Indigenous Cosmologies Research Articles

Storytelling and Listening in Transitional Justice Processes: Addressing the Marginalisation of More-than-Human Worlds

This interdisciplinary article makes three important contributions to discussions about transitional justice and storytelling. First, it problematises the anthropocentric character of transitional justice and the concomitant narrow focus on human-centred stories. It underscores the need for more inclusive and multispecies ways of thinking about storytelling – as a deeply relational process – and what it looks and sounds like in transitional justice contexts. Second, the article focuses not just on storytelling but also on listening, which has received little attention within transitional justice research. It reflects on the significance of soundscape ecology and argues that learning to listen to and with our soundscapes is one way of ensuring that more-than-human worlds, ‘voices’ and experiences do not remain peripheral to transitional justice. Third, the article contributes to a larger decolonising imperative. By conceptualising storytelling and listening as inherently relational practices, it de-centres liberal individualism and gives prominence to Indigenous cosmologies.

Center and Periphery in the Early Modern Spanish Empire: An Art-Historical Perspective on Colonial Latin America

ABSTRACT Art history’s center-periphery paradigm holds metropolitan centers as the originators of artistic models that the periphery copies. Accordingly, European artworks were the primary models for colonial Latin America’s artists who dutifully copied them. Scholarship that accounts for complex artistic negotiations characteristic of colonial societies complicates the long-held view of colonial Latin America as a replicative artistic periphery to Europe. It recognizes mutually constitutive relationships between different groups and artistic practices in the Spanish imperial order. This article highlights select examples of cross-cultural artistic interactions in colonial Mexico and argues that they often operated outside the European/Renaissance preoccupation with artistic originality/innovation as it is characterized in the artist biography genre of early modern Europe. Significantly, Christian global designs were the justification for Spanish power in the Americas, and colonial religious art has often been used to measure the success of that order. Accounting for the strategic copresence of European and Indigenous cosmologies and aesthetics in colonial visual culture is crucial to developing a more rounded and critical understanding of the Christian colonial order in Latin America. It also offers one alternative to the binary and largely unidirectional center-periphery model by highlighting the multidirectional flow of ideas, beliefs, and forms.

Manobo, Bagobo, and Mansaka Indigenous Cosmology: Rediscovering Culture through Dramatist Pentad Structures of Folk Heroes

This study investigates the culture of Manobo, Bagobo, and Mansaka Indigenous Peoples in Mindanao. It utilizes the qualitative-descriptive method to describe culture based on the practices of folk heroes in the collected oral narratives. Furthermore, the study uses the dramatist pentad theory of Kenneth Burke, including act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose, to produce cultural interpretations. Hence, the study reveals the culture mirrored in the oral narratives such as: (1) Manobo, pangayaw (hunting of enemies) and transcendental belief in Tubaran (magical instrument); (2) Bagobo, hunting of wild chickens and encountering Busaw (evil spirits); and, (3) Mansaka, courtship and marriage to a mythical creature and hunting of birds. This research facilitates critical discourses on culture through oral narratives. It may foster a sense of place and cultural identity among academic scholars to rediscover the epistemological and ontological knowledge of Indigenous Peoples in Mindanao.

Entangled engagements: a posthumanist and affirmative ethics for tourism geographies

This review summarizes some key moments in the development of ethics in tourism research and practice where three main areas of concern are identified: socio-economic inequalities, cultural discriminations, and more-than-human speciesism. Following a brief historical review, the paper delves into some current trends and ethical concerns in tourism geographies, which trace back to the utilitarian ethics within which contemporary tourism emerged, after which, and with the growing concerns about tourism’s negative impacts, normative and moral approaches to ethics held sway. Then the paper addresses a critical gap in tourism ethics’ research and practice. With few exceptions, tourism environments are seen as something apart, things to be managed, developed or even protected, where the focus is instrumental on how these environments can be maintained or manipulated for human benefit. This modernization paradigm and its promise of progress through growth, together with a tourism industry that (re)produces colonial structures through neocolonial practices reinforced by neoliberal globalization has contributed to a host of present-day challenges and injustices. We argue that to address the injustices above and current existential crises like climate change, and other threats to socio-ecological well-being, a paradigm shift in tourism thinking is needed. Specifically, we propose embracing posthumanist ethics as a novel, experimental (as against normative or moral), situated (as against universal), and affirmative (as against oppositional) critique of structural injustices and structural power; epistemological pluralism (as against essentialism), acknowledging the relationality proper of indigenous cosmologies and other traditional knowledges (where more involvement from the Global South is needed); and a new materialist ontology that overcomes human exceptionalism and abandons oppositional binary thinking. In other words, what is needed, is an affirmative posthumanist ethics for tourism that is relational, plural and differential.

