Indigenous Cosmovision Research Articles

An Indigenous Cosmovision for Earth-Centric Governance

Abstract The following article critically examines how the structure of international law falls short of embracing common global problems. In this context, the article focuses on the ecological aspects of governance that tend to go beyond state-centric interests. Putting forward an overview of how issues beyond the states’ national jurisdiction are addressed in the present structure of international law, the article examines the challenges of incorporating the Earth-centric approach reflected in the Indigenous cosmovision into that body of law. While the analysis does not attempt to provide any conclusive solutions, it argues that the Earth-centric approach cannot be incorporated into the current international legal framework. Although absolutely indispensable for a sustainable planetary process, the approach would require a complete deconstruction of the global legal order or a radical re-organization of the current structure of international law.

Education and socio-environmental justice in the pluriverse: decolonial perspectives

ABSTRACT A growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship underscores the imperative to explore and advance pluriversal education – an educational approach that embraces the diversity of ways of being, knowing, and acting, rooted in historical contexts and ecological interconnectedness. Central to this exploration is a pressing need to consider education as a means of promoting epistemic pluralism within spaces of settler colonialism. By contesting a westernized geopolitics of knowledge, a pluriversal education advocates for the revalorization of subaltern knowledges, Indigenous cosmovisions, activism, and socio-environmental justice grounded in human, cultural, and land rights. The paper first debates on fundamental divergences between the concept of pluriversal education, based on principles of decolonial interculturality, and the principles of global sustainable education announced by international mainstream institutions. Then, it refers to concrete experimentations of activism in pluriversal education in various locations illustrated by the contributions of the special issue.

Decolonizing applied linguistics in Africa and its diasporas: disrupting the center

ABSTRACT The decolonization of applied linguistics is a critique of applied linguistics (see Phillipson, 1999; Phipps, 2018 and Pennycook & Makoni, 2020). We argue for a shift toward the Global South, in particular Africa, and for the importance of paying attention to ‘race’ as a significant category of analysis in applied linguistics in Africa. Three points require attention in a decolonized applied linguistics: 1) The identification of northern sociolinguistic theories masked as universal and a shift toward Southern frameworks, 2) The acknowledgment of ‘white privilege’ and ‘white fragility’ in language studies, more generally, and the inclusion of ‘race’ as a category of analysis among authors, and 3) The under-representation of female African scholars. The challenges transcend an agenda that redresses exclusions, and the colonial past of linguistics and location in neoliberal times. We question principles underlying applied linguistics in the Global North, often based on patriarchal and capitalist impositions, and epistemological racism in applied linguistics. We argue for a decolonized applied linguistics which draws from indigenous cosmovisions. These cosmovisions sidestep the dualism that is typical of Global North scholarship: individual/collective, body/mind. We show that Euro-American applied linguistics is evolving toward Africa in particular fields.

Transcending the nature-society dichotomy: A dialogue between the Sumak Kawsay and the epistemology of complexity

This transdisciplinary research aims to propose one path, among multiple paths, to transcend the nature/society dichotomy in ecological economics, through an ecology of knowledge between Sumak Kawsay—an Andean indigenous cosmovision—and the epistemology of complexity. A qualitative methodology has been used, which includes a critical revision of scholarship on Sumak Kawsay, the definition of nature, complexity, complex systems, and the epistemology of complexity. This effort points to a critique of the conception of nature held by ‘traditional science’; one that has also resulted in the nature/society dichotomy as an epistemic basis within ecological economics. Thus, an epistemic convergence between Sumak Kawsay and the epistemology of complexity is advocated not only to disregard the nature/society dichotomy in ecological economics but also to include ancestral indigenous principles and values in knowledge production. In conclusion, such a dialogue between Sumak Kawsay and the epistemology of complexity could transcend the nature/society dichotomy within ecological economics by including notions like Pacha Mama and socio-ecological systems. It also has the potential to influence science production by considering principles from ancestral knowledge that points towards community, inclusion, horizontality, complexity, interculturality, and trans-disciplinarity.

