Introduction
The field of philosophy is often (mis)perceived as an anglo- and eurocentric discipline, dominated by certain voices and a distinctively Western perspective. Indigenous forms of knowledge, methodologies, and worldviews, in all their diversity and complexity, however, have existed for millennia, thriving outside the academy and other institutional spaces and engaging with life, experience, and the nature of reality in unexpected and exciting ways. These tributaries of thought, flowing within and across Native communities, subvert dominant paradigms and ideals of philosophical thought and challenge us to consider other ways of knowing and understanding the world.
In this guide, and in recognition of National Native American Heritage Month, we have attempted to outline and highlight the many books, articles, and individuals that comprise and who have contributed to Indigenous philosophy and thought across time.
Further Resources & Reading
- Indigenous Philosophies (Philosophy Now)
- Native American Philosophy (Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy)
- APA Studies on Native American and Indigenous Philosophy (American Philosophical Association)
- Indigenous Research and Professional Philosophy in the U.S. (Political Philosopher Blog)
Next Steps
If you'd like to learn more about this month-long celebration of Indigenous communities and identity, we've created a guide with list of resources, as well as a playlist featuring Indigenous musicians, on the Media Studies Research Guide. There is also an introduction to Two-Spirit identity and the LGBTQIA Indigenous experience on the Gender Studies Research Guide.
For more information about the Indigenous communities with ongoing and traditional ties to this land, and how to support Indigenous groups and movements, take a look at our Land Acknowledgment and Local Indigenous Resources guide.
Prominent Indigenous Philosophers
A selection of Native American/First Nations philosophers, primarily from Turtle Island, along with a summary of their research areas and interests:
- Kyle Whyte (Potawatomi Nation), Michigan State University - environmental justice, climate policy and indigenous people, indigenous perspectives on food sovereignty and the anthropocene
- Anne Waters (Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Chickasaw heritage), State University of New York - indigenous thought, indigenous feminism, native american studies, experiences of native people in the justice system
- Brian Y. Burkhat (Cherokee Nation), University of Oklahoma - native american philosophy, philosphy of race, latinx philosophy
- Andrea Sullivan-Clarke (Muskogee Nation), University of Washington - philosophy of science, social dimensions of knowledge creation, indigenous identity and sovereignty, mixed race identity and knowledge production
- Taiaiake Alfred (Mohawk (Kanien’kehá:ka)) - native nationalism, indigenous sovereignty and liberation
- Glen Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene (T'atsaot'ine)), University of British Columbia - native/indigenous studies, political theory, indigenous self-determination, critical indigenous philosophy
- Lee Hester (Choctaw Nation), University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma - native american epistemologies, political theory, indigenous sovereignty
- Jeannette Armstrong (Sylix Okanagan), University of British Columbia - indigenous knowledge and philosophy, oral histories and thought traditions, indigenous rights, indigenous language preservation and fluencies
- Shay Welch (Cherokee), Spelman College - embodied critical inquiry, native american epistemologies, feminist ethics, dance, systemic oppression, indigenous philosophy
- David Martinez (Akimel O'odham/Hia Ced O'odham/Mexican), Arizona State University - indigenous intellectual history, o'odham culture and politics, transborder indigenous nations, indigenous art history and aesthetics
- Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner (Luiseño (La Jolla), Cupeño), Georgetown University - indigenous philosophy, philosophy of language, feminist epistemology, philosophy of race
- Wayne Wapeemukwa (Métis), Pennsylvania State University - Social and Political Philosophy (esp. Marxism and Critical Theory), Indigenous and Decolonial Theories, 19th - 20th century Continental Philosophy, Decolonizing Pedagogy
- Susan Hill (Mohawk (Kanien’kehá:ka)), University of Toronto - Haudenosaunee history, Haudenosaunee knowledge and thought, Indigenous research methodologies and ethics, Indigenous territoriality
- Juan Alejandro Chindoy Chindoy (Kamëntšá), Caldas University, Universidad Católica Luis Amigó - Decolonial thinking, Indigenous Philosophies
- Ailton Alves Lacerda Krenak (Krenak (Aimoré)), Brazilian writer, journalist, philosopher, Indigenous activist
Featured Interviews
Kyle Whyte on Climate Justice and Decolonizing Climate Science
Video: Talking #JustClimate and decolonising climate science with Professor Kyle Whyte. Croakey (2017).
Kyle Whyte on Indigenous Philosophy, the Anthropocene, and Museums
Video: Interview with Kyle Whyte. Research Center for Material Culture (2018).
Taiaiake Alfred on Indigenous Governance
Video: Native scholar be Taiaiake Alfred on indigenous governance. tvo (2014).
Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner on Ancestors, Archives, and Intergenerational Knowledge Transmission
Video: Ancestors, Archives, and Intergenerational Knowledge Transmission. MizzouAandS (2021).
Wayne Wapeemukwa on Stories of Scrip
Video: Métis Speaker Series Season 2, Episode 2: Stories of Scrip with Wayne Wapeemukwa. Métis Nation British Columbia (2022).
Juan Alejandro Chindoy Chindoy on his book, "A Decolonial Philosophy of Indigenous Colombia"
Video: "A Decolonial Philosophy of Indigenous Colombia" Interview with Juan Alejandro Chindoy Chindoy. UConn Global Affiars (2021).
Books
American Indian Thought by ISBN: 0631223037Publication Date: 2003-12-08This book brings together a diverse group of American Indian thinkers to discuss traditional and contemporary philosophies and philosophical issues. Covers American Indian thinking on issues concerning time, place, history, science, law, religion, nationhood, and art. Features newly commissioned essays by authors of American Indian descent. Includes a comprehensive bibliography to aid in research and inspire further reading.
The Dance of Person and Place: One Interpretation of American Indian Philosophy by ISBN: 9781438431338Publication Date: 2010-04-29Ever since first contact with Europeans, American Indian stories about how the world is have been regarded as interesting objects of study, but also as childish and savage, philosophically curious and ethically monstrous. Using the writings of early ethnographers and cultural anthropologists, early narratives told or written by Indians, and scholarly work by contemporary Native writers and philosophers, Shawnee philosopher Thomas Norton-Smith develops a rational reconstruction of American Indian philosophy as a dance of person and place. He views Native philosophy through the lens of a culturally sophisticated constructivism grounded in the work of contemporary American analytic philosopher Nelson Goodman, in which stories (or “world versions”) satisfying certain criteria construct actual worlds—words make worlds. Ultimately, Norton-Smith argues that the Native stories construct real worlds as robustly as their Western counterparts, and, in so doing, he helps to bridge the chasm between Western and American Indian philosophical traditions.
Indian from the Inside: Native American Philosophy and Cultural Renewal by ISBN: 9780786443482Publication Date: 2011-05-18Native American philosophy has enabled aboriginal cultures to survive centuries of attempted assimilation. The first edition of this historical and philosophical work was written as a text for the first course in Native philosophy ever offered by a philosophy department at a Canadian university. This revised edition, based on more than twenty-five years of research through the Native Philosophy Project and funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation, is expanded to include extensive discussion of Native American philosophy and culture in the United States as well as Canada. Topics covered include colonialism, the phenomenology of the vision quest, the continuity of Native values, land and the integrity of person, the role of cognitive science in supporting Native narrative traditions, language in Indian life, landscape and other-than-human persons, the teaching of Native American philosophy and the value of various research methods.
A Call to Action: An Introduction to Education, Philosophy, and Native North America by ISBN: 9781433101724Publication Date: 2007-12-05A Call to Action challenges current and future teachers to take seriously the philosophical implications of being an educator on land indigenous to a particular human group with both Native and non-Native students. Readers are introduced to the interrelated histories of education, philosophy, and Native and non-Native peoples in North America. These discussions point to the advancement of a critical pedagogy for Native North America. This book should be read by any teacher or student who is or will be involved with cultural studies, especially in the area of Native Americans.
Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies by ISBN: 9780429440229Publication Date: 2020-12-30The Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies is the first comprehensive overview of the rapidly expanding field of Indigenous scholarship. The book is ambitious in scope, ranging across disciplines and national boundaries, with particular reference to the lived conditions of Indigenous peoples in the first world. The contributors are all themselves Indigenous scholars who provide critical understandings of indigeneity in relation to ontology (ways of being), epistemology (ways of knowing), and axiology (ways of doing) with a view to providing insights into how Indigenous peoples and communities engage and examine the worlds in which they are immersed. Sections include: Indigenous Sovereignty, Indigeneity in the 21st Century, Indigenous Epistemologies, The Field of Indigenous Studies, Global Indigeneity. This handbook contributes to the re-centering of Indigenous knowledges, providing material and ideational analyses of social, political, and cultural institutions and critiquing and considering how Indigenous peoples situate themselves within, outside, and in relation to dominant discourses, dominant postcolonial cultures and prevailing Western thought.
Indigenous Innovations in Higher Education by ISBN: 9463510125Publication Date: 2017-05-26This edited volume is the result of a collaborative project of Indigenous graduate education training and higher education-tribal institution partnerships in the southwestern United States. We feature the work of interdisciplinary scholars writing about local peoples, issues, and knowledges that demonstrate rich linkages between universities and Indigenous communities. Collectively, as Indigenous peoples writing, this work takes the opportunity to explore why and how Indigenous peoples are working to reframe dominant limits of our power and to shift educational efforts from the colonial back to an Indigenous center. These efforts reflect a conscientious practice to maintain Indigenous worldviews through diverse yet unified approaches aimed at serving Indigenous peoples and places. Cover photo: Gia Khun (Mother Corn) with Gia (Mother) and Uncle Manual, c. 1918. This is a family photo provided by Dr. Tessie Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo). Imaging assistance provided by Tewa artist, Jason Garcia (Okuu Pin).
Subjects of Intergenerational Justice: Indigenous Philosophy, The Environment and Relationships by ISBN: 9780367551476Publication Date: 2021-09-01This book challenges mainstream Western IEJ (intergenerational environmental justice) in a manner that privileges indigenous philosophies and highlights the value these philosophies have for solving global environmental problems. Divided into three parts, the book begins by examining the framing of Western liberal environmental, intergenerational and indigenous justice theory and reviews decolonial theory. Using contemporary case studies drawn from the courts, film, biography and protests actions, the second part explores contemporary Māori and Aboriginal experiences of values-conflict in encounters with politics and law. It demonstrates the deep ontological rifts between the philosophies that inform Māori and Aboriginal intergenerational justice (IJ) and those of the West that underpin the politics and law of these two settler states. Existing Western IEJ theories, across distributional, communitarian, human rights based and the capabilities approach to IJ, are tested against obligations and duties of specific Māori and Aboriginal iwi and clans. Finally, in the third part, it explores the ways we relate to time and across generations to create regenerative IJ. Challenging the previous understanding of the conceptualization of time, it posits that it is in how we relate--human to human, human to nonhuman, nonhuman to human--that robust conceptualization of IEJ emerges. This volume presents an imagining of IEJ which accounts for indigenous norms on indigenous terms and explores how this might be applied in national and international responses to climate change and environmental degradation.
Teachings from the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy by ISBN: 0871400979Publication Date: 1976-02-01This collection of writings is from authors who are either Indians who have tried to make themselves heard, or whites who have tried to hear Indians. The first part of the book emphasizes the practical and includes Isaac Tens's "Career of the Medicine Man". The second section concentrates on the theoretical and contains Benjamin Lee Whorf's "American Indian Model of the Universe" and chapters on Indian metaphysics, among other things. In addition to an introductory essay on the Indian's stance towards reality, the editors have contributed chapters entitled "The Clown's Way" and "An American Indian View of Death".
God Is Red: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact by ISBN: 9781555914981Publication Date: 2003-09-01First published in 1972, Vine Deloria Jr.'s God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native religious views, asking new questions about our species and our ultimate fate. Celebrating three decades in publication with a special 30th-anniversary edition, this classic work reminds us to learn "that we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world." It is time again to listen to Vine Deloria Jr.'s powerful voice, telling us about religious life that is independent of Christianity and that reveres the interconnectedness of all living things.
Red Earth, White Lies by ISBN: 0684807009Publication Date: 1995-10-10"In this latest work by the prominent historian, Deloria turns his audacious intellect and fiery indignation to an examination of modern science as it relates to Native American oral history and exposes the myth of scientific fact, defending Indian mythology as the more truthful account of the history of the earth." "Deloria grew up in South Dakota, in a small border town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There he was in a position to absorb the culture and traditions of Western Europeans, as well as of the native Sioux people. Much of the formal education he received about science, including how the earth and its people had formed and developed over time, came from the white, Western world; he and his fellow students accepted it as gospel, even though this information often contradicted the ancient teachings of the Native American peoples." "As an adult, though, Deloria saw how some of these scientific "facts," once readily accepted as the truth, now began to run against common sense as well as the teachings of his people. For example, the question of why certain peoples had lighter or darker skins posed an especially thorny problem - one that mainstream journals and books failed to answer in a way that was satisfactory to this budding skeptic. When he began to reexamine other previously irrefutable theories - of the earth's creation, of the evolution of people, of the acceptance of the notion that the Indians themselves had been responsible for slaughtering and wiping out certain large animals from their habitat over time - he also began to reconsider the value of myth and religion in an explanation of the world's history and, in the process, to document and record traditional knowledge of Indian tribes as offered by the tribal elders."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Native American Worldviews by ISBN: 1591020514Publication Date: 2002-09-01In this excellent survey of Native American worldviews, philosopher of religion Jerry H. Gill emphasizes the value of tracing the overarching themes and broad contours of Native American belief systems. He presents an integrated view to serve as an introduction to ways of life and perspectives on the world far different from those of the dominant Euro-American culture. Drawing on the scholarship of anthropologists and specialists in American Indian Studies, Gill brings together much original research in broad, accessible chapters. He explores Native American origin stories, the special connotations given to spatial concepts such as the cardinal directions and the circle, the influence of the seasons and the cycles of life on different cultures, and clan and kinship systems. Separate chapters are devoted to key ceremonies and customs as well as to concepts of health, harmony, virtues, wisdom, and beauty. The final chapter considers the devastating effects on native peoples of the European incursion into North America. Gill discusses the reservation system, attempts at assimilation and resistance, the recent renaissance of American Indian cultures, and prospects for the future.
Honoring the Medicine: The Essential Guide to Native American Healing by ISBN: 0345395301Publication Date: 2003-06-03An introduction to Native American medicine explores their healing traditions, philosophy, and methods, explaining how such fundamental therapies as counseling, massage, and more can be integrated with western medicine, how Native Americans understand healing therapies, and how the Native American approach can be interpreted, all from the perspective of a traditional healer.
The American Indian Mind in a Linear World by ISBN: 0415944570Publication Date: 2003-06-18Addresses current approaches to studying Native American traditional knowledge and acknowledges an Indian intellectualism that has up until now been ignored in studying Native American history.
Circle of Life: traditional teachings of Native American elders by ISBN: 9781574160826Publication Date: 2004-11-01"Circle of Life" presents, in written form, traditional oral Native American sacred teachings involving spirituality, ceremonies, visions, healings, everyday life, and the warrior's way from the Iroquois, Lakota and other traditions. The author, has been receiving these teachings orally from elders since he was a youth. The wisdom includes Native American views on cosmology, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, sociology, psychology, healing, dream interpretation and vision quests.
Indigenous Storywork: educating the heart, mind, body, and spirit by ISBN: 9780774814010Publication Date: 2008-02-06Jo-ann Archibald worked closely with Coast Salish Elders and storytellers, who shared both traditional and personal life-experience stories, in order to develop ways of bringing storytelling into educational contexts. Indigenous Storywork is the result of this research and it demonstrates how stories have the power to educate and heal the heart, mind, body, and spirit. It builds on the seven principles of respect, responsibility, reciprocity, reverence, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy that form a framework for understanding the characteristics of stories, appreciating the process of storytelling, establishing a receptive learning context, and engaging in holistic meaning-making.
Spirit and Reason by ISBN: 1555914306Publication Date: 1999-08-01Spirit & Reason is a collection of the works of one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century--Vine Deloria, Jr. Author of such classics as Red Earth, White Lies, and God is Red, Deloria takes readers on a momentous journey through Indian country and beyond by exploring some of the most important issues of the past three decades. The essays gathered here are wide-ranging and essential and include representative pieces from some of Deloria's most influential books, some of his lesser-known articles, and ten new pieces written especially for Spirit & Reason. Tellingly, in the course of reviewing his body of work, Deloria found much that he had written in the past remained current and compelling because "people have not made much progress in resolving issues." Whether disputing theories of religion and science, examining the problems of modern education, or expounding on our understanding of the world, Deloria consistently urges readers toward an intimate connection with the world in which we live.
