtesy of Taschen, © David Lazaro
“Western engineers build single-purpose infrastructures,” Watson said at her talk, “but Indigenous technologies are multifunctional — they clean water, grow food, create habitat, and protect against floods all at once.”
Watson often cites the concept of original instructions, guiding principles from many Native traditions that describe humanity as stewards, not conquerors, of the Earth. Her call is not nostalgic primitivism but radical indigenism—a design philosophy that sees biodiversity, myth, and ritual as part of engineering resilience for the Anthropocene.
In Lo — TEK she documents living technologies from the Amazon to the Mekong Delta: floating islands, bamboo aqueducts, and mangrove seawalls — knowledge systems evolving through observation, storytelling, and spiritual practice. These are not artifacts of the past, she stresses, but blueprints for survival in a warming world.
“When you look at these Indigenous technologies, you realize they are already hybrid, already modern in their own way,” she said in an interview. “The real question is whether we are humble enough to learn from them.”
Watson’s critique is aimed as much at Silicon Valley as at climate denialists. In a world obsessed with solar geoengineering, floating cities, and “smart” everything, she sees a blindness being shown towards solutions that do not look like the technologies we valorize.
“Are we drowning in information while starving for wisdom?” she asked the audience in her talk. It’s a rhetorical question — but one that cuts deep. In place of high-tech monocultures, she imagines urban wetlands in New York, agroforestry in California, and hybrid infrastructures that merge ecology with design.
Julia Watson’s work stands at the intersection of climate science, design innovation, and cultural decolonization. It asks us to look at a Kayapo village in Brazil, a Javanese rice paddy, or a Balinese water temple — and see not folklore but infrastructure, not relics but prototypes.
As fires rage, seas rise, and cities overheat, Watson offers not just critique but a vision: a design revolution rooted in reciprocity, biodiversity, and the long memory of the Earth.
