In Canada, After The Publication of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report on the Indian Residential Schools, universities and town halls have been flooded with questions about how they are going to implement its ninety-four calls to action and how they are going to promote reconciliation on stolen lands.1 Many universities have taken heed of the call to “Indigenize” their curricula.2 The worry remains, however, that the language of reconciliation is empty rhetoric that “metaphorizes” decolonization, rather than responding to the demands of Indigenous communities for self-determination and land back (Tuck and Yang). For example, we might be wary of the Canadian government's language of reconciliation when it is compatible with police raids against Wet'suwet'en land defenders opposed to the Coastal GasLink Pipeline Project (which prompted the creation of the hashtag #reconciliationisdead on Twitter).3This paper considers what the activity of “Indigenizing” academic philosophy (and ethics, more specifically) might involve, and envisions philosophy education that is responsive and responsible to land and community.4 As a settler5 to the Stó:lō territory,6 where I currently live and teach, I question what “Indigenizing” ethics might look like in the academy, which is itself an apparatus of colonization.7 While I have a vested interest in learning about Indigenous philosophizing8 in order to better understand the place where I am (and how this place informs what and how I teach), framing these efforts in terms of “Indigenization” makes it about me and my learning, rather than about listening to Stó:lō elders when they say “S’ólh Téméxw te it'kwelo. Xyólhmet te mekw’ stám ít kwelát” [This is our land. We have to take care of everything that belongs to us].9 In other words, I worry that the call to Indigenize philosophy ultimately serves settlers in assuaging settler guilt while leaving structural settler colonial power intact. This echoes Andrea Sullivan-Clarke's recent concerns that land acknowledgments often become rote and are performed to mark the beginning of the meeting “before ‘the real content’ gets underway” (12). While adding land acknowledgments to the beginning of university events is a helpful reminder to settlers that they are on unceded territory and that Indigenous nations have had a long relationship with these lands, the acknowledgment falls far short of returning land to those communities and nations.In particular, I contend that the integration of Indigenous philosophy into ethics curriculum might assimilate an understanding of “grounded normativity” into settler understandings of groundless or placeless normativity.10 Such an assimilation would be an operation of what Brian Burkhart calls “settler philosophical guardianship” (“Groundedness of Normativity” 42). For this reason, I contend that the work of meaningfully “Indigenizing” philosophical curricula must first critically investigate an account of groundless normativity as a function of the settler colonial drive for expansion and elimination.A helpful starting point in articulating an account of the role of land in Indigenous philosophizing is Vine Deloria, Jr., and Daniel Wildcat's 2001 Power and Place: Indian Education in America. They define Indigenous philosophy as philosophy “of a place” (Deloria and Wildcat 31). The emphasis of being “of a place” puts forward an ontology in which place, defined as “the relationship of things to each other,” is an agent (22–23). This means that place, or land, is an active participant in the life of the community. Deloria puts it plainly: “[P]ower and place produce personality” (23). This means that agents or persons are the intersection of power and place, where power names a kind of motivating force and place names the complex network of relations that make agents what they are. A particular person, for example, is generated by a particular place. In this respect, Wildcat affirms that identity—“who one is”—is emergent from place. Sonny McHalsie's (Naxaxalhts'i) research on how Stó:lō place-names reveal Stó:lō understandings of place and relationships with land supports this claim (Carlson et al. xi–xii). Similarly, the Katzie story of white sturgeon as the descendant of the daughter of the first man created at Pitt Lake highlights this connection.11Burkhart expands on Deloria's insistence on the central role of land to Indigenous philosophizing in terms of locality, which he defines as “being-from-the-land, knowing-from-the-land, and meaning-from-the-land” (Indigenizing Philosophy xvii). In a similar vein, Glen Coulthard uses the term “grounded normativity” to name the ethical framework that emerges from “Indigenous land-connected practices and long-standing experiential knowledge that inform and structure our ethical engagements with the world and our relationships with human and nonhuman others over time” (Coulthard 13). Land here refers to systems of relationships between “people and animals, rocks and trees, lakes and rivers, and so on” (Coulthard 61). Leanne Betasamosake Simpson affirms