Indigenous Worldviews Research Articles

The impact of family and friend support of physical activity on the participation in physical activity within Indigenous individuals in Saskatoon

IntroductionSocial support within Indigenous worldviews is recognized as a component of health and has been associated with physical activity and sedentary behaviour. Physical Activity (PA) is a modifiable behaviour that can help reduce risks of disease and benefit many dimensions of health. The purpose of this study was to compare the physical activity of Indigenous adults in Saskatchewan with and without family/friend support of PA.MethodsThe Family Influence on Physical Activity questionnaire was used to record the extent and forms of family/friend support of PA. The Godin Shepard Leisure Exercise Questionnaire (GSLEQ) was used to measure weekly PA, including moderate PA (MPA), vigorous PA (VPA), exercise frequency (WEF) and GSLEQ scores.ResultsIndigenous participants overall, First Nations and Cree participants specifically with family/friend involvement in PA reported greater weekly WEF and GSLEQ scores. Indigenous participants overall and First Nations participants specifically with family and friends who watch them engage in PA reported greater weekly VPA and GSLEQ scores. Among First Nations and Cree participants specifically, those with family/friends encouragement of PA reported greater weekly VPA, WEF and GSLEQ scores. Furthermore, First Nations participants with active family/friends reported significantly greater weekly VPA (36.8 ± 51.5 min·week−1 vs. 80.2 ± 108.5 min·week−1; p = 0.01). Greater weekly VPA was found in Métis participants with family/friend involvement in PA and with family/friends who watch them engage in PA (67.6 ± 59.6 min·week−1 vs. 29.5 ± 40.8 min·week−1; p = 0.01).DiscussionSocial support, specifically family/friends involvement, has a significant impact on Indigenous participation in PA.

Space technologies for development? Practicing sovereignty, beyond inclusion

The increasing use and integration of space technologies in International Development projects raises fundamental questions about the ways in which these technologies are produced and applied, for what purposes and what ideas of innovation underpin their knowledge frameworks. With reference to two UK Space Agency (UKSA)-funded projects aiming to create an environmental information system using remotely sensed data, this article considers the possibilities and threats of user-centred technology design for the management of Indigenous territories. The team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers grapples with the contradictions and sites of tension emerging at the intersection of the space sector, development, Earth system science and Indigenous sovereignty. Can space science and development be re-interpreted in the light of local needs, knowledges and right to self-determination? While common reliance on Western epistemologies feeds into deterministic understandings of technological benefits, this article presents Indigenous worldviews and practices as integral to codesign and co-implementation of innovations that are both technical and social. It argues that data are grounded and must be kept in connection with the contexts, culture and knowledges that make up a place. Praxis – as a theoretically inspired practice of doing development projects – thus emerges as a worldmaking activity inspired by a vision of design that foregrounds Indigenous sovereignty.

Culturally responsive strategies and practical considerations for live tissue studies in Māori participant cohorts

IntroductionIndigenous communities globally are inequitably affected by non-communicable diseases such as cancer and coronary artery disease. Increased focus on personalized medicine approaches for the treatment of these diseases offers opportunities to improve the health of Indigenous people. Conversely, poorly implemented approaches pose increased risk of further exacerbating current inequities in health outcomes for Indigenous peoples. The advancement of modern biology techniques, such as three-dimensional (3D) in vitro models and next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, have enhanced our understanding of disease mechanisms and individualized treatment responses. However, current representation of Indigenous peoples in these datasets is lacking. It is crucial that there is appropriate and ethical representation of Indigenous peoples in generated datasets to ensure these technologies can be used to maximize the benefit of personalized medicine for Indigenous peoples.MethodsThis project discusses the use of 3D tumor organoids and single cell/nucleus RNA sequencing to study cancer treatment responses and explore immune cell roles in coronary artery disease. Using key pillars from currently available Indigenous bioethics frameworks, strategies were developed for the use of Māori participant samples for live tissue and sequencing studies. These were based on extensive collaborations with local Māori community, scientific leaders, clinical experts, and international collaborators from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Issues surrounding the use of live tissue, genomic data, sending samples overseas and Indigenous data sovereignty were discussed.ResultsThis paper illustrates a real-world example of how collaboration with community and the incorporation of Indigenous worldviews can be applied to molecular biology studies in a practical and culturally responsive manner, ensuring fair and equitable representation of Indigenous peoples in modern scientific data.