Aztec Philosophy: understanding a world in motion by ISBN: 9781607322221Publication Date: 2014-03-15In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics--the Aztecs' understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality--underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving--theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology.
Contemporary Indigenous Cosmologies and Pragmatics by ISBN: 9781772125825Publication Date: 2021-12-29In this timely collection, the authors examine Indigenous peoples' negotiations with different cosmologies in a globalized world. Dussart and Poirier outline a sophisticated theory of change that accounts for the complexity of Indigenous peoples' engagement with Christianity and other cosmologies, their own colonial experiences, as well as their ongoing relationships to place and kin. The contributors offer fine-grained ethnographic studies that highlight the complex and pragmatic ways in which Indigenous peoples enact their cosmologies and articulate their identity as forms of affirmation. This collection is a major contribution to the anthropology of religion, religious studies, and Indigenous studies worldwide.Contributors: Anne-Marie Colpron, Robert R. Crépeau, Françoise Dussart, Ingrid Hall, Laurent Jérôme, Frédéric Laugrand, C. James MacKenzie, Caroline Nepton Hotte, Ksenia Pimenova, Sylvie Poirier, Kathryn Rountree, Antonella Tassinari, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel
Call for Change: the medicine way of American Indian history, ethos, & reality by ISBN: 9780803243569Publication Date: 2013-06-01For too many years, the academic discipline of history has ignored American Indians or lacked the kind of open-minded thinking necessary to truly understand them. Most historians remain oriented toward the American experience at the expense of the Native experience. As a result, both the status and the quality of Native American history have suffered and remain marginalized within the discipline. In this impassioned work, noted historian Donald L. Fixico challenges academic historians--and everyone else--to change this way of thinking. Fixico argues that the current discipline and practice of American Indian history are insensitive to and inconsistent with Native people's traditions, understandings, and ways of thinking about their own history. In Call for Change, Fixico suggests how the discipline of history can improve by reconsidering its approach to Native peoples. He offers the "Medicine Way" as a paradigm to see both history and the current world through a Native lens. This new approach paves the way for historians to better understand Native peoples and their communities through the eyes and experiences of Indians, thus reflecting an insightful indigenous historical ethos and reality.
How It Is: the Native American philosophy of V.F. Cordova by ISBN: 9780816526482Publication Date: 2007-12-06Viola Cordova was the first Native American woman to receive a PhD in philosophy. Even as she became an expert on canonical works of traditional Western philosophy, she devoted herself to defining a Native American philosophy. Although she passed away before she could complete her life's work, some of her colleagues have organized her pioneering contributions into this provocative book. In three parts, Cordova sets out a complete Native American philosophy. First she explains her own understanding of the nature of reality itself--the origins of the world, the relation of matter and spirit, the nature of time, and the roles of culture and language in understanding all of these. She then turns to our role as residents of the Earth, arguing that we become human as we deepen our relation to our people and to our places, and as we understand the responsibilities that grow from those relationships. In the final section, she calls for a new reverence in a world where there is no distinction between the sacred and the mundane. Cordova clearly contrasts Native American beliefs with the traditions of the Enlightenment and Christianized Europeans (what she calls "Euroman" philosophy). By doing so, she leads her readers into a deeper understanding of both traditions and encourages us to question any view that claims a singular truth.
Earth's Mind: essays in native literature by ISBN: 0826317987Publication Date: 1997-10-01These thirteen essays reflect Dunsmore's broad experience as a poet, student of native literature, and teacher. They take their inspiration from Chief Joseph's statement that "the Earth and myself are of one mind," and go on to consider Black Elk; the work of D'Arcy McNickle, Simon Ortiz, and Laurens van der Post; Salish stories; and Pueblo sacred clowns. The idea that mind is something larger and more pervasive in nature than the Western tradition has usually considered suggests respect as central to survival and conveys the essential wildness of mind. Earth's Mind will be useful to those who study or teach native literature or who simply want to understand better native world views. "The most original and evocative study of Native American literary accomplishments, and their sources, it has been my pleasure to read in several years."--Karl Kroeber, Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University
Ancient and Modern: time, culture and indigenous philosophy by ISBN: 0868407860Publication Date: 2004-10-01How might we think and talk about indigenous philosophy? Why has Aboriginal knowledge not been given the status of philosophical knowledge, but treated by whites rather as culture or history? There is a quarrel about whose antiquity is at the foundation of Australian culture, and why contemporary forms of Aboriginality are marginal to Australia’s modernity. These are the starting points for the essays contained in Stephen Muecke's original and challenging book.
Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: conversations from earth to cosmos by ISBN: 9781138902978Publication Date: 2016-08-19This book addresses the intersections between the interdisciplinary realms of Ecocriticism and Indigenous and Native American Studies, and between academic theory and pragmatic eco-activism conducted by multiethnic and indigenous communities. It illuminates the multi-layered, polyvocal ways in which artistic expressions render ecological connections, drawing on scholars working in collaboration with Indigenous artists from all walks of life, including film, literature, performance, and other forms of multimedia to expand existing conversations. Both local and global in its focus, the volume includes essays from multiethnic and Indigenous communities across the world, visiting topics such as Navajo opera, Sami film production history, south Indian tribal documentary, Maori art installations, Native American and First Nations science-fiction literature and film, Amazonian poetry, and many others. Highlighting trans-Indigenous sensibilities that speak to worldwide crises of environmental politics and action against marginalization, the collection alerts readers to movements of community resilience and resistance, cosmological thinking about inter- and intra-generational multi-species relations, and understandings of indigenous aesthetics and material ecologies. It engages with emerging environmental concepts such as multispecies ethnography, cosmopolitics, and trans-indigeneity, as well as with new areas of ecocritical research such as material ecocriticism, biosemiotics, and media studies.
The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System: dancing with Native American epistemology by ISBN: 9783030049355Publication Date: 2019-05-10This book investigates the phenomenological ways that dance choreographing and dance performance exemplify both Truth and meaning-making within Native American epistemology, from an analytic philosophical perspective. Given that within Native American communities dance is regarded both as an integral cultural conduit and "a doorway to a powerful wisdom," Shay Welch argues that dance and dancing can both create and communicate knowledge. She explains that dance--as a form of oral, narrative storytelling--has the power to communicate knowledge of beliefs and histories, and that dance is a form of embodied narrative storytelling. Welch provides analytic clarity on how this happens, what conditions are required for it to succeed, and how dance can satisfy the relational and ethical facets of Native epistemology.
Waves of Knowing: A Seascape Epistemology by ISBN: 9780822362128Publication Date: 2016-11-02In Waves of Knowing Karin Amimoto Ingersoll marks a critical turn away from land-based geographies to center the ocean as place. Developing the concept of seascape epistemology, she articulates an indigenous Hawaiian way of knowing founded on a sensorial, intellectual, and embodied literacy of the ocean. As the source from which Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) draw their essence and identity, the sea is foundational to Kanaka epistemology and ontology. Analyzing oral histories, chants, artwork, poetry, and her experience as a surfer, Ingersoll shows how this connection to the sea has been crucial to resisting two centuries of colonialism, militarism, and tourism. In today's neocolonial context—where continued occupation and surf tourism marginalize indigenous Hawaiians—seascape epistemology as expressed by traditional cultural practices such as surfing, fishing, and navigating provides the tools for generating an alternative indigenous politics and ethics. In relocating Hawaiian identity back to the waves, currents, winds, and clouds, Ingersoll presents a theoretical alternative to land-centric viewpoints that still dominate studies of place-making and indigenous epistemology.
Traditional and Indigenous Knowledge Systems in the Modern Era: a natural and applied science perspective by ISBN: 9781138034297Publication Date: 2019-09-23While there is talk of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, old and new challenges bedevil the world - climate change, nutrition, and health poverty being at the top of the list. In seeking solutions to these and other problems which afflict the modern era, it is worthwhile to look into our collective past, to the traditions and knowledges of our ancestors. Such knowledge continues to exist in many parts of the world, though now marginalized by homogenous, Eurocentric ontolology and epistemology. This book presents a compilation of reviews, case studies, and primary research attempting to locate the utility of traditional and Indigenous Knowledges in an increasingly complex world. It assembles chapter authors from across the world to tackle topics ranging from traditional knowledge-based innovations and commercialization, traditional medicine systems as practiced around the world, ethnoveterinary practices, and food innovation to traditional governance and leadership systems, among others.