that grounded normativity does not have a predetermined structure or conclusion, but is generated and “maintained from deep engagement with Indigenous processes that are inherently physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual” (23). Since land is a connection of relationships, a land-based ethics is one that emerges from the particular obligations to the particular relationships in place. For example, a First Salmon Ceremony shows honor and respect to the salmon for giving its life to nourish the Stó:lō people. lolehawk Laura Buker asserts that this ceremony reflects “an indigenous epistemology towards a basic truth: sharing is a value, a personal commitment to sustaining a community and a cultural resilience” (83).An exploration of land as a “system of reciprocal social relations and ethical practices” provides a relational understanding of self and morality (Wildcat et al. ii). In turn, this calls for an awareness of one's place in a web of different connections with human and non-human parties. For this reason, Robin Wall Kimmerer calls for a shift in language in order to better hear and see the animacy of the land (“Intelligence of Plants”). The shift to viewing non-human living beings as kin can help to see them as fellow moral agents enmeshed in relations of interdependence. The recognition of my interdependence motivates my responsibility to foster reciprocal relationships. A relational understanding of the self whereby relationships are ontologically primary means that morality “can be understood as a feature of relationships rather than founded on the value of things” (Burkhart, Indigenizing Philosophy xxxv; emphasis added). Kyle Whyte puts it succinctly: “As responsible agents, a range of human and nonhuman entities, understood as relatives of one another, have caretaking roles within their communities and networks” (Whyte and Cuomo 12). The emphasis on reciprocal responsibility teaches one to live in relation “to other people and nonhuman life forms in a profoundly nonauthoritarian, nondominating, nonexploitive manner” (Burkhart, “Groundedness of Normativity” 40).12 This means that moral obligations do not arise from the appreciation of the intrinsic value of a person, but from the recognition of how we are embedded in relationships that call for reciprocity and respect.Simpson illustrates a model of grounded normativity through her turn to land-based education, which emphasizes the resurgence of Indigenous traditions, governance, and connection to land through the process of recovering and revitalizing the Nishnaabeg language, Creation Stories, and relationships with Elders. Simpson proposes that a return to land, as opposed to efforts to “Indigenize the academy,” can nurture a generation of people who can think “within the land and have tremendous knowledge and connection to the land [to aki]” (23). The model of land-based education does not aim for reconciliation through the tokenized inclusion of Indigenous epistemologies within settler education, but seeks to revitalize Indigenous communities in order to work toward decolonization.13Simpson uses Nishnaabeg stories to reclaim land as pedagogy, in which “stories direct, inspire and affirm [an] ancient code of ethics” (8). She recounts the story “Kwezens Makes a Lovely Discovery,” a retelling of a traditional Michi Saagig Nishnaabeg story she learned from her Elder Doug Williams. It is a story of a young girl learning from a red squirrel (Ajidamoo) about licking sap from maple trees (Ninaatigoog), in a context of loving support from family. The story highlights more than the belief that Kwezens learns from the land, but that she also learns with the land. The land is an agent that can teach Kwezens once she properly acknowledges her reciprocal responsibilities. She knows to give tobacco (semaa) to the tree in thanks before collecting the sap, in order to build a relationship based on “mutual respect, reciprocity, and caring” (Simpson 12). Importantly, the “context is the curriculum and land, aki, is the context” (12). For Simpson, Kwezens embodies the core teachings and philosophies of Michi Nishnaabeg culture and, as such, is a model and leader of resurgence (12–13). This story is not from a distant pre-colonial past, but rather envisions a model of Nishnaabeg morality in the past, present, and future.Kwezens offers tobacco to the maple tree in recognition that she is in a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity. This conception of ethical obligation grounded in relationships with land is at odds, however, with many understandings of normativity in the Western philosophical canon. Whereas Western ethical theory understands a distinction between normative ethics and applied ethics, where ethical theories can be brought to bear and applied to particular problems (such as concerns about animal welfare, euthanasia, or the allocation of scarce health resources), the model of grounded normativity flips this paradigm on its head. Instead of applying theory to help solve problems on the ground, it attends to relationships to and with