Pachamama Allied to Human Rights Education: Applicability of The Indigenous Worldview As An Eco-Legal Proposal For Interpretation and Way of Living

Objective: To propose an approach to teaching human rights and environmental education together, based on knowledge about Pachamama. Theoretical Framework: Legal documents that support human rights education and the concept of Pachamama. To this end, the authors Capra and Mattei (2018), Zaffaroni (2017), Benevides (2022) and Moraes (2018) were used, with the same aim of interconnecting the rights of nature with human rights. Method: To carry out this article, we started from bibliographical and documentary research, through studies of legislation and literature on the subject, using the hypothetical-deductive method. Results and Discussion: The research envisaged the proposal of a practice of Human Rights Education combined with practices of Environmental Education in order to promote the awareness and emancipation of the subject in harmony with nature, interpreting it as Pachamama. Research Implications: To direct a proposal through a State Bill to add a specific curricular component to work with Human Rights and the promotion of their culture combined with Environmental Education practices and knowledge about Pachamama in the early years of Elementary School, 8th and 9th grades. Originality/Value: This study contributes to innovation in the teaching of human rights in schools linked to a systemic view of nature, which considers human beings and values ​​their interconnection with the environment. The relevance and value of this research are evidenced by the way in which the law is applied from an eco-legal perspective.

Overcoming human exceptionalism: The role of ethical nature-culture relations in the developmental contexts of indigenous children.

Indigenous populations, including American Indians, Alaska Natives, First Nations, and other first peoples worldwide, have been largely overlooked in child development research. This commentary examines how Indigenous relationality intersects with developmental science, advocating for a shift from human exceptionalism to an interconnected relationality among people, land, and more-than-human beings. Drawing from diverse Indigenous knowledge and practices, The Six Pillars to Advance Indigenous Relationality among Children provides frameworks for integrating Indigenous worldviews emphasizing interconnected responsibilities and sustainability. Embracing Indigenous relationality-grounded in respect and reciprocity-dismantles inequitable systems, enhances socioecological well-being, and supports healthy Indigenous child development, fostering responsible relationships with the land and ensuring a sustainable future for generations.

Race and authenticity in Argentine comics, 1950s–1970s: Indigenous peoples, mestizos, and white settlers on the frontier

ABSTRACT This article analyses several Argentine comics published between the 1950s and 1970s that depict the racialised hinterlands of state expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whether set in Argentina or the US, these comics are often celebrated as works that dismantle traditional dichotomies found in comics (e.g. white heroes vs. Indigenous villains). Referring to their use of the archive, of more nuanced Indigenous characters, and even of narratives constructed from “an Indigenous worldview”, comics creators are seen to disrupt stereotypical depictions of race. Positioning the works within a history of race in Argentina and political struggles over its rural interior, I unpack the creators’ claims to “authenticity” to set out an alternative reading of Indigeneity, mestizaje, and whiteness in these comics. I argue that this corpus ultimately preserves existing racial hierarchies by promoting figures of whiteness who support white settlerism in the name of modernisation and progress.

Traditional wellness therapy

This submission for the special issue of qualitative social work journal describes how the authors have implemented a Indigenous therapy model in Indigenous communities. The approach centers Indigenous worldviews with a focus on ceremony, trauma, and spirituality.

Is eHealth Research with or on Our People?: Lessons Learned Using the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Quality Appraisal Tool.