Spiritual Disorientation: A Study of Place in Linda Hogan’s <i>Solar Storms</i> from the Perspective of Human Geography

Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw writer grown up in the Native American Renaissance, who feels much obliged to figure out an effective way of guiding the colonized native people out of ecocide and ethnocide wrought by the Euro-American colonization. As an author wholly drenched in the indigenous cosmology, Hogan bestows great concern on the issue of place in the literary creation, which is a pivotal cosmological element in the native epistemological system and thus can be taken as a means for her to decolonize her people. This paper is to investigate the issue of colonization and decolonization through the lens of place in the register of human geography by exploring the spiritual disorientation attributed to land loss represented in her novel <i>Solar Storms </i>(1995). Based on detailed textual analysis, it is unfolded that the spiritual disorientation in the Indian community has been overtly embodied in two aspects: native men’s alcoholism and their conceding to white masculinity, and child abuse conducted by women for their suffering from intergenerational trauma, which truly represents the mental or psychological crisis of indigenous peoples triggered by and attendant to the land loss. In conclusion, the decolonizing process in Hogan’s fiction necessitates reviewing the horrible outcome of the native people’s land loss history so as to enhance their recognition of the communal place, stimulate their sense of community and develop new sites and strategies of resistance.

Psicologia Indígena, ou a construção de um lócus de mediação

Abstract This essay aims to explore the practical, theoretical, and methodological specificities of Indigenous Psychology, proposing the use of audiovisual languages as a means to research, document, and deepen the dialogue between academic and Indigenous communities. This field is under development and reflection, adopting a transdisciplinary, complex, systemic, and dialogical perspective that contributes to the decolonization of psychology itself by creating spaces, or mediation locus, for the recognition of the existence and resilience of Indigenous cosmology and good living. We discuss audiovisual media as a mediating instance between distinct ways of understanding the historical world through image and sound capture and editing processes. We conclude that this strategy de-hierarchizes the relationship between academia and communities, striving to empower, amplify, and enhance the voices and visibility of all involved, bringing practical, theoretical, technical, methodological, and ethical advancements in constructing, disseminating, and sharing knowledge.

Accessing the Divine: Indigenous Medical Specialists, Catholic Priests, and Nonorthodox Methods of Healing in Colonial Mexico

Abstract This study examines forty-six colonial records spanning over two centuries (ca. 1581–1802), the majority of which consist of Mexican Inquisition and criminal trials. The article illuminates how Indigenous medical specialists, alternatively labeled ritual specialists, maintained communal solidarity by accessing the divine using sacred rituals. From New Spain’s southern extremity in Chiapas to its northern frontier in Santa Fe, devout commoners made votive offerings to combat disease and recalibrate the cosmos. Indigenous medical specialists such as curanderos and midwives remained influential locally because commoners perceived their ceremonies to be efficacious. Ritual specialists used their advanced knowledge of medicine and spirituality to alleviate illnesses like dysentery, fever, and typhoid. Concern for ailing family members prompted Natives to take an inclusive approach to the treatment of disease, which could conflict with church doctrine. Case testimony reveals that diverse, nonorthodox methods of healing persisted in the face of Spanish colonization. Faith in the efficacy of Indigenous cosmologies helped the infirm to envisage a better life, instilling hope. The study’s focus on the spiritual and material illuminates how ancestral knowledge produced political and social ramifications centuries after inception, demonstrating how the past reverberates into the present.

Different Words, Same Results

In 2007, Ecuadorians elected Rafael Correa, a left-wing leader who based much of his platform on calls for decolonial reform and the indigenous cosmology of buen vivir. Representing the opposite side of the political spectrum, Brazilians elected right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro, whose platform included social conservative and anti-environmental rhetoric. Both leaders can be understood as populists, which refers to the phenomena whereby leaders build a multi-class coalition via a personalistic party, have charismatic personalities, and have a redistributive agenda within the existing social bounds. Populism is an ineffective mechanism to address the demands of civil society, which is ultimately detrimental to democracy, as highlighted by the case studies of Ecuador and Brazil. This paper focuses on the impact of populism on one aspect of democracy, the dispersal of power and the limitation of domination by one person or a small group.

Making Waves: The Role of Indigenous Water Beings in Debates about Human and Non‐Human Rights

