Indigenous Concepts Research Articles

The impacts of leader–member guanxi and its differentiation on hotel employees moderated by Confucian values

Abstract This study examines the impacts on hotel employees in China of leader–member guanxi (LMG), an Indigenous concept of the relationship between employees and their supervisor, and LMG differentiation (LMGD), the variance in LMG quality within a work team. Furthermore, a set of Confucian values is used as a cross-level moderator to further explain the effects of LMG and LMGD on employees’ work outcomes at both individual and group levels. Based on social cognitive learning theory and Confucian philosophy, research hypotheses were developed and tested using a sample of 483 employees and 75 of their supervisors from 14 Chinese hotels. The findings show that LMG and LMGD have unique effects on employees’ work outcomes at both individual and group levels, and that Confucian values moderated the impacts of LMG and LMGD. The implications are discussed in terms of unique perspectives towards employees of Eastern background for hospitality researchers and practitioners alike.

Conceptualising cultural safety at an Indigenous-focused midwifery practice in Toronto, Canada: qualitative interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients.

ObjectiveCultural safety is an Indigenous concept that can improve how healthcare services are delivered to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. This study explored how Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients at an urban, Indigenous-focused midwifery practice in Toronto, Canada (Seventh Generation Midwives Toronto, SGMT) conceptualised and experienced culturally safe care.Design and settingInterviews were conducted with former clients of SGMT as a part of a larger evaluation of the practice. Participants were purposefully recruited. Interviews were transcribed and analysed thematically using an iterative, consensus-based approach and a critical, naturalistic, and decolonising lens.ParticipantsSaturation was reached after 20 interviews (n=9 Indigenous participants, n=11 non-Indigenous participants).ResultsThree domains of cultural safety emerged. Each domain included several themes: Relationships and Communication (respect and support for choices; personalised and continuous relationships with midwives; and being different from past experiences); Sharing Knowledge and Practice (feeling informed about the basics of pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period; and having access to Indigenous knowledge and protocols), and Culturally Safe Spaces (feeling at home in practice; and having relationships interconnected with the physical space). While some ideas were shared across groups, the distinctions between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants were prominent.ConclusionThe Indigenous participants conceptualised cultural safety in ways that highlight the survival and resurgence of Indigenous values, understandings, and approaches in cities like Toronto, and affirm the need for Indigenous midwives. The non-Indigenous participants conceptualised cultural safety with both congruence, illuminating Black-Indigenous community solidarities in cultural safety, and divergence, demonstrating the potential of Indigenous spaces and Indigenous-focused midwifery care to also benefit midwifery clients of white European descent. We hope that the positive impacts documented here motivate evaluators and healthcare providers to work towards a future where ‘cultural safety’ becomes a standard of care.

La Envidia: An Illness Manifest at the Level of the Community Body

AbstractIn Curanderismo and other traditional medicine systems, illnesses are understood to have somatic and emotional components and symptoms may be elicited by disruptions in interpersonal relationships between community members. An aspect of ritual interventions involves returning interpersonal relationships to balance and restoring harmonious interactions between members of the community. Important are shared understandings of the meaning of the symptoms, the mode of transmission of the illness, and the resolution that occurs through the process of the healer’s ritual interventions. In this essay, I present a narrative description of the illness, La Envidia, which is associated with the expression of the emotion, envy. The narrative was shared with me by a person who is a migrant from an Afromestizo community of the Pacific Coast of Mexico to Atlanta, Georgia. The illness, La Envidia, is discussed and interpreted framed by perspectives including Participation Mystique and blurred psychological boundaries, traditional indigenous conceptualizations of illness, shamanism and symbolization processes, shared meaning, traditional Yoruba informed African conceptualizations of illness and healing practices, and somatic and embodied ritual experiences.