There is growing evidence for the benefits of eHealth interventions with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Yet, there is a lack of guidance for culturally safe, relevant, and sustainable initiatives with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and organisations. To this end a research program was established to develop a roadmap for eHealth with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The current phase of the research program is a review of the literature aimed at identifying the important characteristics of eHealth interventions with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Thirty-nine publications reporting on a variety of eHealth modalities with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were identified. To assess the cultural quality of the final papers, the authorship applied the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Quality Appraisal Tool (QAT). Results from the appraisal demonstrated significantly higher QAT scores between studies, including more Indigenous authors. This further substantiates the importance Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, doing, and being incorporating Indigenous worldviews and leadership have on the cultural quality of eHealth research studies.

What does it mean to ‘live well’? The contentious politics of vivir bien as alternative development

AbstractVivir bien is widely used by academics, activists, and governments of the Latin American ‘Pink Tide’ to refer to alternatives to conventional economic development based on indigenous worldviews claimed to oppose capitalist modernity. Through ethnography of local politics within a Bolivian Quechua community, this article explores how the term has been vernacularized and contested among local leaders, illustrating that their understandings of development and ‘living well’ do not reflect a binary opposition between ‘Western’ and ‘indigenous’ ways of being. Debates concerning vivir bien instead express varied notions of self‐government and aspirations for autonomy informed by centuries of struggle as colonized peoples.

They Do Not Eat a Wife’s Beauty: The Ethnopragmatics of Bette Proverbial Personal Names

Names and naming practices convey various nuances of meaning in the Bette sociocultural setting. Against this significant backdrop, this study examines proverbial names as figurative and overt communicative strategies among the Bette people of northern Cross River State in south-eastern Nigeria. The qualitative data were elicited through semi-structured interviews and informal interactions from purposively selected twenty name-givers and ten name-bearers of Bette proverbial names. Data were analysed using the ethnopragmatic theory, an approach to language study that sees culture as playing a central explanatory role in meaning-making. Besides functioning as discursive strategies through which people’s worldview is embedded, proverbial names serve as sociocultural sites through which interpersonal relationships are performatively constructed and maintained. This study enriches our understanding of how the Bette people use proverbial names as tools of social control to perform gender, strengthen communal bonds, enhance peaceful coexistence, and enact Indigenous worldview among themselves.

Complementary Worldviews Aligning: A Relational Approach to STEM Education

Abstract: Educators in Canada face federal and provincial mandates arising from the TRC Calls to Action (2012) to incorporate First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) perspectives across the curriculum. Yet it is not uncommon to hear K–12 educators as well as some university faculty asking, "How do I incorporate Indigenous culture into science? Is it even possible?" This paper not only describes how it is possible but also explains why it is necessary, providing a theoretical framework and practical examples of how Western approaches to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) knowledge can be braided with Indigenous treatments of these knowledge categories and disciplines. Historically, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) and other Indigenous worldviews have been systematically and systemically dismissed by the sciences and primarily confined to the humanities. Therefore, to move beyond merely learning about Indigenous cultures and lean into learning from them (i.e., learn through the lens of Indigenous cultures), we must (1) teach Niitsitapi and other Indigenous stories beyond the humanities classroom; (2) better engage the etiological, ontological, epistemological, axiological, and practical traditions of Niitsitapi and other Indigenous Peoples; and (3) operationalize pedagogical and methodological models that acknowledge, respect, and embody Indigenous ways of knowing and being in STEM education.

Becoming Hoa: Indigenous Political Thought and the Question of Settler Aloha 'Āina in Hawai'i

Abstract: How is Indigenous-settler solidarity to protect interconnected social ecologies urgent yet altogether precarious? The essay stews on this question in the context of Hawai'i and, through immanent critique of theories about settler aloha 'āina, demonstrates that becoming hoa provides a necessary alternative practice and dialectic process of binding relations together to aloha 'āina. First, I elaborate on Kanaka Maoli conceptualizations of aloha 'āina to foreground the investigation in Indigenous political thought and therein launch an immanent critique of settler aloha 'āina. Second, I examine the question of settler aloha 'āina to explore what it means, and its political and ethical implications concerning solidarity. I contend that the "settler" of settler aloha 'āina undermines Indigenous political thought by obscuring aloha 'āina. Third, I argue that becoming hoa is an alternative mode of solidarity to being settler aloha 'āina. Beyond contributing to critical interdisciplinary scholarship on Hawai'i, the analysis is useful for researching other contexts wherein non-Indigenous theorists, discourses, and movements deploy "settler" as a qualified additive to Indigenous worldviews and practices toward cultivating solidarity with Indigenous peoples on their territories. Settler liberal humanism's attachment to Indigenous worldviews and practices should be reconsidered even as it clings tightly to the language of solidarity.

