E

Abstract

A small but growing literature is beginning to recognize that contemporary spirituality discourse works exclusively from a western paradigm of health and social care practice and, more broadly, the relationship of human beings to the environment. These writers have taken seriously the perspectives of the indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand, North America and the far north of Europe, in emphasizing the interconnectedness of people with their environments. Harvey (2012) is keen to emphasize that indigenous spiritualities (and he emphasizes the plural) comprise not traditional beliefs so much as inherited knowledge, — and those who use that knowledge engage with the issues of the present. As he writes: ‘Traditional indigenous knowledges address the present in ways that might have surprised the ancestors who passed them down’ (p. 50).