land in order to form a basis of normative evaluation. Indeed, even the idea that one can apply an ethical theory to any given problem reflects a meta-ethical position that a theory can, and should, transcend its context—in short, that the theory is placeless such that it can be applied to the problems of any place.Patrick Wolfe describes settler colonialism in terms of a logic of elimination, whereby it functions to eliminate Indigenous peoples in order to gain access to land. One technique of elimination is the use of the settler guardianship principle, which Burkhart defines as the “legal and political doctrine that settler states have the right and obligation to protect Native people and Native tribes, particularly from themselves” (Burkhart, “Groundedness of Normativity” 42). This principle has been used to justify laws prohibiting ceremonies, such as the potlatch and ghost dances, which were banned in Canada until 1951.14 Burkhart shows how this guardianship doctrine operates in academic philosophy as well. He uses “settler philosophical guardianship” to refer to the act of assimilating and translating Indigenous philosophizing into the “realm of proper civilized philosophy in contrast to what is seen as mere religious thought or mythopoetics” (Burkhart, “Groundedness of Normativity” 42). In other words, settler philosophical guardianship determines the way Indigenous ways of knowing are met with radical suspicion and only accepted to the extent that they are translated into dominant settler philosophical frameworks.15 This guardianship is mostly done with good intentions, as the superiority of Western theory is experienced as natural and necessary in settler societies.16One manifestation of the settler philosophical guardianship principle is the attempt to assimilate an account of locality and grounded normativity into one of delocality and groundless normativity. Grand Chief George Manuel states that settler colonial expansion has led to a struggle between two incommensurable understandings of land (Manuel). Burkhart draws the distinction as one between land as object—of “land as a mere object that only has meaning or value in relation to people”—and land as kinship—of “land as the relational ground of kinship” (“Indigenizing Philosophy”). For Burkhart, these differing understandings of land lead to differing conceptions of people—“the idea of people as floating free from the land and the idea of people as fundamentally a part of the land” (Indigenizing Philosophy 6).According to Burkhart, coloniality attempts to delocalize locality through the “unmooring of the roots of being, meaning, and knowing from out of the land itself, or the attempted breaking apart of being-from-the-land and knowing-from-the-land” (Indigenizing Philosophy xv). Delocality articulates a groundless framework of meaning, knowing, and being, insofar as it aims to understand meaning, knowing, and being as “floating free from the land” (“Groundedness of Normativity” 47).17 This occurs through the attempt to obscure Indigenous locality in order to remold Indigenous land as a new (and delocalized) Europe, as a new England or new France, for example.Following the settler colonial logic of elimination, land is remade and reconceptualized as a mere object that only has meaning or value in relation to people, conceived to be floating free from the land. This view reconfigures land and people as resources to be extracted, rather than as relatives to be respected (Wildcat 64). As such, epistemological, ontological, and ethical relationships with land other than as property are deemed “pre-modern and backward” (Tuck and Yang 5). We see this at work, for example, in the legal doctrine of terra nullius that justified settler colonial expansion by defining a populated land as belonging to no one.Burkhart's concept of settler philosophical guardianship highlights the need to call into question efforts to “Indigenize” ethics that do not also challenge a groundless account of normativity. If the integration of Indigenous philosophizing with a Kantian understanding of moral autonomy, for example, ends up upholding a groundless account of normativity, then it does not address differences in ontologies, and ends up performing this settler philosophical guardianship. In this respect, any attempt to integrate Indigenous philosophizing into Western ethical theory must pay attention to whether the act of integration works to obscure and delocalize an account of grounded normativity.18In order to challenge the settler philosophical guardianship, settlers first need to see locality through the “blanket of European delocalized locality that attempts to hide . . . the original and true locality of this land” (Burkhart, Indigenizing Philosophy xvii). Burkhart names “epistemic locality” as the framework that creates an opening to see delocality as a function of the settler colonial logic of elimination. Simply put, this epistemic locality shows how delocality aims to cover over the relationship between morality and the land by putting forward a groundless normativity in