Rights of Nature, Legal Personality, and Indigenous Philosophies

AbstractThis article investigates the relationship between legal personality for nature and Indigenous philosophies by comparing two cases: the Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 and the 2014 Te Urewera Act of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Through these case studies the article considers the nature of Indigenous relations with the concept of rights of nature, arguing that this relation is primarily strategic, not genealogical. The article engages with the concept of legal personality and shows that it is not a direct translation of Indigenous conceptions, but rather a potential straitjacket for Indigenous emancipatory politics. The radical character of Indigenous ontologies is not fully reflected in the concept of legal personality. Furthermore, the way in which rights are granted to the natural environment is an important part of the effect that such rights might have on Indigenous communities. Despite some affinities between rights of the environment and Indigenous philosophies, overstating the connection might constrain the radical political and legal implications of Indigenous thought.

Bidirectional hash chains generically enhances resilience of key predistribution schemes

Key predistribution is an adequate technique to solve the (symmetric) key management problem in distributed systems. Owing to the large network size and limited memory (z) in devices, a given key is shared by a number of nodes (r). This leads to a generic degradation of a network's resilience. Several works dedicate to reduce this deterioration by applications of lightweight mechanisms. Few such prominent approaches are the q- composite method by Chan et al., hashed random preloaded subset by Ramkumar et al. and one-way function iterates by Cichoń et al. or its special case of hash chains (HCs) by Bechkit et al. The authors introduce the generic concepts of bidirectional HCs (2HCs) and q -composite 2HCs. A thorough qualitative investigations of vital system parameters indicate trade-offs between significant improvement in a network's resilience and nominal increment in space and computational overheads in constituent devices. In the process, they correct an error in resilience computations in the works of Bechkit et al. Instantiations of their indigenous concepts to three prominent schemes that represent individual types of key predistribution schemes (one random and two deterministic) concretely quantify their analyses.

Time-space politics and heritagisation in Africa: understanding where to begin decolonisation

ABSTRACT This paper reflects on how heritage knowledge is built around time-space discourses. It takes a Critical Heritage Studies (CHS) position to examine heritage knowledge systems through the lenses of Walter Mignolo’s decolonial praxis on ‘locus of enunciation’ and Tim Ingold’s exegesis on ‘dwelling perspectives’. Drawing from ethnographic evidence collected among the Igbo of Nigeria, the study engages Indigenous concepts and heritage ontologies in the context of time and space in heritage making in Africa. Secondly, it interrogates the evidence with the continuity that occurs in society through intergenerational knowledge systems that began with known ancestors. Thirdly, such sustainability mechanisms are examined using what I call ‘territorial communion’ – the ways in which those local knowledge systems are ‘printed’ on the landscape through human-nature ‘relational ontologies’, and how such pictured living holds heritage in a continuum. Finally, the paper contends that a good knowledge of intergenerational ‘dwelling perspectives’ from different loci of enunciation would begin the decoloniality of heritage in Africa.

Reclaiming Indigenous Sexuality in Vancouver

This paper illustrates Indigenous sexual being on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam),Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, through a narrative of resurgenceand sovereignty. Discussions regarding Indigenous sexual being in Vancouver within scholarship andmedia tend to share a single story which focuses narrowly on a theme of violence. This paper utilizesthe Indigenous concept of a Sovereign Erotic (Driskill, 2004) to illustrate how sexuality can be used as asovereignty practice. I exemplify this concept as an active practice of decolonization through erotics byexploring the works of Virago Nation, an all-Indigenous burlesque group. This paper works to exposenarratives of colonization and gendered violence in Vancouver, in order to share a competing narrativeof sovereignty through sexuality. This narrative of sovereignty provides a broader scope of Indigenoussexuality in Vancouver by including those who reflect resurgence, reclamation, and hope.

Imazighen of France; articulations of an indigenous diaspora

ABSTRACT Indigenous diasporas are an emerging social and political phenomenon, and conceptually offer a productive avenue for critical research in the study of ethnicity and migration. The politics of Indigenous peoples in diaspora have not received enough scholarly attention, and this article seeks to respond by examining how indigeneity is articulated by the many Amazigh (non-Arab North African) cultural associations of France. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s articulation theory, this article contributes a nuanced approach to the relational concept of indigeneity, exploring four key ways in which disparate subjectivities are articulated with indigeneity in the discourse and practices of the diasporic Amazigh movement. Firstly, diaspora Imazighen articulate with the Global Indigenous Movement. Secondly, they position themselves and their homeland populations as colonised people. Thirdly, they perform cultural authenticity within their project of cultural and linguistic revitalisation. Lastly, they practice a village territoriality that articulates with indigeneity by privileging rurality and pre-colonial political institutions. These diaspora articulations are argued to produce a pro-indigenous, anti-essentialist discourse, which highlights the relational nature of indigeneity.

