Indigeneity, Space Expansion, and the Three-Body Problem

Abstract

Abstract “Indigeneity, Space Expansion, and the Three-Body Problem” argues that inclusion of Indigenous storytelling within discussions about space can facilitate thinking critically about ethics, including rethinking the legacy of the kinds of ethics that emerged within the heartlands of the colonial world. Part of this legacy is the view that good ethics revolves around a compact set of universal rules (principles that might be transferred anywhere). These principles act as a fixed center. However, this chapter argues that it may make more sense to think of space ethics as a field of inquiry that has no fixed center. Drawing an analogy with the three-body problem in celestial mechanics, there may be no fixed point around which everything else in space ethics must revolve. Three pathways to the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge are considered in this chapter, pointing toward a multiplicity of things that matter from an ethical point of view.