Re-membering plant personhood: syntropic entanglements between Indigenous Naga vegetal ethos and Critical Plant Studies in Temsula Ao’s The Tombstone in My Garden

ABSTRACT The contemporary ‘plant turn’, driven by modern scientific researches into plant potentialities and a renewed philosophical appreciation of botanical lives within Critical Plant Studies, has spurred discussions about the attribution of personhood to plants. However, anxieties subtend the notion of plant personhood, for it being predominantly anchored in an anthropocentric paradigm of autonomous and embodied ‘extrinsic’ and ‘intrinsic’ properties of plant ontology. Drawing from Indigenous Naga animist vegetal ethos and building upon the arguments of Matthew Hall and Michael Marder, the article attempts to transcend this impasse by conceptualising a neological framework of co-constitutive and reciprocal syntropic capacities as the defining elements of a non-anthropocentric vegetal personhood. Subsequently, the study employs this syntropic model of plant personhood to analyse the ethno-literary representations of vegetal agency and communication as syntropic plant capacities within the context of Indigenous Naga animist culture in two short stories from Temsula Ao’s anthology The Tombstone in My Garden (2022). On the whole, the article explores how the syntropic capacities of plants can function as a connective complement between the Western discourses of Critical Plant Studies and the Indigenous Naga animist arboreal worldviews to facilitate re-membering of an ecocentric plant personhood.

Canadian foreign policy analysis and Inuit within Canada

ABSTRACT This article examines transnational Indigenous cooperation among Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council using decolonialism and Indigenization in Canadian foreign policy analysis. The mainstream IR approaches primarily consider Indigenous NGOs as civil society groups united by common interests and cultures and as organizations that promote social change. This study argues that unlike other types of NGOs, Indigenous organizations have a complex social identity, which is influenced by settler-colonial heritage. Besides this, transnationalism promotes collective Indigenous agency. Like feminist IR, Indigenous IR scholarship challenges dominant worldviews and conceptualizations of Westphalian sovereignty, nation-state, and security. This study suggests comparing the state-centred IR concepts and Inuit within Canada’s understandings of the same terms. Although the Inuit within Canada perceive international relations distinctly, their conceptualizations of IR should be recognized by state structures. The article suggests that CFPA should incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing and promote transnational Indigenous IR studies to decolonize foreign policy and include Indigenous views in analysis.

Talking across worlds: The ontological turn and communication in natural resource co-management with Indigenous communities

The ontological turn in critical social theory provokes emerging calls for new approaches to natural resource management where Indigenous perspectives, worldview, knowledges, and values are prioritized in the stewardship of Indigenous lands. Yet, scant literature focuses on the ontological implications for communication within environmental decision-making, where Habermas’ communicative action theory, with its norms of privileging argumentation, formality, expertise, institutional authority, rationality, and language, continues to shape spaces of public participation since the communicative turn in the 1990s. Growing calls for participatory decision-making, as well as the mounting failures of scientific management approaches espoused by conventional natural resource management, have fuelled the rise of co-management since the 1980s. The emerging emphasis in co-management approaches on community collaboration and meaningful communication was strengthened with the emergence of adaptive co-management and adaptive governance in the early 2000s. Yet, the ontological turn unveils communicative tensions which continue to persist, rooted in ontological difference and onto-epistemic violence. Rethinking communication under the ontological turn in co-management with Indigenous communities, this paper reviews the literature and further proposes the idea of ethical equivocation as a communicative tool and starting point toward learning to talk across worlds.