Everything Ancient Was Once New: indigenous persistence from Hawaiʻi to Kahiki by ISBN: 9780824886806Publication Date: 2021-02-28In Everything Ancient Was Once New, Emalani Case explores Indigenous persistence through the concept of Kahiki, a term that is at once both an ancestral homeland for Kānaka Maoli (Hawaiians) and the knowledge that there is life to be found beyond Hawaiʻi's shores. Kahiki is therefore both a symbol of ancestral connection and the potential that comes with remembering and acting upon that connection. Tracing physical, historical, intellectual, and spiritual journeys to and from Kahiki, Case frames it as a place of refuge and sanctuary, a place where ancient knowledge can constantly be made anew. It is in Kahiki, and in the sanctuary it creates, that today's Kānaka Maoli can find safety and reprieve from the continued onslaught of settler colonial violence while confronting some of the uncomfortable and challenging realities of being Indigenous in Hawaiʻi, in the Pacific, and in the world. The book engages with Kahiki as a shifting term employed by Kānaka Maoli to explain their lives and experiences at different points in history. Case argues for reactivated and reinvigorated engagements with Kahiki to support ongoing work aimed at decolonizing physical and ideological spaces and to reconnect Kānaka Maoli to peoples and places in the Pacific region and beyond in purposeful, meaningful ways. By tracing Kahiki through pivotal moments in history and critical moments in contemporary times, Case demonstrates how the idea of Kahiki--while not always mentioned by name--was, and is, always full of potential.
Indigenous Knowledge: Philosophical and Educational Considerations by ISBN: 9781793604163Publication Date: 2021-01-11Although the manifestation of what is taken to be indigenous knowledge could presumably be traced back roughly to the origins of humankind, the idea of indigenous knowledge is a fairly recent phenomenon. It has arguably gained conceptual and discursive currency only over the past half century, with a veritable slew of conferences, workshops, special journal editions, and anthologies devoted to the topic. Yet, there has been no treatise that offers a comprehensive, critical examination of this notion. Accounts of indigenous knowledge usually focus on explanations of "indigenous," "local," "traditional," "African" and the like - but to date not a single defense of indigenous knowledge has bothered to explain the particular understanding of "knowledge" the authors are working with. Indigenous Knowledge: Philosophical and Educational Considerations's critique of the idea of indigenous knowledge should in no way be understood as an endorsement of the evils of colonial conquest and (ongoing) exploitation, oppression, and subjugation. Nor should it be taken as an indication of a failure on the part of the Kai Horsthemke to sympathize with the struggle of indigenous peoples the world over for a dignified and sustainable way of life, for personal and communal space, and for self-determination.
Indigenous Knowledge in Taiwan and Beyond by ISBN: 9789811541773Publication Date: 2021-01-16This book situates Taiwan's indigenous knowledge in comparative contexts across other indigenous knowledge formations. The content is divided into four distinct but interrelated sections to highlight the importance and diversity of indigenous knowledge in Taiwan and beyond. It begins with an exploration of the recent development and construction of an indigenous knowledge and educational system in Taiwan, as well as issues concerning research ethics and indigenous knowledge. This is followed by a section that illustrates diverse forms of indigenous knowledge, and in turn, a theoretical dialogue between indigenous studies and settler colonial studies. Lastly, the Paiwan indigenous author Dadelavan Ibau's trans-indigenous journey to Tibet rounds out the coverage.
Decolonising Digital Media and Indigenisation of Participatory Epistemologies: Languages of the Global South by ISBN: 9781032804682Publication Date: 2024-08-09The book provides insights on decolonising the digital media landscape and the indigenisation of participatory epistemologies to continue the legacies of indigenous languages in the global South. It concludes that the construction phase of self-determining and redefining among the global South societies is an essential step towards decolonising the digital landscape and ensuring that indigenous voices and worldviews are equally infused, represented, and privileged in the process of higher-level communication, exchanging epistemic philosophies, and knowledge expressions. The book employs an interdisciplinary approach to engage in the use of digital media as a sphere for resistance and knowledge transformation against the persistent colonialism of power through dominant non-indigenous languages and scientific epistemic systems. It further advocates that decolonising digital media spaces through appreciating participatory epistemologies and their languages can help promote the inclusion and empowerment of indigenous communities. It indicates that the decolonial process can also help to redress the historical and ongoing injustices that have disadvantaged many indigenous communities in the global South and contributed to their marginalisation.
The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge by ISBN: 9781032694672Publication Date: 2024-09-27This book examines the persistence of Native peoples in retaining their own worldviews, from the pre-Columbian era into the twenty-first century. It explores the ways in which Indian people who are close to their cultural traditions think in a circular fashion, understand by relying on visual analysis, and make decisions from an Indigenous logic. Yet, Comanches have a different reality from Mohawks, Apache ethos is not like that of the Lakotas, and Indian men and women see things differently. How and why is the Native mind different from the western world? Why have white teachers and missionaries tried to change the minds of Native students? The Indian perspective is not wrong; it is simply different and inclusive, another way of looking at the world and universe. This edition updates the discussion with a new chapter on contemporary American Indian intellectualism and further analysis of the preservation of Indigenous traditional knowledge.
Foundational Concepts of Decolonial and Southern Epistemologies by ISBN: 9781800418844Publication Date: 2023-12-12This book brings together 11 prominent scholars and political activists to discuss and explore issues around postcolonialism, decoloniality, Theories of the South and Epistemologies of the South. These wide-ranging discussions touch upon issues from academic research methods and writing conventions to global struggles for justice. Together the chapters, as well as the interventions from forum participants which are characteristic of this series, paint a complex and dynamic picture of areas of thought and action that are constantly evolving in response to the demands of a world in flux. The book is a major intervention in current debates about the geopolitics of knowledge, as well as an illustration of the ways in which scholarship in the Global North(s) is indebted to the diverse traditions of scholarship in the Global South(s).
Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants by ISBN: 9781571313355Publication Date: 2013-10-15An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American whose previous book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation." As she explores these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return.
Wisdom of the Elders: Honoring Sacred Native Visions of Nature by ISBN: 0553088629Publication Date: 1992-07-01Arranged thematically, this book contains sacred stories and traditions on the interrelationships between humans and the environment as well as perspectives from modern science, which more often than not validate the sacred, ancient Wisdom of the Elders. Native peoples and environments discussed range from the Inuit Arctic and the Native Americans of the Northwest coast, the Sioux of the Plains, and the Pueblo, Hopi, and Navajo of the Southwest to the Australian Outback, to the rich, fecund tropics of Africa, Malaysia, and the Amazon.
Indigenizing Philosophy Through the Land: a trickster methodology for decolonizing environmental ethics and indigenous futures by ISBN: 9781609176099Publication Date: 2019-09-01Land is key to the operations of coloniality, but the power of the land is also the key anticolonial force that grounds Indigenous liberation. This work is an attempt to articulate the nature of land as a material, conceptual, and ontological foundation for Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and valuing. As a foundation of valuing, land forms the framework for a conceptualization of Indigenous environmental ethics as an anticolonial force for sovereign Indigenous futures. This text is an important contribution in the efforts to Indigenize Western philosophy, particularly in the context of settler colonialism in the United States. It breaks significant ground in articulating Indigenous ways of knowing and valuing to Western philosophy--not as artifact that Western philosophy can incorporate into its canon, but rather as a force of anticolonial Indigenous liberation. Ultimately, Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land shines light on a possible road for epistemically, ontologically, and morally sovereign Indigenous futures.
