Revisiting the Breath of Life Theory

Abstract

AbstractWhilst theorists in physics have been striving for a ‘theory of everything’ to explain the interconnections of matter across time and space (Hawking, 2006), western social theories are largely segmented and situated within a limited scope of time and space with little attention to the multiple dimensions of reality that western physics and indigenous knowledge have already validated (Blackstock, 2009a,b). Ten years ago, I developed the Breath of Life theory (Blackstock, 2011) to provoke a conversation about Indigenous ontological approaches that place human experience in an interconnected web of reality across time, space and dimensions of reality. The overall goal was to engage other theorists into the communal building of a ‘theory of everything’ to inform social sciences and to highlight the richness of Indigenous ontology and epistemology. This article revisits the Breath of Life theory and argues that a greater emphasis on equity within and between the relational worldview principles (Cross, 2007) would be a useful modification.