ABSTRACTRejecting nature‐culture dualism, contemporary anthropology recognises the mutually constitutive processes that create shared human and non‐human lifeworlds. Such recognition owes much to ethnographic engagement with diverse indigenous cosmologies many of which have, for millennia, upheld ideas about indivisible worlds in which all living kinds occupy a shared ontological space and non‐human species and environments are approached respectfully, with expectations of reciprocity and partnership. As many societies confront the global chaos caused by the anthropocentric prioritisation of human interests, anthropologists and indigenous communities are therefore well placed to articulate alternative models in which the non‐human domain is dealt with more equitably and inclusively. This paper is located comparatively in long‐term ethnographic research with indigenous communities in Australia, alongside the Mitchell River in North Queensland and the Brisbane River in South Queensland. It draws more specifically on involvement in legal claims for water rights by Māori iwis in New Zealand; in land claims by the Kunjen language group in Cape York; and in a recent ‘sea country’ case brought against a major multi‐national by the Tiwi Islanders in Australia's Northern Territory. It also makes use of a major comparative study of water beings in diverse cultural and historical contexts, and considers the central importance of water beings such as Māori taniwha and the Australian Rainbow Serpent in such legal conflicts, and in broader debates about human and non‐human rights. Like other water deities around the world, these beings personify the generative (and potentially punitive) powers of water and its co‐creative role in shaping human and non‐human lives. They are resurfacing today with an important representational role in contemporary conflicts over land and water.

(Re)charging Queer Indigenous zones: Pedagogical hub-making with the Land of the Spirit Waters

This article situates the multiple formations of pedagogical hubs that Two-Spirit, Queer, and Trans (2S/Q/T) Indigenous educators co-constitute with the Land of the Spirit Waters (central and south Texas, United States). Through these pedagogical hubs, 2S/Q/T Indigenous educators are re-constituting a Queer Indigenous cosmology bonded intimately with their relationships with the Land, ceremony, community, and other 2S/Q/T people. Guided by these relationalities, they come together to teach, create, and sustain 2S/Q/T Indigenous subjectivities, as, within specific Indigenous communities, gender and sexuality can often be seen in rigid and impenetrable ways. One of these pedagogical hubs is a Queer and youth-led Danza Mexica (Aztec dancing) group in Austin, Texas. In learning with the Land, I co-theorize with the concept of the recharge zone, an area in which Water runoff accumulates within a particular region, fills the aquifer below, and later emerges as springs that give life to the area. I argue that 2S/Q/T Indigenous people are mirroring these geological processes because their acts of gathering, much like a recharge zone, give life to a region marked by cis-heteropatriarchy and the enduring remnants of settler sexualities. Thus, the process of (re)charging Queer Indigenous zones presents multiple registers of epistemology and learning with the Land and demonstrates how 2S/Q/T Indigenous people co-create and fortify dreams, stories, experiences, and futures that have always already been Queer.

Contemporary Indigenous Cosmologies and Pragmatics, Edited by Françoise Dussart and Sylvia Poirier

Contemporary Indigenous Cosmologies and Pragmatics, Edited by Françoise Dussart and Sylvia Poirier

Realms unseen

AbstractSince 2006, albinism has emerged as both a subject and an object of contestation in Tanzania and beyond. An abiding global narrative purports that, as a recessively inherited condition, albinism is fetishized by Africans who falsely attribute otherworldly potentials to albino body parts and commodify them in a grisly market run by “traditional” healers and their patrons. In response, translocal albinism rights stakeholders have formed to cement a singular notion of albinism and, with “it,” a notion of unseen power that cancels the agency of particular nonhumans. Their work diverges from those who insist on multiple other instantiations of albinism and worlds unseen, some of which offer compelling explanations of recent violence rooted in entanglement and complicity, rather than an Indigenous cosmology. In this context, I argue for a conceptual and methodological approach to social movements and minority groups rooted in decolonizing unseen realms and embracing epistemic and ontological openness.

Territorial learning and childcare practices: exploring relations between territory and care in the intercultural training of Indigenous educators in Brazil

ABSTRACT The article discusses Indigenous caring relations in everyday practices involving children, in which co-learning approaches, as well as peer-to-peer learning processes, are grounded in territory. We revisit a set of learning encounters that unfolded as part of the Intercultural Training Programme for Indigenous Educators in Southeast Brazil. The course is part of the Minas Gerais Federal University’s (UFMG) Faculty of Education where, since 2006, it has trained and qualified Indigenous teachers to deliver Primary and Secondary education. In the text we argue in favour of the ‘school for many’, highlighting the pedagogical possibilities that emerge from the course’s ethnographic focus and, more specifically, from two care-taking learning scenarios with and among children. The records of these activities allow us to envision an educational agenda that includes such topics, respecting and dialoguing with Indigenous cosmologies and traditions; one that assumes this dialogue to be a fundamental part of Indigenous peoples’ resistance and respect for life.

Is there a right to knowledge about our origins?