Co-producing autonomy? Forest monitoring programs, territorial ontologies, and Indigenous politics in Amazonia

Forest monitoring programs have become widespread in Amazon Basin countries. Using GPS artifacts, smartphones, drones, and other technologies, international environmental non-government organizations (IENGOs) propose these programs as tools to control and stop deforestation events—and thus of climate change mitigation. These also seem like ideal initiatives for IENGOs to collaborate with Indigenous organizations, responding to calls to include their knowledge in climate governance. I analyze forest/territorial monitoring programs created by the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and its member organizations in Ecuador and Peru. Scholarship in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and digital geographies has demonstrated how digital environmental technologies and environmental relations and politics can co-produce and shape one another. It has also referred to the historically exploitative relationships that technoscientific projects have enforced towards Indigenous peoples, and the potential of digital tools for emancipatory goals. I argue that forest monitoring programs and technologies co-produce forms of climate and territorial politics in Amazonia. Through forest monitoring programs, Indigenous leaders and organizations imagine and enact territorial defense, or a politics founded on integral territorial ontologies. That is, they see the programs as tools to strengthen their autonomy, to build the capacities of leaders at all scales of political organization, and to support their claims for territorial rights. For them, technologies can make Indigenous cosmovisions or ancestral knowledges visible. However, these programs can also reinforce a politics (of IENGOs) where territories are spaces with strict boundaries and exclusive rights, and which encourages open-access information, thus potentially threatening Indigenous autonomy. Thus, I discuss the intrinsically contradictory impact of monitoring technologies, as the conceptions of territories as lifeworlds, and the embeddedness of ancestral knowledges in them, further exceed their possibilities. Conclusions highlight the importance of attending to Indigenous territorial defense to understand how (new) technologies and society shape each other, and the many implications of climate change responses to justice issues.

Free time as a central issue of tourism studies: a genealogy of leisure/idleness based on the indigenous cosmovisions of Latin America

ABSTRACT The dominance of the neoliberal ideology over tourism praxis in the last decades have undermined the possibilities for tourism to be seen as a social transformative force. This article considers that the richest part of the tourist experience belongs to the realm of ‘free time’. There is evidence of the importance of free time and leisure in indigenous societies, and to justify that the common-sense view of leisure activities should be confronted. Most literature on indigenous voices in tourism studies identifies the potential of indigenous ideas to contribute to Western/European values of resilience, sustainability and environmental justice. However, such values are employed in the name of modernization and neoliberalism which are taken for granted as values of civilization, but are not so in reality. Thus, this article explores anthropological and indigenous bibliographic productions from Latin America and interviews with indigenous people located in Northeast Brazil to produce a genealogy of leisure, based on 'cultural anthropophagy'. Violence, racism and fear emerged as structural elements of the Western development choice. Tourism studies could further examine leisure as a means to inform contemporary development policies and contribute toward a better life in society, relatively free from such structural ills.

The Border Underground: Indigenous Cosmovisions in the Migration Narratives of Leslie Marmon Silko and Yuri Herrera

AbstractThis article explores the relationship between storytelling and prophecy by reading narratives of extractivism in the US-Mexico borderlands that raise questions about the apocalyptic aftermaths of colonialism. Specifically, it analyzes contemporary migration stories narrated through Indigenous cosmovisions in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991) and Yuri Herrera’s Señales que precederán el fin del mundo (2009). It contends that Silko and Herrera’s novels employ Maya, Nahua, Yaqui, and Laguna Pueblo migration narratives to eschew colonial cartographic portrayals of the borderlands and reclaim them as dynamic spaces of mobility, as opposed to static cartographic lines. The article demonstrates how Indigenous epistemologies afford Silko and Herrera opportunities to extend their stories into underground spaces and lay bare a history of extractivism—specifically of mining. In doing so, the novels materialize the land’s colonial history and lay out prophecies for the end of our present world.