Walking in the Land of Many Gods: remembering sacred reason in contemporary environmental literature by ISBN: 9780820345239Publication Date: 2013-04-01How are we placed on Earth? What is our relationship to the world around us, and how< does our thinking affect the way we relate to the world? We are entrapped, says A. James Wohlpart, by what Martin Heidegger calls "enframing," a worldview that considers all objects as mere resources for our use. Walking in the Land of Many Gods envisions a new way of thinking about the world, one grounded in a moral imagination reconnected to Earth. Insightful readings of three contemporary classics of nature writing--Janisse Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, and Linda Hogan's Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World--are at the heart of Wohlpart's endeavor. Powerful and affecting works like these reveal a pathway to a deeper remembering, one that reconnects us with the primal forces of creation and acknowledges the sacredness of the world. We have forgotten that the world around us is rich and fertile and generative, says Wohlpart. His exploration of these literary works, based on deep anthropology and Native American philosophy, opens a pathway into a new way of thinking called sacred reason. Founded on interdependence and interrelationship, and on care and compassion, sacred reason reminds us that divinity exists around us at all times. We are invited to walk, once again, in a land filled with many gods.- Traditional and Indigenous Knowledge Systems in the Modern Era: a natural and applied science perspective by ISBN: 9781138034297Publication Date: 2019-09-23While there is talk of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, old and new challenges bedevil the world - climate change, nutrition, and health poverty being at the top of the list. In seeking solutions to these and other problems which afflict the modern era, it is worthwhile to look into our collective past, to the traditions and knowledges of our ancestors. Such knowledge continues to exist in many parts of the world, though now marginalized by homogenous, Eurocentric ontolology and epistemology. This book presents a compilation of reviews, case studies, and primary research attempting to locate the utility of traditional and Indigenous Knowledges in an increasingly complex world. It assembles chapter authors from across the world to tackle topics ranging from traditional knowledge-based innovations and commercialization, traditional medicine systems as practiced around the world, ethnoveterinary practices, and food innovation to traditional governance and leadership systems, among others. This book is an important resource for policymakers; scholars and researchers of cultural studies, leadership, governance, ethnobotany, anthropology, plant genetic resources and technology innovation; and readers interested in the history of knowledge and culture, as well as cultural activists and political scientists.
Indigenous Resurgence: Decolonialization and Movements for Environmental Justice by ISBN: 9781800732452Publication Date: 2022-03-11From the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline to the Nepalese Newar community's protest of the Fast Track Road Project, Indigenous peoples around the world are standing up and speaking out against global capitalism to protect the land, water, and air. By reminding us of the fundamental importance of placing Indigenous politics, histories, and ontologies at the center of our social movements, Indigenous Resurgence positions environmental justice within historical, social, political, and economic contexts, exploring the troubling relationship between colonial and environmental violence and reframing climate change and environmental degradation through an anticolonial lens.
Digging Earth: Extractivism and Resistance on Indigenous Lands of the Americas by ISBN: 1804410683Publication Date: 2024This book is a collection of essays and artists' contributions that documents the practices of extractivism on indigenous lands of the American continent, and the opposition to the politics of land appropriation and exploitation, by indigenous movements, activists and artists. Authors and artists address the extractivism of neo-colonial operations, its impact on local and indigenous communities and their environment, while tracing back its practices to settler colonialism in the Americas, and the vision of the natural world as ready to plunder. In addition to the economic impact, some contributions look at extractivism from the point of view of the extraction of cultural knowledge and ontologies. Artists and authors highlight topics of indigenous sovereignty, land rights, environmental justice, the stewardship of the land, and the history of indigenous environmental practices. The diversity of the contributors' backgrounds brings fresh perspectives to the issues surrounding the practices of the extractive industries and the exploitation of indigenous lands and resources. Their reflections and analyses convey the urgency of rethinking our politics towards the earth and its resources, as we are warned of an approaching collective ecocide.
Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America by ISBN: 9780773543805Publication Date: 2014-07-20In this book, Nancy Turner integrates her research into a two-volume ethnobotanical tour-de-force. Drawing on information shared by Indigenous botanical experts and collaborators, the ethnographic and historical record, and from linguistics, palaeobotany, archaeology, phytogeography, and other fields, Turner weaves together a complex understanding of the traditions of use and management of plant resources in this vast region. She follows Indigenous inhabitants over time and through space, showing how they actively participated in their environments, managed and cultivated valued plant resources, and maintained key habitats that supported their dynamic cultures for thousands of years, as well as how knowledge was passed on from generation to generation and from one community to another. To understand the values and perspectives that have guided Indigenous ethnobotanical knowledge and practices, Turner looks beyond the details of individual plant species and their uses to determine the overall patterns and processes of their development, application, and adaptation.
Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice by ISBN: 9781032737850Publication Date: 2024-10-09This book exposes how legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism co-produce and exacerbate the climate crisis, create disproportionate impacts on those who contributed the least to climate change, and influence global and local responses. Climate coloniality is perpetuated through processes of neoliberalism, racial capitalism, development interventions, economic growth models, media, and education. Confronting climate coloniality entails decolonizing climate discourses and governance, challenging the dominant framings and policies, interrogating material, geopolitical, and institutional arrangements for tackling the climate crisis, and centering Global South and Indigenous knowledge, experiences, strategies, and solutions. This volume provides critical insights and strategies for transformative action and fosters deeper understandings of the structural injustices entangled with climate change in governance, framings, policies, responses, and praxis.
This Is Not a Peace Pipe: Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy by ISBN: 9780802080165Publication Date: 2006-02-01How can indigenous people best assert their legal and political distinctiveness? In This is Not a Peace Pipe, Dale Turner explores indigenous intellectual culture and its relationship to, and within, the dominant Euro-American culture. He contends that indigenous intellectuals need to engage the legal and political discourses of the state, respecting both indigenous philosophies and Western European intellectual traditions. According to Turner, the intellectual conversation about the meaning of indigenous rights, sovereignty, and nationhood must begin by recognizing, firstly, that the discourses of the state have evolved with very little if any participation from indigenous peoples and, secondly, that there are unique ways of understanding the world embedded in indigenous communities. Further, amongst indigenous peoples, a division of intellectual labour must be invoked between philosophers, who possess and practice indigenous forms of knowledge, and those who have been educated in the universities and colleges of the Euro-American world. This latter group, Turner argues, must assert, protect, and defend the integrity of indigenous rights, sovereignty, and nationhood, as they are the ones able to 'speak the language' of the dominant culture while being guided by their indigenous philosophies.
Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition by ISBN: 9781452942421Publication Date: 2014-08-15WINNER OF: Frantz Fanon Outstanding Book from the Caribbean Philosophical Association Canadian Political Science Association's C.B. MacPherson Prize Studies in Political Economy Book Prize Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America. The term "recognition" shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples' right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. Beyond this, Coulthard examines an alternative politics--one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism. Coulthard demonstrates how a "place-based" modification of Karl Marx's theory of "primitive accumulation" throws light on Indigenous-state relations in settler-colonial contexts and how Frantz Fanon's critique of colonial recognition shows that this relationship reproduces itself over time. This framework strengthens his exploration of the ways that the politics of recognition has come to serve the interests of settler-colonial power. In addressing the core tenets of Indigenous resistance movements, like Red Power and Idle No More, Coulthard offers fresh insights into the politics of active decolonization.
The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism by ISBN: 9780816676408Publication Date: 2011-09-06In 1761 and again in 1768, European scientists raced around the world to observe the transit of Venus, a rare astronomical event in which the planet Venus passes in front of the sun. In The Transit of Empire, Jodi A. Byrd explores how indigeneity functions as transit, a trajectory of movement that serves as precedent within U.S. imperial history. Byrd argues that contemporary U.S. empire expands itself through a transferable "Indianness" that facilitates acquisitions of lands, territories, and resources. Examining an array of literary texts, historical moments, and pending legislations--from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma's vote in 2007 to expel Cherokee Freedmen to the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill--Byrd demonstrates that inclusion into the multicultural cosmopole does not end colonialism as it is purported to do. Rather, that inclusion is the very site of the colonization that feeds U.S. empire. Byrd contends that the colonization of American Indian and indigenous nations is the necessary ground from which to reimagine a future where the losses of indigenous peoples are not only visible and, in turn, grieveable, but where indigenous peoples have agency to transform life on their own lands and on their own terms.
Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States by ISBN: 9780822356431Publication Date: 2014-05-09Mohawk Interruptus is a bold challenge to dominant thinking in the fields of Native studies and anthropology. Combining political theory with ethnographic research among the Mohawks of Kahnawà:ke, a reserve community in what is now southwestern Quebec, Audra Simpson examines their struggles to articulate and maintain political sovereignty through centuries of settler colonialism. The Kahnawà:ke Mohawks are part of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy. Like many Iroquois peoples, they insist on the integrity of Haudenosaunee governance and refuse American or Canadian citizenship. Audra Simpson thinks through this politics of refusal, which stands in stark contrast to the politics of cultural recognition. Tracing the implications of refusal, Simpson argues that one sovereign political order can exist nested within a sovereign state, albeit with enormous tension around issues of jurisdiction and legitimacy. Finally, Simpson critiques anthropologists and political scientists, whom, she argues, have too readily accepted the assumption that the colonial project is complete. Belying that notion, Mohawk Interruptus calls for and demonstrates more robust and evenhanded forms of inquiry into indigenous politics in the teeth of settler governance.