Temporal Concepts and Formulations of Time in Tibeto-Burman Languages

As a vast and diverse linguistic grouping, Tibeto-Burman languages vary in their usage of time constructs, both morphologically and semantically. Even between genetically related languages within the Tibeto-Burman language family, approaches to elements such as suffixation vary widely, while vocabulary from Indo-Aryan and distantly related Sinitic languages is differently incorporated and borrowed. In this article, we identify trends that only become apparent through the process of data collation and the careful comparison of numerous grammatical sketches and dictionaries. We further expand this rich, if understudied, area through the incorporation of original fieldwork data from the Thangmi/Thami-speaking communities of Nepal undertaken by one of the co-authors, and supplemented by the researcher’s residence in the Himalayan region from 1996 to 2009. The literature review and linguistic scope of this survey includes multiple grammars of languages spoken across the Greater Himalayan region, with specific emphasis on the Rāī-Kiranti sub-branch of languages autochthonous to eastern Nepal. In our comparative analysis, we focus on apparent cognates and shared paradigms with an emphasis on systems of segmental time measurement (e.g. ‘two days hence,’ ‘this year’) rather than on relative ones (e.g. ‘now,’ ‘then’). Through this compilation, the relationship between Tibeto-Burman languages and their often-dominant regional Indo-Aryan counterparts becomes more visible, mediated by a better understanding of the shared yet conflicting epistemological, astrological, and organizational views of time held by the communities who speak Tibeto-Burman languages. Features of note include the assimilation of Chinese and Indian religious and spiritual systems, as well as imported vocabulary that does not always replace—but is in fact sometimes incorporated into—the lexicon of a given language by the speech community. It is our observation that in Tibeto-Burman languages, Indigenous concepts, categories and classifications of time are usually grammatically encoded in adverbial forms, while the influential Indo-Aryan languages of the region mostly make use of nominal morphology in order to express temporal concepts. In addition, reflexes of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (hereafter PTB) nouns are still evident across the language family. To conclude, we position this survey as a comparative and analytical contribution which focuses attention on the region’s rich linguistic variation and the importance of rigorous documentation, conservation and revitalisation programs for Indigenous languages of the Tibeto-Burman family, as the communities who speak these languages continue to grapple with severe socio-political challenges and face the hegemonic pressures of linguistic assimilation.

Canadian Literature and the Temporality of Dying Colonialism

This article historicizes cultural appropriation in Canadian literature today by examining key texts from the critiques of cultural appropriation in Canadian culture in the 1990s. Appropriation is contextualized in relation to a modernist temporality that constructs an Other outside of modernity and to the temporality in Frantz Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism, a temporality in which the colonized is liberated but the colonizer is still “choked” and not yet rehabilitated. Reading appropriation through its cultural historical context in relation to modernist art and conceptual art, the practice of appropriation emerges as an extension of colonial practices and as an extractivist economy. Countering this, I point to the Indigenous concept of “cultural belongings” as a form of critique and alterity that counters the logic of cultural appropriation.

Criarse andando : la andadera de los Embera Chamí de Caimalito.

Este artículo presenta un concepto indígena aprendido mediante observación participante junto a una familia embera chamí de Risaralda, Colombia. La andadera es la propensión a moverse, un trabajo constante que le da forma a la vida indígena. La andadera pone a los indios en un relacionar constante en el cual los humanos “se crían” en el ir y el regresar. Se presenta el concepto en la primera parte mediante una inmersión etnográfica. En la segunda se buscan ecos en la literatura etnográfica de los embera y se plantea un diálogo con las antropologías de Luis Guillermo Vasco y de Tim Ingold.