Earth Beings mot extraktivismen

Earth Beings Against Extractivism: A Decolonial Analysis of Mapuche Poetry The purpose of this analysis is to examine two poems by two Mapuche poets: María Teresa Panchillo’s “I am…” and Ricardo Loncón Antileo’s “Puma’s prayer”. On the one hand, the analysis intends to scrutinise how nature and more-than-humans or earth-beings are represented in the poems, and, on the other hand, to examine the narratives’ resistance and struggle against environmental destruction. In order to analyse the poems, I apply two perspectives: Latin American cultural theory of decoloniality, on the one hand, is used to show the discourse rupture that the Mapuche literary narrative has achieved, and on the other hand, an ecocritical perspective is used to show the relationship between literature and environment in interaction with nature, culture, and humans. To accomplish my purpose, and to explain the content of the texts, I employ two concepts from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro: ‘perspectivism’ and ‘multinaturalism’, and the term earth-being from Marisol de la Cadena; both authors study indigenous cosmovision from different parts of Latin America.

Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems and Biocultural Heritage: Addressing Indigenous Priorities Using Decolonial and Interdisciplinary Research Approaches

The food systems and territories of Indigenous Peoples sustain much of the world’s biodiversity, cultivated and wild, through agroecological practices rooted in Indigenous cosmovision and cultural and spiritual values. These food systems have a critical role to play in sustainability transformations but are widely threatened and have received limited research attention. This paper presents the results of four virtual workshops with Indigenous Peoples: a global workshop and local workshops with communities in coastal Kenya, northeast India and southwest China. Indigenous participants highlighted the role of their food systems in resilience to climate change, nutrition, sustainability and resilience to pandemics, and threats from agriculture, development and conservation policies. They called for research on the rapid loss of Indigenous knowledge; Indigenous Peoples’ land rights and food sovereignty; and the impacts of industrial agriculture on Indigenous food systems, stressing the need for decolonial approaches to revitalise Indigenous knowledge. The paper presents a decolonial and interdisciplinary framework for action-research on Indigenous food systems past and present, from farm to plate, drawing on the virtual workshops, Andean decolonising methods and historical approaches. It concludes that decolonising action-research, led by Indigenous Peoples, is urgently needed to reverse the rapid loss of food-related biocultural heritage.

Indigenous Ontology in Zo Oral Narratives: A Study of the Zo Indigenous Cosmovision

This paper is an exploration of Indigenous ontologies and ways of thinking and worldview that deviates from the Eurocentric critical frameworks that often insufficiently portray or interpret the nature of specific indigenous cultures and native epistemology. The focal point of this study is to explore the indigenous ontology and knowledge found in the folktales and oral narratives of the Zo tribes of Southern Manipur. The Zo’s geo-political state of existence has been in a muddle since colonial times. The territorial demarcation that was done for administrative purposes had caused permanent displacement and obscurity of the Zo Indigenous identity. Colonial ethnographical records that have been perceived as infallible evidences, fall short of impartial facts and accounts. The series of under and misrepresentation of their socio-cultural and political history has narrowed the general interest and scope for the discursive study of Zo indigeneity, whose relevance to the modern world is only confined to their conflict-ridden state of political affairs. Therefore, this study will be carried out in the hope of decolonising and re-aligning the ‘Zo-ness’ through the exploration of the lesser-known indigenous ways of knowledge, philosophies, and worldview found in the reservoir of their oral literature. Zo orality is accentuated by certain indigenous concepts and philosophies that find expression in proverbs, aphorisms, allegorical tales, customary laws, rituals and the folksongs. The paper argues that these concepts are not adequately represented by ethnocentric appreciation, but are elements of indigeneity that deserve specialized set of conceptual introspections

“Amazonizing” world cities through paintings: Indigenous cosmovisions encountering urban centers for the lost balance

Currently, Peruvian Amazonian Indigenous artists are receiving unprecedented attention as they exhibit their paintings in galleries worldwide. In this context, I focus on three paintings of world cities as Havana, Miami, and Paris by Bora artist Brus Rubio (born 1984). Unfortunately, these paintings have not been analyzed from Indigenous studies and Amazonian Indigenous cosmologies. I argue that the paintings manifest Rubio’s Amazonian resilience by offering a new imaginary of the urban space associated with Indigenous cosmologies, which facilitates the preservation of Indigenous lands, rights, and traditions for the globalized world. In this vision, the Western and the Indigenous worldview find harmony when the human and the non-human encounter and celebrate a balanced cohabitation as in Bora’s narratives. This is his way of amazonizing the world or claiming his right to world citizenship and proposing a new understanding of globalization.