which values arise from a consideration of universal, abstract principles. If normativity is groundless, it can go anywhere. Likewise, if the land is unowned, the settler can go anywhere.Burkhart affirms that injecting “even a bit of locality” into conversations about morality can create new ideas and new relationships to the land (Indigenizing Philosophy xxxiv). Most importantly, this works to “chip away at the naturalness of the colonial attitude of delocality” (Indigenizing Philosophy xxxiv). The acknowledgment of locality requires settler educators to form intimate relationships with land. This includes hearing origin stories (when invited) and learning about the histories of settler colonial policies that have severed Indigenous communities’ connections with the land, as well as their ongoing resilience in the face of such policies. Reading the story of Kwezens learning from and with the land in an ethics classroom, for example, can challenge and unsettle taken-for-granted assumptions of morality as arising from abstract and universal concepts. The moral obligation Kwezens has toward the tree does not arise through an abstract theory that is extended to include non-humans, but from an understanding of morality that is relational and non-anthropocentric from the start. Crucially, the meaning of Kwezens's experience is not “legitimated” by referring to Western thinkers or the academy, but is rather determined by her in relationship with the land. Considerations of categorical imperatives do not enter the conversation. A groundless conception of morality, for a moment, floats away and is out of view.The integration of Indigenous philosophizing in ethics curriculum calls for a radical re-understanding and re-imagining of the very practice of ethical inquiry. Understanding land as both teacher and source of normativity challenges fundamental assumptions of Western ethical theory. The very distinction between theory and application collapses since theory emerges from a particular place, from particular relationships. This means that common distinctions between meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics must be re-evaluated, as well as divisions between ontology, ethics, epistemology, and politics.Indigenous land-based education is not only helpful for thinking through particular problems (such as the dwindling sockeye salmon population due to the warming of the Fraser River, or the need to protect sacred sites, such as Lightning Rocks that sit in the path of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion), but also offers a productive and enriching understanding of the very source of normativity (Barrera). It unsettles the desire of Western normative theory for abstraction and universalization. From the perspective of grounded normativity, a practice gets its normative force by maintaining, not transcending, contact and relationships with land.An understanding of being, knowledge, and morality as fundamentally tied to land can be challenging, however, since it requires an intimate relationship to land (such as the one Kwezens has with the squirrel and the maple tree), and delocality has been so normalized in the academy (and in philosophy, more specifically). In addition to the difficulty of challenging taken-for-granted assumptions about what ethics curriculum should include, an understanding of oneself as “floating free from the land” can prevent settlers from forming relationships with land grounded in reciprocity. For this reason, the activity of challenging internalized settler colonialism involves a critical interrogation of the desire for abstract and universal groundings of normativity. According to Chief Luther Standing Bear, the attempt to control and master the land creates a settler worldview that is “reluctant to seek understanding and achieve adjustment in a new and significant environment into which it has so recently come” (qtd. in Burkhart, “Groundedness of Normativity 50). In other words, the need to dominate the land prevents the settler from “finding an epistemological and moral home on this land” (Burkhart, “Groundedness of Normativity” 50).19 A centering of grounded normativity disrupts Western philosophy's ambitions for a groundless account of the world, and reveals that this ambition only serves to justify and thus evade ethical responsibility for the destruction and genocide of Indigenous nations.So, what could “Indigenizing” philosophy or making a little space for locality mean? Here are some initial ideas: learning from Indigenous scholars and elders (which first requires hiring Indigenous scholars and elders) about the origins of the land where one lives; allowing courses in Indigenous Studies to satisfy philosophy requirements; building relationships with local Indigenous communities; moving the class outside of the classroom; and including storytelling as a key method of investigation.20 In addition to these practices, we need to critically investigate the settler colonial assumptions that remain intact within the academy and within philosophy's own aim at placelessness.