Artistic Expression through (Re)Creation: Children’s Play Songs in Ghana

Abstract This paper examines rural Ghanaian children’s creative performance of play songs in the context of recent scholarship on children’s rights in children’s literature. This scholarship, which has focused mainly on written literature in western contexts, seeks to give serious literary attention to children’s creative expression and thereby uphold their rights to contribute to the artistic life and culture of their societies. Kasena children of northern Ghana exhibit creative agency in adapting traditional play songs to new situations, as they re-create and reinterpret communal idioms, imagery and symbols, thus generating new forms, new concepts and new meanings. I illustrate the aesthetic qualities and transgressive features of this phenomenon by drawing on relevant indigenous Kasem concepts about art and creative resistance. If taken seriously, this dynamic heritage of children’s poetry can help us see emerging play genres as an affirmation of children’s creativity, and prompt a redefinition of ideas about childhood.

Thinking about Indigeneity with Respect to Time and Space: Reflections from Southeast Asia

Most people take it for granted that it is relatively easy to determine who is Indigenous and who is not. Indeed, in the Americas and Oceania, where a lot of settler colonialism occurred, Indigenous peoples are generally considered to be the descendants of those who inhabited these spaces prior to the arrival of white settlers. In Southeast Asia, however, there was plenty of European colonialism, but much less white settler colonization. This has made the question of “who is Indigenous” much more difficult to answer, and politically contested, as both ethnic minority and majority populations are able to credibly claim that they are “Indigenous” to where they live. Indicative of the contested nature of the issue, and following what has come to be known as the ‘salt-water theory’, most states in Southeast Asia stipulate that their populations are either all Indigenous, or that there are no Indigenous peoples within their borders. Yet new globalized conceptions of indigeneity are circulating, hybridizing and taking hold, albeit unevenly. Crucially, Indigenous peoples are now increasingly being conceptualized as “colonized peoples” rather than simply “first peoples”, thus partially uncoupling indigeneity from space and time. In this paper, I contend that relational ideas associated with indigeneity are perpetually changing and are best considered through the lens of time and space, concepts that serve as the foundation for assertions related to who is Indigenous and who is not.

Ways to Be Understood: The Ontological Turn and Interpretive Social Science

The ontological turn in anthropological methodology, at least in its conceptualization-oriented formulation, aims to turn away from the concepts and objects found within one’s own social setting in order to turn to indigenous conceptualization processes and take a look at “the things (and persons) themselves.” This article aims to unpack what such constant reconceptualization amounts to, arguing that when modified to meet certain objections, the ontological turn could provide important ingredients for an alternative version of interpretive social science—one that wishes to understand social phenomena as human kinds in the vein of Ian Hacking, Sally Haslanger and Ron Mallon.

New and old knowledge aimed at decolonising mental health: reflections and proposals from Chile

Assuming that coloniality and its expression in hegemonic medicine and conventional psychiatry are present in most Latin American countries, this article explores unknown dimensions of decolonisation: the subjective, but social process of decolonisation of the being in hegemonic groups as the physicians. Although in Chile there are new models and state programmes that promote collective mental health and interculturality, they generally fail because they are trapped in the colonial system of power/knowledge and life/being. Grounded on the perspective of critical interculturality, we need to rethink mental health from the colonial difference to propose a new epistemology of power/knowledge and life/being based on indigenous concepts as well-being. Considering structural transformation as a key issue, through a case study of a lived intercultural experience, we point out that the activation of the decolonisation process requires not only new models of mental health but also a profound epistemic subjective transformation of physicians as colonised subjects.

“Holding Living Bodies in Graveyards”: The Violence of Keeping Ethiopian Manuscripts in Western Institutions

“Holding Living Bodies in Graveyards”: The Violence of Keeping Ethiopian Manuscripts in Western Institutions

Family Counselling as Decolonization: Exploring an Indigenous Social-Constructivist Approach in Clinical Practice