Legal pluralism, indigenous rights and the Inter-American corpus iuris

The permeability between state, regional and universal legal systems for the protection of human rights is increasingly evident, materialising a trend of legal pluralism in a multilevel universe of human rights protection. Therefore, it is important to interpret the norms contained in national constitutions and international treaties – that is, the different systems for the protection of human rights – in light of the pro persona principle. In this context, the indigenous issue stands out for its complexity and urgent safeguard, given the past and current scenarios of numerous violations. The indigenous cosmovision must permeate any application of the mechanisms for protecting the human rights of indigenous peoples. In order to better understand this pluralism from the perspective of safeguarding indigenous rights, a brief study was carried out on the constitutionalization of these rights in Latin America and their interpretation in the Inter-American system for the protection of human rights. The question is: what are the main indigenous rights contained in Latin American constitutions? How does the Inter-American system interpret these rights in light of the American Declaration and Convention? What are the protective standards for indigenous rights in the region? For that, the method of approach used was the deductive one and the methodological procedures were in the juridical and systematic dogmatic study. As a result of this research, it was found that there is an entire Inter-American corpus iuris that must be protected, based on the duty of harmonisation imposed by the American Convention, and carried out through the control of conventionality

Making the road caminando de otra manera: Co-constructing decolonial community psychologies from the Global South.

Current discussion on coloniality dismantles structures embedded in neoliberal capitalism that maintain and perpetuate social pathologies. Theories and praxes emerging from Abya Yala (North, Central, and South America) provide academic and nonacademic contributions to co-construct community psychologies de otra manera (otherwise). These accountable ways of knowing and acting in cultural context and local place, become ways of making counterculture to inform decolonial community psychologies. The epistemologies of the Global South have produced invaluable teachings for transformative revisions of community psychology within frameworks that go beyond liberation and toward decoloniality. Activist women and decolonial feminists from the Global South, contest patriarchal rationality and universalism and co-construct new ways of being, thinking-feeling, sentipensar, and acting. Decolonial paradigms weave networks of solidarity with communities in their struggles to sustain Indigenous cosmovisions, delinking from western-centric ideologies that are not anthropocentric and promote sustainability, epistemic and ecological justice, and Sumak Kawsay/Buen Vivir (wellbeing) that includes the rights of the Earth. This paper deepens into decolonial community psychologies from Abya Yala that are making the road caminando (walking) de otra manera by applying methodologies of affective conviviality with communities, sentipensando, and co-authoring collective stories that weave pluriversal solidary networks within ecologies of praxes into colorful tapestries of liberation. These are the proposed coordinates to sketch pathways toward decoloniality.

Migranthood: Youth in a new era of deportationbyLaurenHeidbrink (2020) Stanford: Stanford University Press, ISBN 9781503612075, 240 pp., $25 (paperback).

Migranthood: Youth in a new era of deportationbyLaurenHeidbrink (2020) Stanford: Stanford University Press, ISBN 9781503612075, 240 pp., $25 (paperback).

