Western Knowledge Systems Research Articles

The start of a new journey: Decolonising the Global Mental Health curriculum

Intellectual colonisation is defined as the imposition of Western knowledge systems onto non-Western cultures, resulting in the marginalisation and subordination of non-Western beliefs, practices, and technologies. Decolonisation aims to challenge this dominance. Higher Education Institutions play a crucial role in dismantling intellectual colonisation, and sustained efforts are needed to promote diverse perspectives. The authors adopt a critical pedagogy and cyclical improvement approach to develop inclusive and equitable learning environments. They have committed to the process of decolonising the curriculum, acknowledging it as ongoing and multifaceted. A range of staff-led developments have been initiated as understandings of decolonisation have deepened. Alumni have applied review tools related to decolonising the curriculum to identify potential improvement areas. A student workshop was facilitated to overview the initial project developments and gain insight on how to address the issues identified. Feedback from the diverse student cohort indicated this was highly valuable. The potential for student-staff partnerships in driving decolonising efforts has begun to be explored, but key challenges include resource constraints and the need for student upskilling. The project goal is to empower students and staff to acknowledge their positionality, critically engage, and adopt a decolonial lens in both educational and workplace arenas.

Islamization of Knowledge as a “Muslim Question”

Islamization of knowledge (islāmiyyat or aslamat al-ma‘rifah) has emerged as one of the most significant Muslim global intellectual enterprises over the past half-century. Its efforts to integrate Islamic epistemology with Western knowledge systems have, however, subjected it to extensive criticism, a subset of which dismisses it as an ideological programme aimed at reviving religion, defying secularism, and subverting Western universal values. This article focuses on this subset of criticism and analyses its discourse by framing it within the broader context of the “Muslim Question.” Reminiscent of the historical Jewish Question, the “Muslim Question” continues to serve as a lens through which Islam and Muslims are systematically constructed as a problem. To retrace and investigate the inherent structure shared by the “Muslim Question” and this criticism, this study undertakes a discursive analysis of the decades-long critique of Bassam Tibi. It puts the criticism within the broader narrative of crisis; however, distinguishing it from the European rhetoric of the “crisis of Islam,” and questions it at the intersection of reasonable critique and Islamophobia. This article concludes that a critique of the Islamization of knowledge and its recent facet, knowledge integration (al-takāmul al-ma‘rifī), should acknowledge the plurality and diversity within Muslim intellectual traditions and resist homogenizing them under reductive categories. Such a merited study will have the potential to promote a more nuanced and balanced engagement with the intricate realities of contemporary Muslim thought and practice.

Weaving Indigenous and Western knowledge systems to discern drivers of mooz (moose) population decline

Abstract Understanding and addressing biodiversity declines across the globe will require interdisciplinary practices that embrace multiple worldviews and weave knowledge systems. Here, we used a Two‐Eyed Seeing approach to weave Anishinaabe ecological knowledge with peer‐reviewed Western scientific literature to provide a comprehensive understanding of the drivers of a declining moose (mooz; Alces alces) population in Ontario, Canada. We interviewed 66 participants from three Anishinabek communities on the causes of moose decline and conducted a literature review of 52 Western‐science studies that focused on factors that affect moose in Ontario. Our study revealed that there was agreement among knowledge systems on the importance of climate change and disease and parasites in explaining moose population decline in Ontario. Unique perspectives were provided on the mechanisms describing climatic impacts on calf recruitment, with an emphasis on spring onset and green‐up by Western science, and winter onset and timing of the rut by Anishinaabe knowledge. Western science also focused on the effects of habitat disturbance and predation on moose, and Anishinaabe knowledge emphasised harvest pressure. Other factors identified by both knowledge systems included the impacts of roads and railways. Distinctive information offered by Anishinaabe knowledge holders included the displacement of moose from areas in response to the range expansion of white‐tailed deer (waawaashkeshi; Odocoileus virginianus) and the negative effects of contaminants introduced into the environment by mining and forestry activity. Overall, weaving knowledge systems offered a nuanced and wholistic understanding of factors affecting moose and provided different perspectives to explain interacting and cumulative effects. Our study showcases the value in weaving knowledge systems to improve understanding of ecological problems and find wholistic strategies for conservation. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

“Knowledge Strategies” for Indigenous Studies on Intercultural Communication in Non-Western Countries in the Global Power Structure