As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance by ISBN: 9781517903862Publication Date: 2017-10-17Across North America, Indigenous acts of resistance have in recent years opposed the removal of federal protections for forests and waterways in Indigenous lands, halted the expansion of tar sands extraction and the pipeline construction at Standing Rock, and demanded justice for murdered and missing Indigenous women. In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking. Indigenous resistance is a radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused around the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous bodies and land. Simpson makes clear that its goal can no longer be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in a multicultural mosaic. Instead, she calls for unapologetic, place-based Indigenous alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler colonial state, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation.
Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by ISBN: 9781786636720Publication Date: 2019-03-05In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan "Mni Wiconi" Water is Life was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making Our History is the Future at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto.
The Rule of Law and Governance in Indigenous Yoruba Society: A Study in African Philosophy of Law by ISBN: 9781498518376Publication Date: 2016-08-22This book has two main goals. The first is to provide an exploration of aspects of indigenous Yoruba philosophy of law. The second is to relate this philosophy of law to the Yoruba indigenous traditions of governance, with a view to appreciating the relevance of the Yoruba traditions of law and governance to contemporary African experiments with imported Western democracy in the 21st century. This book is devoted to what can be described as a juridical forensic investigation of Nigeria's predicament of developmental deficit, leading to gross and unconscionable impoverishment of large segments of the population, in the midst of so much natural resources and abundant human capital, using Yoruba indigenous legal traditions as reflective template. The view urged in this book is that Africa has to take seriously the necessity of obedience, observance, enforcement and operation of law as no respecter of persons, groups, affiliations and pedigrees as was in the case in the societies founded by our ancestors, rather than the present scenario whereby the highest bidder procures semblances of justice from a crooked system of common law which was never designed to be fair, equitable and just to the disadvantaged in society. It is concluded that while Africa has much to offer humanity by way of its originary contribution to human civilization, the current situation where in most African countries, the burden of statehood, law enforcement and observance of the laws remain mainly that of poor, minorities or vulnerable segments of society cannot conduce to the renaissance which Africa seeks in the 21st Century or beyond.
Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought by ISBN: 9781610489881Publication Date: 2015-09-29This ground-breaking text explores the intersection between dominant modes of critical educational theory and the socio-political landscape of American Indian education. Grande asserts that, with few exceptions, the matters of Indigenous people and Indian education have been either largely ignored or indiscriminately absorbed within critical theories of education. Furthermore, American Indian scholars and educators have largely resisted engagement with critical educational theory, tending to concentrate instead on the production of historical monographs, ethnographic studies, tribally-centered curricula, and site-based research. Such a focus stems from the fact that most American Indian scholars feel compelled to address the socio-economic urgencies of their own communities, against which engagement in abstract theory appears to be a luxury of the academic elite. While the author acknowledges the dire need for practical-community based research, she maintains that the global encroachment on Indigenous lands, resources, cultures and communities points to the equally urgent need to develop transcendent theories of decolonization and to build broad-based coalitions.
Indigenous Governance: Clans, Constitutions, and Consent by ISBN: 9780190095994Publication Date: 2023-12-12This book offers a comprehensive, critical examination of Native political systems: the senior political sovereigns on the North American continent in terms of their origin, development, structures, and operation. Native governments have become critically important as the chief providers of basic services and the authors of solutions to collective problems in their societies. As major actors within the realm of democratic politics, they increasingly wield their powers to educate and advocate regarding Indigenous concerns. For many communities (including non-Native neighbors) they are the largest spenders and employers. They have also become adept at negotiating intergovernmental agreements that protect their peoples and resources while strengthening their unique political status. Native peoples and governments are also navigating the devastating and lingering health and economic impact of COVID-19; the profound environmental problems that have been exacerbated by climate change; and jurisdictional conflicts with local, state, and federal actors.
Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education by ISBN: 9781138585867Publication Date: 2018-06-18Indigenous and decolonizing perspectives on education have long persisted alongside colonial models of education, yet too often have been subsumed within the fields of multiculturalism, critical race theory, and progressive education. Timely and compelling, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education features research, theory, and dynamic foundational readings for educators and educational researchers who are looking for possibilities beyond the limits of liberal democratic schooling. Featuring original chapters by authors at the forefront of theorizing, practice, research, and activism, this volume helps define and imagine the exciting interstices between Indigenous and decolonizing studies and education. Each chapter forwards Indigenous principles - such as Land as literacy and water as life - that are grounded in place-specific efforts of creating Indigenous universities and schools, community organizing and social movements, trans and Two Spirit practices, refusals of state policies, and land-based and water-based pedagogies.
Native Pragmatism: rethinking the roots of American philosophy by ISBN: 9780253340788Publication Date: 2002-04-01Pragmatism is America's most distinctive philosophy. Generally it has been understood as a development of European thought in response to the "American wilderness." A closer examination, however, reveals that the roots and central commitments of pragmatism are indigenous to North America. Native Pragmatism recovers this history and thus provides the means to re-conceive the scope and potential of American philosophy. Pragmatism has been at best only partially understood by those who focus on its European antecedents. This book casts new light on pragmatism's complex origins and demands a rethinking of African American and feminist thought in the context of the American philosophical tradition. Scott L. Pratt demonstrates that pragmatism and its development involved the work of many thinkers previously overlooked in the history of philosophy.
The Primal Roots of American Philosophy: pragmatism, phenomenology, and Native American thought by ISBN: 0271020253Publication Date: 2000-07-01Continuing his quest to bring American philosophy back to its roots, Bruce Wilshire connects the work of such thinkers as Thoreau, Emerson, Dewey, and James with Native American beliefs and practices. His search is not for exact parallels, but rather for fundamental affinities between the equally "organismic" thought systems of indigenous peoples and classic American philosophers. Wilshire gives particular emphasis to the affinities between Black Elk's view of the hoop of the world and Emerson's notion of horizon, and also between a shaman's healing practices and James's ideas of pure experience, willingness to believe, and a pluralistic universe. As these connections come into focus, the book shows how European phenomenology was inspired and influenced by the classic American philosophers, whose own work reveals the inspiration and influence of indigenous thought. Wilshire's book also reveals how artificial are the walls that separate the sciences and the humanities in academia, and that separate Continental from Anglo-American thought within the single discipline of philosophy.
Native Science: natural laws of interdependence by ISBN: 1574160354Publication Date: 1999-11-01This sociology study guide is one of a series written by experienced examiners and teachers to follow the demands of all GCSE syllabuses and Scottish Standard Grade. The series aims to present the important information in a clear and direct way, with the emphasis on improving study skills and exam performance. Topic-by-topic coverage is presented with many examples and diagrams, together with quick tests to check progress, and there is a bank of recent GCSE exam questions (with answers) to fine-tune exam technique.
The Black Shoals: offshore formations of black and native studies by ISBN: 9781478005056Publication Date: 2019-08-23In The Black Shoals Tiffany Lethabo King uses the shoal--an offshore geologic formation that is neither land nor sea--as metaphor, mode of critique, and methodology to theorize the encounter between Black studies and Native studies. King conceptualizes the shoal as a space where Black and Native literary traditions, politics, theory, critique, and art meet in productive, shifting, and contentious ways. These interactions, which often foreground Black and Native discourses of conquest and critiques of humanism, offer alternative insights into understanding how slavery, anti-Blackness, and Indigenous genocide structure white supremacy. Among texts and topics, King examines eighteenth-century British mappings of humanness, Nativeness, and Blackness; Black feminist depictions of Black and Native erotics; Black fungibility as a critique of discourses of labor exploitation; and Black art that rewrites conceptions of the human. In outlining the convergences and disjunctions between Black and Native thought and aesthetics, King identifies the potential to create new epistemologies, lines of critical inquiry, and creative practices.