Education: An Excellent Opportunity to Respect, Maintain and Promote Indigenous Children’s Cultural and Linguistic Richness

Education can provide the opportunity to affirm indigenous children’s cultural and linguistic identity by using their funds of knowledge as an essential tool in the teaching and learning process. This paper emphasizes the importance of using indigenous children’s voices, knowledge, and wisdom to continue to develop their talents and capacities to share, learn, inquire, analyze, and create. To do so, indigenous children should be given the opportunity to participate in meaningful activities that allow them to utilize their native language and culture which can be done through bilingual discussions, debates, artistic works, creation of poems, singing of songs, games and group activities related to their own indigenous culture while using both their native and second languages. Also, critical thinking skills can be developed through the use of this type of activities that can be artistic and also promote collaborative work since bringing the community together is fundamental in the indigenous cosmovision. In addition, the techniques that are suggested in this piece can help create a peaceful/harmonious environment in the classroom where students’ affective filters are open to welcome and practice the target language since enriching interactions that embrace diversity in all its dimensions are promoted. Thus, the purpose of this manuscript is to share some ideas to make the teaching and learning process more meaningful, respectful, harmonious, and enjoyable through artistic activities that promote indigenous children’s own language, culture and cosmovision. The ideas that will be discussed in this piece are based on a qualitative research study conducted at a Spanish-Indigenous Tsotsil bilingual school in Chiapas, Mexico.

Mapuche cosmovision and territorial rights: An interdisciplinary approach to understand the conflict of Wallmapu, Chile

The indigenous population of Latin America has been suffering from a sense of alienation since the arrival of Columbus in 1492 who referred to this land as “Nuevo Mundo”. There is a long history of environmental exploitation in Chile which has severely strained the relationship amongst the Mapuche community, the State and private entities (hydroelectric and timber industry). Although this conflict seems to be economic-productive associated with land, wherein land attains a “tangible material good”, in the Mapuche cosmovision, land (Mapu means land in Mapudungun, the language of Mapuche) acquires a connotation of “intangible material and immaterial good”. There is a profound imperceptible connection between nature and Mapuche and their traditions and culture are strongly rooted in the land. The industrial expansion has promoted a series of negative externalities like habitat fragmentation, loss of native forest, biodiversity reduction, water availability, etc. These affect the “idiosyncrasy” of this community (Mapuche-Nature relationship) and loss of their land could represent an identity loss. The Chilean indigenous policy appears to be inadequate and fail to recognize the socio-cultural and territorial rights for all indigenous peoples, including Mapuche, given the multidimensionality of the land under the indigenous cosmovision. The socio-political measures imposed by the Chilean government until now to make their life “modern” boomeranged alienating them further from society. This paper proposes to look at the territorial rights of the Mapuche with an interdisciplinary approach and focuses on developing the conceptual framework of Mapuche cosmovision of land and territory. The study follows a brief analysis of the historical context of the territorial conflict between the Chilean State and the Mapuche people and how the implementation of national and international normative framework on indigenous rights has not been effective in resolving this territorial conflict. The study tries to synthesize and talks about integrating the Mapuche land cosmovision in the socio-political discourse and be considered while formulating any land policy involving Mapuche and other indigenous peoples inhabiting in Chile in future. The discussions and analysis have been carried out through a comprehensive literature review and integrate an interdisciplinary approach to look at this issue, both from the philosophical perspective and from the socio-political policy framework of government.

Formação humana e o sentido da vida: quais pedagogias?

A pandemia mundial da COVID-19 que se inicia no Brasil em março de 2020, leva-nos a presenciar a finitude da vida humana de forma drástica. As desigualdades sociais se agravaram e revelam que umas/uns têm mais direito à vida do que outras e outros. Para alguns e algumas, guardar a quarentena com distanciamento social por mais de três meses provocou uma série de novos questionamentos, para além das questões pessoais da própria existência, mas, sobre o nosso futuro como espécie; as causas que nos trouxeram até esse contexto de crises, e a demanda por “Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo” (KRENAK, 2019) se tornaram ainda mais urgentes. É nesse contexto que este ensaio é pensado, dando uma chance para as inquietações que mantém a mente alerta ao mundo. Trata-se da tentativa de estabelecer intercessões entre diferentes visões que pensam a formação humana e como estas operam com o(s) sentido(s) da vida. Para tanto, mobilizo a filosofia Arendtiana a partir das categorias de natalidade e amor mundi. Opero, principalmente, com os conceitos de vida zoe e vida bios pontuados por Giorgio Agamben a partir da perspectiva Foucaltiana de biopolítica e biopoder. Por fim e, para adiar/evitar os fins, me inspiro e tento inspirar, a construção de outras Pedagogias e perspectivas formativas, de adultas/os e crianças, em diálogo com a cosmovisão indígena de Aílton Krenak (2019, 2020) e com o manifesto xamanico cosmopolítico e futurista do Davi Kopenawa (KOPENAWA; ALBERT, 2015).

