Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Possibilities for Re-envisaging Globalization: Implications for Human Ecology

Abstract

Indigenous cultural orientations across the globe offer some groundwork for us to recognize the essential connectivity of all planetary life, including human and non-human dynamisms. Furthermore, Indigenous Wisdom as it manifests across the world (for example, in the cultural symbols of Indigenous people in Africa, of Native/Indian Americans in America, and of Aboriginals in Australia) can be seen as offering an approach to knowing and being that is non-impositional. The paper spotlights some of the ways in which people in various Indigenous communities have tried to oppose forces of social and natural exploitation when living out their approaches to being-in-the-world. A case is made for arguing that in human ecological studies, our lens when addressing Indigenous approaches needs not be directed so much at the content of the knowledge that different people may put forward, but can be turned more to the manner of tying knowing to valued ways of living.