According to Michel Foucault’s power/knowledge theory, knowledge is not produced in a vacuum; the construction of any knowledge system implicitly contains power relations. The “knowledge strategies” for Indigenous studies on intercultural communication should evolve and improve in response to shifts in the global power structure. With the development of globalization and the evolution of communication technologies, this study interprets the current global power structure as a “dual structure” in which the international society and the world society coexist and develop together. This structure leads to a complex trend of simultaneous “centralization” and “decentralization”, as well as “homogenization” and “hybridization” in the global cultural order. For scholars from non-Western countries, Indigenous studies on intercultural communication need to interpret the new global power structure, expanding their research perspectives and topics to a global dimension. This approach links Indigenous conceptual resources and methodologies with an open and diverse global cultural order. This study proposes “knowledge strategies” for Indigenous studies on intercultural communication in non-Western countries and introduces a third level of significance for intercultural communication beyond daily interaction and cultural interaction: community building. Regarding the research purpose, this study aims to provide a new perspective for the study of intercultural communication theory, promoting an equal dialogue between Western and non-Western knowledge systems of intercultural communication, and enhancing the inclusiveness and humanistic awareness of this discipline.

Year zero of tomorrow’s pasts

ABSTRACT We will discuss the impact of AI on storytelling, particularly in the context of Indigenous media-making. We will do this broadly in reference to our own practices and artistic processes and our current collaboration, Tomorrow’s Pasts, specifically in relation to our experience of developing and creating artistic and creative projects with AI-generative media.We will speak to the notion that Indigenous knowledge systems tend to be relational whereas Western knowledge systems can be cumulative and extractive, and that these points of difference expose a colonial imprint on conceptualizing and producing projects that deal with artistic and cultural production in general and emerging technologies in the narrative space in particular. In this we will refer to the growing field of research into indigenous data sovereignty.We will draw directly on 3 ‘events’ in which we participated in 2023: (1) Frame Doco Lab, Victoria, Australia (2) The International Sami Film Institute’s Indigenous Film Conference in Guovdageaidnu, Norway and (3) Art + Australia’s Study-In on AI + Race + Art, Melbourne, Australia. our in-conversation at the Indigenous Film Conference (August 17–20) presented by the International Sami Film Institute in Norway.

Challenges and opportunities for Mi’kmaq Aboriginal and treaty rights to fish in Nova Scotia, Canada

Despite the recognition of the Aboriginal and treaty right to fish in Canada, there has been little movement towards enhancing governance that respects the authority of either the Mi’kmaq, the Indigenous peoples in Nova Scotia, or the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Using a Two-Eyed Seeing research framework, three perspectives were derived from interviews exploring governance challenges and opportunities with key governmental and Indigenous actors. Based on the similarities and nuances among perspectives, key considerations to resolving challenges and incorporating identified opportunities from the research include: i) address injustice and lack of solidarity among First Nations arising from the Indian Act, ii) enhance the legitimacy of current governance by integrating Mi’kmaw and western Knowledge Systems iii) improve governance to address conflict and organization of Mi’kmaw fishers, and iv) build on the shared value of improved relationship where all governing authorities, including Mi’kmaq rights holders and the Mi’kmaq Grand Council, are recognized.

Enantiomorphs no more: Indigenous agroecology and the future of food sovereignty: Reflections on the U.S. United States Agroecology Summit 2023

I was part of a plenary panel on “Bridge Build­ers” at the 2023 Colorado Food Summit in Denver in December 2023. Echoing a statement I first made at the U.S. Agroecology Summit 2023, I explained how the first “bridge” we are building at The Acequia Institute (TAI) is between Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and so-called Western Science (WS). TAI does this work not to verify and legiti­mize IK by invoking the presumably more rigorous and mathematical methods and materials of WS. TAI enunciates and practices IK through autono­mous place-based food sovereignty initiatives. In this work we have determined how best to inte­grate the methods and materials of selected domains of Western knowledge systems in forms useful for us and the locality. These issues were discussed at the U.S. Agroecology Summit, but in the end they were left largely unresolved. The entire Summit was, as Carmen Cortez and others have rightly observed, plagued by being “Devoid of this spirit of place and people…” (Agroecology Summit ‘Outside Empire’ Subgroup, 2024, p. 2). In my view, it was a gathering fractured by pre-existing and possibly inadvertent and unconscious acts of epistemic violence reminding me of the difference Michael Redclift (1987) observed between top-down environmental managerialism and bottom-up collaborative environmental management. . . .