Indigenous Intergenerational Resilience: Confronting Cultural and Ecological Crisis by ISBN: 9781003008347Publication Date: 2021-11-04This book argues that there is a need to develop greater indigenous-led intergenerational resilience in order to meet the challenges posed by contemporary crises of climate change, cultural clashes, and adversity. In today's media, the climate crisis is kept largely separate and distinct from the violent cultural clashes unfolding on the grounds of religion and migration, but each is similarly symptomatic of the erasure of the human connection to place and the accompanying tensions between generations and cultures. This book argues that both forms of crisis are intimately related, under-scored and driven by the structures of white supremacism which at their most immediate and visible, manifest as the discipline of black bodies, and at more fundamental and far-reaching proportions, are about the power, privilege and patterns of thinking associated with but no longer exclusive to white people. In the face of such crisis, it is essential to bring the experience and wisdom of Elders and traditional knowledge keepers together with the contemporary realities and vision of youth. This book's inclusive and critical perspective on Indigenous-led intergenerational resilience will be valuable to Indigenous and non-Indigenous interdisciplinary scholars working on human-ecological resilience.
Decolonizing Methodologies: research and indigenous peoples by ISBN: 9781848139503Publication Date: 2012-05-10'A landmark in the process of decolonizing imperial Western knowledge.' Walter Mignolo, Duke University To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. Now in its eagerly awaited second edition, this bestselling book has been substantially revised, with new case-studies and examples and important additions on new indigenous literature, the role of research in indigenous struggles for social justice, which brings this essential volume urgently up-to-date.
Decolonizing Research: indigenous storywork as methodology by ISBN: 9781786994608Publication Date: 2019-06-15From Oceania to North America, indigenous peoples have created storytelling traditions of incredible depth and diversity. The term 'indigenous storywork' has come to encompass the sheer breadth of ways in which indigenous storytelling serves as a historical record, as a form of teaching and learning, and as an expression of indigenous culture and identity. But such traditions have too often been relegated to the realm of myth and legend, recorded as fragmented distortions, or erased altogether. Decolonizing Research brings together indigenous researchers and activists from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to assert the unique value of indigenous storywork as a focus of research, and to develop methodologies that rectify the colonial attitudes inherent in much past and current scholarship. By bringing together their own indigenous perspectives, and by treating indigenous storywork on its own terms, the contributors illuminate valuable new avenues for research, and show how such reworked scholarship can contribute to the movement for indigenous rights and self-determination.
Research Is Ceremony: indigenous research methods by ISBN: 9781552662816Publication Date: 2008-09-01Indigenous researchers are knowledge seekers who work to progress Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in a modern and constantly evolving context. This book describes a research paradigm shared by Indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia, and demonstrates how this paradigm can be put into practice. Relationships don't just shape Indigenous reality, they are our reality. Indigenous researchers develop relationships with ideas in order to achieve enlightenment in the ceremony that is Indigenous research. Indigenous research is the ceremony of maintaining accountability to these relationships. For researchers to be accountable to all our relations, we must make careful choices in our selection of topics, methods of data collection, forms of analysis and finally in the way we present information. I'm an Opaskwayak Cree from northern Manitoba currently living in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales, Australia. I'm also a father of three boys, a researcher, son, uncle, teacher, world traveller, knowledge keeper and knowledge seeker. As an educated Indian, I've spent much of my life straddling the Indigenous and academic worlds. Most of my time these days is spent teaching other Indigenous knowledge seekers (and my kids) how to accomplish this balancing act while still keeping both feet on the ground.
Research and Reconciliation: unsettling ways of knowing through indigenous relationships by ISBN: 9781773381152Publication Date: 2019-08-19In this edited collection, leading scholars seek to disrupt Eurocentric research methods by introducing students, professors, administrators, and practitioners to frameworks of Indigenous research methods through a lens of reconciliation. The foundation of this collection is rooted in each contributor's unique conception of reconciliation, which extends beyond the parameters of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission to include a broader, more global approach to reconciliation. More pointedly, contributors discuss how effective research is when it's demonstrated through acts of reconciliation. Encouraging active, participatory approaches to research, this seminal text includes a range of examples, including a variety of creative forms, such as storytelling, conversations, letters, social media, and visual methodologies that challenge linear ways of thinking and embrace Indigenous ways of knowing and seeing. This collection is a go-to resource for all disciplines with a research-focus, including Indigenous studies, sociology, social work, education, gender studies, and anthropology.
Indigenous Knowledge Production: navigating humanity within a western world by ISBN: 9781138218383Publication Date: 2018-05-10Despite many scholars noting the interdisciplinary approach of Aboriginal knowledge production as a methodology within a broad range of subjects - including quantum mathematics, biodiversity, sociology and the humanities - the academic study of Indigenous knowledge and people is struggling to become interdisciplinary in its approach and move beyond its current label of 'Indigenous Studies'. Indigenous Knowledge Production specifically demonstrates the use of autobiographical ethnicity as a methodological approach, where the writer draws on lived experience and ethnic background towards creative and academic writing. Indeed, in this insightful volume, Marcus Woolombi Waters investigates the historical connection and continuity that have led to the present state of hostility witnessed in race relations around the world; seeking to further one's understanding of the motives and methods that have led to a rise in white supremacy associated with ultra-conservatism. Above all, Indigenous Knowledge Production aims to deconstruct the cultural lens applied within the West which denies the true reflection of Aboriginal and Black consciousness, and leads to the open hostility witnessed across the world.
New Directions in Theorizing Qualitative Research by ISBN: 9781975501747Publication Date: 2020-03-09The chapters in this volume collect together perspectives on Indigenous epistemologies. These Indigenous ways of knowing pay particular attention to the relational aspects of language, culture, and place. They are not identified as specific themes, but as integrated parts of a philosophy, for Indigenous epistemologies think within a relational framework, so that all aspects are best understood from this perspective. Indigenous ways of knowing have resisted colonization and oppression, and as such, Indigenous research perspectives exemplify a commitment to social justice, one that recovers knowledges that have been silenced or subjugated. When such knowledge is shared, we can see how to challenge oppressive regimes. We can see how to seek truth in a relational way that's attendant to being together. Indigenous Researchtakes up issues of social justice in a way that is informed by Indigenous epistemologies, an important practice in contemporary research, particularly qualitative inquiry.
Indigenous Research Ethics: claiming research sovereignty beyond deficit and the colonial legacy by ISBN: 9781787693906Publication Date: 2020-10-19Given the extreme variety of research issues under investigation today and the multi-million-dollar industry surrounding research, it becomes extremely important that we ensure that research involving Indigenous peoples is ethically as well as methodologically relevant, according to the needs and desires of Indigenous peoples themselves. This distinctive volume presents Indigenous research as strong and self-determined with theories, ethics and methodologies arising from within unique cultural contexts. Yet the volume makes clear that challenges remain, such as working in mainstream institutions that may not regard the work of Indigenous researchers as legitimate 'science'. In addition, it explores a twenty-first-century challenge for Indigenous people researching with their own people, namely the ethical questions that must be addressed when dealing with Indigenous organisations and tribal corporations that have fought for - and won - power and money. The volume also analyses Indigenous/non-Indigenous research partnerships, outlining how they developed respectful and reciprocal relationships of benefit for all, and argues that these kinds of best practice research guidelines are of value to all research communities.
Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education by ISBN: 9780813588704Publication Date: 2018-02-27Indigenous students remain one of the least represented populations in higher education. They continue to account for only one percent of the total post-secondary student population, and this lack of representation is felt in multiple ways beyond enrollment. Less research money is spent studying Indigenous students, and their interests are often left out of projects that otherwise purport to address diversity in higher education. Recently, Native scholars have started to reclaim research through the development of their own research methodologies and paradigms that are based in tribal knowledge systems and values, and that allow inherent Indigenous knowledge and lived experiences to strengthen the research. Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education highlights the current scholarship emerging from these scholars of higher education. From understanding how Native American students make their way through school, to tracking tribal college and university transfer students, this book allows Native scholars to take center stage, and shines the light squarely on those least represented among us.
Applying Indigenous Research Methods: Storying with Peoples and Communities by ISBN: 9781315169811Publication Date: 2019-01-10This book focuses on the question of "How" Indigenous Research Methodologies (IRMs) can be used and taught across Indigenous studies and education. In this collection, Indigenous scholars address the importance of IRMs in their own scholarship, while focusing conversations on the application with others. Each chapter is co-authored to model methods rooted in the sharing of stories to strengthen relationships, such as yarning, storywork, and others. The chapters offer a wealth of specific examples, as told by researchers about their research methods in conversation with other scholars, teachers, and community members. Applying Indigenous Research Methods is an interdisciplinary showcase of the ways IRMs can enhance scholarship in fields including education, Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, social work, qualitative methodologies, and beyond.