In Canada, Indigenous peoples’ lives are shaped by relationships with their families. These relationships are defined by traditional Indigenous conceptions of connectedness with the earth, communities, and the many relations that occur within these contexts and are based on what is termed Indigenous ways of knowing. These relationships are also described through a concept of Western social constructivism. Social constructivism is an ideal mate for Indigenous ways of knowing in the practice of family counseling because it recognizes the importance of culture and context in understanding what occurs in human interactions when constructing knowledge based on this understanding. Indigenous ways of knowing have been of recent and growing interest to family mental health practitioners and policy makers who are seeking to support clients in decolonization processes. Family service providers who work in a Western social service or health care setting have an interest in exploring forms of sociocultural theory and practice, such as Indigenous ways of knowing, in order to address and further the practitioner-family interaction and to benefit both individuals and communities in a responsible and sustainable manner. Using current and historical literature, this article presents a summary of issues and guidelines for a hybrid approach that brings together Western and Indigenous approaches for family service workers (such as counselors, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists), and a set of guidelines for practical application. Implications of how these practices can positively impact and promote community mental health in the current climate of recovery from colonialism and cultural genocide are presented.

Aboriginal Title in the Press at Red River and New Westminster

This article is a historical study of how newspaper editors at Red River and New Westminster dealt with the subject of Aboriginal title across the 1860s. In so doing, the article responds to Bain Attwood’s injunction of how “historians must seek to recover the realpolitik of the frontier, what actually happened in colonial settings and how aboriginal title was shaped by relationships between colonizers, colonized and the imperial and colonial state.” At both Red River and New Westminster, editors commented extensively about how Indigenous property rights had not yet been dealt with, lobbying for local and imperial authorities to take action. But while this support for the recognition of Aboriginal title remained consistent over time in Red River, writers in New Westminster eventually quit their advocacy. Through this analysis, the article also reckons with Stuart Banner’s argument that the recognition or non-recognition of Aboriginal title in British and American sites across the Pacific region was driven primarily by local factors rather than by imperial policy. With this theory in mind, of key importance to this article are the significance of treaty-making precedents and the degree to which editors understood or cared about Indigenous conceptions of land tenure.

Two-Spirit Identity and Indigenous Conceptualization of Gender and Sexuality: Implications for Nursing Practice.

The word Two-Spirit is an umbrella term that is used to describe Indigenous peoples who are diverse in terms of their sexual orientation and gender identity, though community-specific definitions and roles for gender and sexual orientation are more extensive and varied. While the terminology of Two-Spirit is recent in its development, Indigenous conceptualizations of diverse gender identities, roles, and sexual orientations have existed since time immemorial and provide important insights into how cultural safety can be incorporated into caring practices. The purpose of this article is to introduce readers to the term Two-Spirit and to provide a broad overview of Indigenous conceptualizations of gender, sexuality, and spirit, to address implications for the nursing profession, and to outline potential applications of this knowledge in practice.

Identifying and understanding the health and social care needs of Indigenous older adults with multiple chronic conditions and their caregivers: a scoping review

BackgroundIndigenous people continue to experience high rates of multiple chronic conditions (MCC) at younger ages than other populations, resulting in an increase in health and social care needs. Those who provide services designed to address MCC for Indigenous communities require synthesized information to develop interventions that meet the needs of their older adult population. This review seeks to answer the research question: What are the health and social care needs, priorities and preferences of Indigenous older adults (living outside of long-term care settings) with MCC and their caregivers?MethodsA scoping review, guided by a refinement of the Arksey & O’Malley framework, was conducted. Articles were included if the authors reported on health and social care needs and priorities of older Indigenous adults. We also included articles that focused on Indigenous conceptions of wellness, resilience, well-being, and/or balance within the context of aging, and articles where authors drew from Indigenous specific worldviews, ways of knowing, cultural safety, cultural competence, cultural appropriateness, cultural relevance and community needs.ResultsThis scoping review included 9 articles that were examined using an Indigenous determinants of health (IDH) theoretical framework to analyze the needs of older adults and CGs. Five areas of needs were identified: accessible health services; building community capacity; improved social support networks; preservation of cultural values in health care; and wellness-based approaches.ConclusionThe review highlights key determinants of health that influenced older adults’ needs: education and literacy, ethnicity, and social support/network (proximal); health promotion and health care (intermediate); and a combination of historical and contemporary structures (distal). The findings highlight the importance of local Indigenous knowledge and perspectives to improve accessibility of culturally relevant health and social services.