It's a very exciting and relevant research area I believe. Seems like psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists will be the ones who make the most interesting contributions to conservation in the coming decades! Imho. Of course you don't need to do an academic course to make a contact and share experiences with indigenous peoples... some of the most personally important learning experiences can happen in your own personal adventures and missions whilst travelling. Here in Brazil for example there's lots of opportunities to share experiences with indigenous peoples. I was chatting today with a friend that here in Brazil perhaps people have a bit more opportunity to orientate and align themselves with the wisdom that is there to be learnt with indigenous peoples. Indigenous wisdom is contained within the lived experience, to a secular westerner who honours science, forms of knowledge that aren't transmitted by written word can seem less valid, less important, or simply invisible. At times it seems that regardless of all the technological advances that the human race makes, for every step we think we take forward, we are sliding back another two steps. Putting so much importance on technology we neglect our own spiritual well-being, we neglect our own physical practical capabilities, we neglect the nurturing of a caring, loving feeling of relationship with our tribe, with our surrounding nature, our home (in the sense of our own bodies and our ecosystems that we inhabit). I've really started to see that people who discard religion and superstition and fixate on science as the one truth, sometimes can be sadly closing themselves off to what might be very important lessons and wisdom (I know that there are many exceptions to this!!!).

Quick definition from Wikipedia:
"Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that certain ("positive") knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations. Thus, information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all certain knowledge."

The thing is, science (positivism) is pretty limited in what it can prove, but for sure there's phenomenon occurring that simply can't (or won't) be proved (yet). More and more I see "positivists" as actually being very dogmatic in their beliefs, which of course they would receive as anathema, surely it's all the religious people that are "dogmatic". Yet science is actually peppered with blind belief (there's a great Ted Talk on this), and I often feel that they [the millions of positivists] arrogantly believe that science is the holder of the only truth. I think it's useful for scientists to be a bit more humble in their stances at times. I'm really interested in the tension that exists between Western knowledge systems and traditional / indigenous knowledge systems, a lot of the literature on this totally taps into this dialectic and contradiction within positivism.

I'm rambling now. I guess the point I wanted to make was a response to your comment about people abandoning religion and moving to a secular stance and belief in science. I personally have come full circle on this issue, from being quite a staunch atheist and proponent of scientific approaches. I still highly value and promote a scientific, that is to say, systematic, studious, rational analysis of a situation and using that as a guide to decide how to go forward. But along my path I came to see that spirituality has a profoundly important role in human society and well-being, for ethical behaviour and moral reasoning, as well as well-being in society. And sometimes as part of that you need to give in to the irrational, to honour ritual and mysticism, to connect directly with feeling, to channel creativity, to encounter the mystical unknown. And we could do well to look to some of the long traditions of religions that have mastered techniques to connect people to the sacred.

Ha ha, still rambling! I'll shut up now.