Is there a right to knowledge about the origins of life and the origins of humanity? Here, I mean knowledge of a sort that astrobiology may be able to supply. And a right of the sort that might be acknowledged within international declarations, agreements, and codes of conduct. A distinguishing feature of the paper is an argument strategy that draws upon pragmatic discussions of animal rights and links a pragmatic idea of rights to interests. The background thought here is that discussions of rights in the non-human case can enrich our understanding of the rights that we should ascribe to humans as well as our understanding of what it means to ascribe a right. A right to knowledge about our origins can be supported by the classic autonomy-based approach towards rights, given that such a right would help to optimize the conditions under which autonomy is exercised. However, the case for a right to knowledge about origins strengthens when we draw upon a more interest-based approach and say that rights can also be tied to strong interests. In order to support the idea that humans have a sufficiently strong interest in the relevant kinds of knowledge, i.e., astrobiological knowledge about origins, appeal is made to the historical spread, depth and persistence of our human concern with origins, evidenced by Indigenous cosmologies and storytelling about how life began. Our history as a moral community is, in part, a history of reflection upon origins, with astrobiology functioning as a recent and productive way of engaging in such reflection.

Towards a circular theory of communication: The case of the Wayusa ritual of the traditional Kichwa people of Sarayaku

The Wayusa is a community ritual that is part of the exercise of political imagination among the Kichwa Indigenous people of Sarayaku, in Ecuador. In this article it will be discussed as a case study arguing towards a circular theory of communication, emerging from the works of Paulo Freire and calling for an approximation with Indigenous cosmology, looking for epistemological diversity and interdisciplinarity. Based in comprehensive fieldwork, this article suggests that the Wayusa illustrates the role of communication in the knowledge-chain in the community of Sarayaku, while also describing the kind of communication that it is made of. Different from a dominant linear theory of communication, it points to a conceptual framework whose horizon is not universalist but based on each space–time context. Beyond explaining a localized practice, it is argued that such circular model can dialogue and challenge the linear one as an operative general framework.

Eschatology in African Traditional Religion and African Christianity: Implications for Biblical and Theological Scholarship in Africa

African traditional religion has many concepts that present alternative and a variety of contexts for Christianity, theology and biblical scholarship in Africa which can also provide appropriate answers to the many questions of African Christians. One of such concepts is eschatology. Eschatology in African traditional religions present deep insight into the philosophies of Africa’s indigenous cosmology and perspectives about life, death, and the hereafter. This article attempts to examine the concept of eschatology in Christian theology and explain the same within the African traditional and religious hermeneutical framework to decipher what implications can be derived for Christianity, theology and biblical scholarship in Africa and beyond. To achieve this the article reviewed various literature on the concept of eschatology within Christianity and African Traditional Religion (ATR). In this way, the article was able to compare the theology of escatology in Christianity and African Traditional Religion. The article looked at concepts such as time, death, end time, judgement, etc in both Christianity and ATR to discover their similarities and differences. The study revealed that the quintessential essence of African spirituality and cosmology is summed up in the concept of life as a cycle (unending); a person is born, grows to become a full member of the family, dies and gets admitted into the world of the ancestors. Even in death, life does not end, it continues actively and vibrantly in the world of the ancestors. This ideology evokes a kind of consciousness of life as a spiritual journey. Keywords: Eschatology, Christology, Ancestor, Christianity, Theology, Religion

A Mighty Cooperative

A Mighty Cooperative

Religiosity and Indigenous Cosmology in a Brazilian Hospital Setting: The Challenges Faced by Health Professionals

This article focuses on the description, discussion, and problematization of the ways indigenous spirituality is presented in a Brazil’s hospital, in the context of the treatment of chronic illnesses in children under medical supervision. It describes a short extract from a more wide-ranging study, focusing on the analysis of excerpts of the verbal responses of health professionals, and of two specific cases. Adopting a phenomenological approach, the vicissitudes of the hospitalization of indigenous children are described from the perspectives of the professionals, with an emphasis on the outcomes of the reported cases, which are riddled with impasses and challenges, with important implications for the country’s health policy and for the training of health professionals. Grounded on the cosmological explications for the illness, the indigenous child’s family members tend to resort to pajelança, (indigenous traditional healing rituals), even within the hospital environment, with or without the consent of the medical team. This process does not always end harmoniously or in an integrated fashion, evidencing the rifts in the interaction between indigenous curing practices, underpinned by thousands of years of tradition, and medical practices grounded on formal, rational, and scientific understanding. We conclude by indicating perspectives for professional training and the respective ethical considerations.

Indigenous cosmologies and black onto-epistemologies in gender and education

Indigenous cosmologies and black onto-epistemologies in gender and education

From Banib to Bunyip: Tracking Bricolage and Knowledge Systems in Colonized Aboriginal Spirituality

This article considers the Australian ‘bunyip’, a cryptid that has captured the colonial imagination since the European invasion. In doing so, the article will track the transformation of the creature through the invasion of Australia, and subsequently raise concerns regarding the application of an ‘apolitical’ bricolage in cases of myths translated across knowledge systems, especially in the context of colonialism. It considers the relationship between cryptozoology and the natural sciences, as well as the origins of the bunyip within Indigenous cosmologies. Ultimately, this article demonstrates the transformation of the bunyip from Indigenous contexts to its current position as a pseudoscientific cryptid.