Scholarly Journals & Articles
Relevant Journals
- IK: other ways of knowing (Indigenous Knowledge)
- Decolonization: indigeneity, education & society
- NAIS (Native American and Indigenous Studies Association)
- International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies
- Journal of Indigenous Research
- APA Studies on Native American and Indigenous Philosophy
- American Indian Culture and Research Journal
Selected Scholarly Articles
- Brown, K. G., & Brown, M. P. (2003). Access in Theory and Practice: American Indians in Philosophy History. American Indian Quarterly, 27(1/2), 113–120.
- Doetzel, N.-A. (2018). Cultivating Spiritual Intelligence: Honoring Heart Wisdom and First Nations Indigenous Ways of Knowing. Interchange (0826-4805), 49(4), 521–526.
- Ing, M. D. K. (2022). Ka Hulikanaka a me Ka Hoʻokūʻonoʻono: Davida Malo and Richard Armstrong on Being Human and Living Well. Journal of World Philosophies, 7(1), 81–100.
- Lutz, H. (2018). “They Talk, We Listen”: Indigenous Knowledges and Western Discourse. Zeitschrift Für Kanada-Studien, 38(1), 66.
- Mika, Carl. (2015). Counter-Colonial and Philosophical Claims: An indigenous observation of Western philosophy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(11), 1136-1142.
- Pratt, S. L. (2022). Lessons in place: Thoreau and Indigenous philosophy. Metaphilosophy, 53(4), 371-384–384.
- Wright, J., & Jayawickrama, J. (2021). “We Need Other Human Beings in Order to be Human”: Examining the Indigenous Philosophy of Umunthu and Strengthening Mental Health Interventions. Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, 45(4), 613–628.
- Ahenakew, C. (2016). Sacred Pain in Indigenous Metaphysics Dancing Towards Cosmological Reconciliations. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 38(2), 176–188.
- Burkhart, B. (2016). “Locality Is a Metaphysical Fact” -- Theories of Coloniality and Indigenous Liberation through the Land: A Critical Look at Red Skin, White Masks. American Philosophical Association Newsletters: Indigenous Philosophy, 15(2), 2–7.
- Calderon, Dolores. (2008). Indigenous Metaphysics: Challenging Western Knowledge Organization in Social Studies Curriculum. Unpublished dissertation.
- Girma, M. (2014). Negotiating Indigenous Metaphysics as Educational Philosophy in Ethiopia. Sophia, 53(1), 81–97.
- Bahr, A. M. B. (2015). People of Place, Ethics of Earth: Indigenous Nations, Interfaith Dialogue, and Environmental Sustainability. Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 50(1), 66–76.
- Castillo Morga, A. (2019). Education Based on Indigenous Ethics: The Aims of the Centre of Arts and Crafts for the First Peoples of Mexico. Concilium, 2019(4), 72–83.
- Grijalva, R. M. (2020). The Ethics of Storytelling: Indigenous Identity and the Death of Mangas Coloradas. College Composition and Communication, 72(1), 31–57.
- Haverkamp, J. (2021). Where’s the Love? Recentring Indigenous and Feminist Ethics of Care for Engaged Climate Research. Gateways: International Journal of Community Research & Engagement, 14(2), 1–15.
- Mika, C. (2021). A Maori il-logical ethics of the dark: An example with “trauma.” Educational Philosophy & Theory, 53(5), 426–435.
- Sinclair, R. (2020). Un-Settling Species Concepts through Indigenous Knowledge: Implications for Ethics and Science. Environmental Ethics, 42(4), 313–334.
- Calderon, Dolores. (2008). Indigenous Metaphysics: Challenging Western Knowledge Organization in Social Studies Curriculum. Unpublished dissertation
- Capurso, M. (2010). Surviving Stereotypes: Indigenous Ecology, Environmental Crisis, and Science Education in California. Teacher Education Quarterly, 37(4), 71–86.
- Dockry, M., & Whyte, K. P. (2021). Improving on Nature: The Legend Lake Development, Menominee Resistance, and the Ecological Dynamics of Settler Colonialism. American Indian Quarterly, 45(2), 95–120.
- Großmann, K. (2020). “We have been awake for years”: conflicting ecologies in an indigenous land management scheme in Indonesia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 26(4), 733–750.
- Sinclair, R. (2018). Righting Names: The Importance of Native American Philosophies of Naming for Environmental Justice. Environment & Society, 9(1), 91.
- Wright, R. M. (Robin M. (2007). Indigenous moral philosophies and ontologies and their implications for sustainable development. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 1(1), 92–108.
Online Resources
- Decolonizing Conservation: A Reading List, is a resource created by aquatic conservation scientist Sara E. Cannon, aimed at providing "non-Indigenous and settler folks... who work in conservation with a place to start learning about the colonial and white supremacist roots of conservation." Readings are tagged by topic.
- Estrada, G. S. (2003). An Aztec Two-Spirit Cosmology. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 24(2/3), 10–14.
- Ing, M.D.K. (2022). Hanau Kanaka o Mehelau: The Advent of Humanity in the Kumulipo. Philosophy East and West. Advance online publication on Project MUSE.
- Norgaard, K., & Reed, R. (2017). Emotional impacts of environmental decline: what can Native cosmologies teach sociology about emotions and environmental justice? Theory and Society, 46(6), 463–495.
- Patiño-Contreras, A. (2020). Fantastic Primeval Beings and Their Roles in Reconstructions of Indigenous Colonial Cosmologies from the Eastern Andes of Colombia. Ethnohistory, 67(4), 621–642.
- Roundtree, H. C. (1992). Powhatan Priests and English Rectors: World Views and Congregations in Conflict. American Indian Quarterly, 16(4), 485–500.
- Topa, F. A. W. (2021). Why Making Vital Distinctions Between Indigenous and Dominant Worldviews is Not a “Binary Thinking Problem” And, In Fact, Could Save Us from Extinction. Integral Leadership Review, 21(1), 1–12.
- Allard-Tremblay, Y. (2022). The Two Row Wampum: Decolonizing and Indigenizing Democratic Autonomy. Polity, 54(2), 225–249.
- Kuan, D.-W., & Charlton, G. C. (2020). Land and Justice from the Indigenous Perspective: A Study on the Tayal Philosophy of “Sbalay.” Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 52(3), 231–248.
- Kushner, A. (2021). Cherokee Political Thought and the Development of Tribal Citizenship. Studies in American Political Development, 35(1), 1–15.
- Lara Martim Rodrigues Selis, & Tchella Fernandes Maso. (2020). Decolonial thinking and pluriversality politics: modern political thought and indigenous experiences in Latin America. Monções, 9(17), 394–418.
- Patton, P. R. (2019). Philosophical foundations for Indigenous economic and political rights. International Journal of Social Economics, 46(11), 1264–1276.
- Rubin, D. I. (2017). Indigenous Knowledge and the Struggle against Capitalism. SoJo Journal: Educational Foundations and Social Justice, 3(1), 1–12.
- Stubben, J. D. (2000). The Indigenous Influence Theory of American Democracy. Social Science Quarterly (University of Texas Press), 81(3), 716–731.
- Haines, J., Du, J. T., Geursen, G., Jing Gao, & Trevorrow, E. (2017). Understanding Elders’ knowledge creation to strengthen indigenous ethical knowledge sharing. Information Research, 22(4), 1–12.
- James, B., Adone, M. C. D., & Maypilama, E. L. (2020). Decolonizing Research Methodologies: Insights from Research on Indigenous Sign Languages of Australia. Sign Language Studies, 20(2), 201–230.
- Meissner, S. N. (2021). How does the consideration of Indigenous identities in the US complicate conversations about tracking folk racial categories in epidemiologic research? Synthese, 198, 2439–2462.
- Sumida Huaman, E. (2020). Small Indigenous Schools: Indigenous Resurgence and Education in the Americas. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 51(3), 262–281.
- Timalsina, S. (2014). Indigenous epistemology and placing the cultural self in crisis: a new hermeneutic model for cultural studies. Southeast Review of Asian Studies , 36, 6–29.