Beyond Borders and States: Modelling Ocean Connectivity According to Indigenous Cosmovisions

The article describes some common features of Indigenous sea cosmovisions (through examples from Oceania and the Arctic region), from which an understanding of ocean governance rooted in the interconnectedness of all life and the importance of protecting water and people emerges. Hence, the model of ocean (or water) connectivity is characterized by the understanding of ocean-human relationships as a continuum of connections between human and non-human elements. In line with the normative recognition of the sacredness of water, the interconnectedness of all life, and the importance of protecting the sea, Indigenous peoples’ law provides insights and implementation solutions for the restoration of marine ecosystems. This study aims to identify blind spots of the current law-of-the-sea regime, where marine ecological connectivity is not fully recognized as a foundational pillar of effective ocean protection. It also suggests approaches towards knowledge integration mechanisms that could minimize critical issues in ocean governance by enabling the enshrinement of Indigenous nature-oriented approaches within the law of the sea regulatory framework (especially focusing on the high seas’ regime). The work is structured into three main parts: a comprehensive overview of connectivity conceptualizations drawn from Indigenous cosmovisions; reflections on the model’s capability to address law-of-the-sea’s systemic challenges; and concluding reflections on possible future trajectories in law-of-the-sea that could encompass elements of the analyzed model.

Modelling Ocean Connectivity

Regulatory coherence is crucial to effectively respond to the growing pressures that our oceans are facing. Applying the interpretative lens of ocean connectivity to ocean governance can help address the challenges from a material, epistemic, and geopolitical viewpoint. This special issue intends to uncover various understandings of ocean connectivity taking into account the complex biocultural interactions happening in the marine environment. The research aim is divided into two objectives: (1) to explore the various conceptualizations of ocean connectivity; and (2) to provide a critical analysis on how the law (of the sea) considers or disregards ocean connectivity. Our research methodology combines a literature review and a mapping technique that examines the models of connectivity. The mapping technique has been developed by adopting the ‘one-pager approach’, where the authors have been asked to answer two research questions, aligned with our research objectives. We structured the work into an introductory section and three main articles. The understanding of ocean connectivity is key to developing international marine policy and suggesting legal tools for the protection of the marine environment. Moving from this angle towards an understanding of connectivity which includes bio-centric elements, Indigenous cosmo-visions, and anthropocentric connectivity, we identified three models of connectivity and explored their suitability to address the systemic challenges.

South American Camelids: their values and contributions to people.

South American Camelids (SACs) make several material and non-material contributions to people and are a key component of the Andean biocultural heritage. From the perspective of the IPBES’ Conceptual Framework, SACs constitute the “nature” component in the complex system of interactions between human societies and the Andean mountain environment. There are four SAC living species today, two of which are wild, or Salqa, in the indigenous cosmovision: guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and vicuña (Vicugna vicugna). Llama (Lama glama) and alpaca (Vicugna pacos) were domesticated 5000 years ago, and are therefore Uywa, in the indigenous cosmovision. Both wild and domestic camelids were, and in several cases still are, the most highly appreciated resource for Andean livelihoods. Historically, camelids and their contributions have been used by Andean people since the peopling of the Americas over 11,000 years ago. In this paper, we present three case studies (chakus for vicuña management, llama caravans, and llama nanobodies) to bring attention to the essential role of vicuñas and llamas for Andean communities today, their intercultural linkages with the Western world, and telecoupling interactions.