Un-learning and re-learning:

In this reflexive piece, the authors consider the unexpected lessons learned while undertaking a collaborative research project with their home institution’s Indigenous Learning Centre on urban berry foraging. The faculty member questions the ethics of settlers undertaking this work, even if in collaboration with an Indigenous community, alongside the promises of this work to critical food studies. The practice of urban foraging is understood as a wider metaphor for Indigenous worldview, and for different ways of being and relating. The student’s reflections weave together themes of learning outside the classroom, with family and community, and the holistic aspects of doing research.

Un-learning and re-learning:

In this reflexive piece, the authors consider the unexpected lessons learned while undertaking a collaborative research project with their home institution’s Indigenous Learning Centre on urban berry foraging. The faculty member questions the ethics of settlers undertaking this work, even if in collaboration with an Indigenous community, alongside the promises of this work to critical food studies. The practice of urban foraging is understood as a wider metaphor for Indigenous worldview, and for different ways of being and relating. The student’s reflections weave together themes of learning outside the classroom, with family and community, and the holistic aspects of doing research.

Braiding frameworks for collaborative stewardship scholarship

Human-environment relationships are most frequently viewed from evolutionary perspectives, despite the vast body of literature which highlights how many Indigenous peoples engage with and understand place, plants, and animals as kinship relations. My goals in this essay are twofold: first, to suggest we adopt the phrase stewardship to recognize and uphold notions of respect, reciprocity, and relationships that are common within many Indigenous worldviews, and secondly, to advocate for the use of pluralistic approaches to our collaborative scholarship. I offer examples from my own experiences in reconstructing stewardship histories across people, plants, and places in the Pacific Northwest.

Embera Children's Stories: A Strategy for the Preservation of Language and Cultural Identity in Indigenous Education

This study conducted in the Embera Chamí Navera Drua community, located in Darien, Colombia, investigates the impact of children's literature, particularly stories, on strengthening cultural identity and preserving the native language among the community's children. Utilizing a qualitative approach, an ethnographic and participatory action research design was implemented to deeply explore the community's worldview, its educational context, and the sense of cultural belonging developed by the children. The results highlight the importance of intercultural teacher training and the implementation of pedagogical strategies that promote the indigenous worldview through the narrative of stories, which capture the interest and imagination of children. It is concluded that children's stories facilitate the development of a sense of cultural belonging in children, youth, and adults while engaging with their native language. Therefore, it is necessary to train teachers within the community who can link storytelling as a strategy to facilitate the preservation of their language from childhood, allow community participation in preserving their worldview, and contribute to the development of the community's own cultural education.

Reflections on the Collaborative Story Analysis Method to Understand Qualitative Perspectives of Indigenous Syringe Services Program Clients

Many scholars have cautioned that the use of Western research methods is problematic in studies with Indigenous communities given colonialist histories that have exploited Indigenous populations. One solution has been to utilize a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach to enhance equity in research partnerships. Employing a CBPR approach, however, does not necessitate the inclusion of Indigenous Research Methods, an additional step that can further benefit studies with their explicit alignment with Indigenous worldviews and values. In a CBPR project aiming to understand Indigenous harm reduction clients' perspectives of barriers and facilitators to opioid use disorder treatment, our research group assembled a multidisciplinary qualitative data analysis team that included diverse tribal community members and academics. Sparse literature was available to guide the use of Indigenous Research Methods for the qualitative data analysis phase of the research. To address this gap, the aims of this process paper are: (1) to describe the implementation of the Collaborative Story Analysis method, and (2) in the Indigenous tradition of honoring and sharing stories, describe our analysis team's experiences and perceptions of implementing this Indigenous Research Method. Through a series of process discussions, the analysis team found that applying the Collaborative Story Analysis method: (1) honored relationships and story, (2) strengthened the depth of analysis, and (3) exhibited tensions when working in a dominant Western culture. Through sharing our team's experiences, the aspiration is that others can use these insights in their own consideration and implementation of an Indigenous Research Method for qualitative data analysis.