This report attempts to document the socio-economic importance of a dynamic "cooperative innovation system" that continues to work - despite overwhelming pressures to destroy it - and continues to offer humankind an irreplaceable hope for planetary survival. Indigenous knowledge has gone unnoticed by the institutional innovation system for so long because it is not informal or disorganized, as some say, but cooperative and conducted within the pace of daily living. In particular, indigenous peoples' knowledge systems operate, often invisibly, within the context of their immediate agro-ecological environment.