Pragmatism as basis of the integration of Indigenous knowledge systems and practices in the Philippine K-12 Indigenous Peoples Education Program: Problematizing and ways forward

I interrogate the Philippine Indigenous Peoples Education’s operational construct of culture to explicate its indigenous knowledge systems and practices (IKSP) integration into the K-12 curriculum. Pragmatism as a philosophical framework mainly guides the argument in this paper. In the first part, I introduce the old and contemporary meanings of culture and point out flaws in the IKSP integration. Literature backing the essence of IKSP integration into the school curriculum dominated by the Western knowledge system is discussed in the second part, followed by a discussion on culture and indigeneity that nuance further the IKSP integration in public education. The Philippine Indigenous Peoples Education is presented next, highlighting its definition of IPs, focus areas, support systems, and recent developments, ending with a critique. Analysis and discussion follow. The paper concludes with a challenge, especially for the education sectors, to reframe their lenses at looking at culture to build authentic relationships with indigenous communities and provide indigenous learners with an education that is need-based and culture-sensitive, one that respects their worldviews, knowledge systems, heritages, and identities, one that is truly liberating. Providing IPs an education responsive to the changing society can help them achieve a real sense of self-determination for social progress.

CALDERA: a scientific drilling concept to unravel Connections Among Life, geo-Dynamics and Eruptions in a Rifting Arc caldera, Okataina Volcanic Centre, Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract. Silicic caldera volcanoes present major volcanic and seismic hazards but also host dynamic hydrothermal and groundwater systems and a rich but largely unexplored subsurface biosphere. Many of these volcanoes are hosted in rift settings. The intricate connections and feedbacks among magmatism, rifting, hydrothermal processes, and the biosphere in these complex systems remain poorly understood, necessitating subsurface joint observations that are only enabled by scientific drilling. The CALDERA (Connections Among Life, geo-Dynamics and Eruptions in a Rifting Arc caldera) project workshop funded by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) gathered multi-disciplinary international experts in January 2023 to advance planning of a scientific drilling project within one of these dynamic, rift-hosted calderas, the Okataina Volcanic Centre (OVC), Aotearoa New Zealand. The OVC's high eruption rate, frequent unrest events and earthquake swarms, location in a densely faulted rapidly extending rift, abundant groundwater–geothermal fluid circulations, and diverse surface hot spring microbiota make it an ideal location for exploring a connected geo-hydro-biosphere via scientific drilling and developing a test bed for novel volcano monitoring approaches. Drilling configurations with at least two boreholes (∼ 200 and ∼ 1000–1500 m deep) were favoured to achieve the multi-disciplinary objectives of the CALDERA project. Decadal monitoring including biosphere activity and composition has the potential to evaluate the response of the hydro-bio system to volcano-tectonic activity. In addition to the OVC caldera-scale datasets already available, site surveys will be conducted to select the best drilling locations. The CALDERA project at the OVC would provide, for the first time, an understanding of volcanic–tectonic–hydrological–biological connections in a caldera–rift system and a baseline for global comparisons with other volcanoes, rifts, and hydrothermal systems. CALDERA would serve as an unprecedented model system to understand how and how quickly the subsurface biosphere responds to geologic activities. Discoveries will improve assessment of volcanic and seismic hazards, guide the sustainable management and/or conservation of groundwater and geothermal resources and microbial ecosystems, and provide a forum for interweaving mātauranga Māori and Western knowledge systems.

The roles of epistemology and decoloniality in addressing power dynamics in university education

ABSTRACT This conceptual paper explores the intersecting domains of epistemology, decoloniality, and power dynamics in university education. It scrutinises the hegemonic prevalence of Western knowledge systems and the resultant epistemic exclusion and marginalisation of alternative and indigenous knowledge paradigms within academic environments. Digging into the transformative role of decoloniality, this paper highlights its significance in dismantling entrenched colonial frameworks and championing intellectual pluralism and inclusive dialogue. The argument demonstrates that addressing the inherent power imbalances and fostering equitable and inclusive learning experiences are pivotal for democratising knowledge and advancing social justice within higher education institutions. This comprehensive examination provides foundational insights and urges further inquiries and practical implementations to cultivate diverse, equitable, and inclusive academic landscapes.

In a Good Way: Braiding Indigenous and Western Knowledge Systems to Understand and Restore Freshwater Systems

Insights from Indigenous and Western ways of knowing can improve how we understand, manage, and restore complex freshwater social–ecological systems. While many frameworks exist, specific methods to guide researchers and practitioners in bringing Indigenous and Western knowledge systems together in a ‘good way’ are harder to find. A scoping review of academic and grey literature yielded 138 sources, from which data were extracted using two novel frameworks. The EAUX (Equity, Access, Usability, and eXchange) framework, with a water-themed acronym, summarizes important principles when braiding knowledge systems. These principles demonstrate the importance of recognizing Indigenous collaborators as equal partners, honouring data sovereignty, centring Indigenous benefits, and prioritizing relationships. The A-to-A (Axiology and Ontology, Epistemology and Methodology, Data Gathering, Analysis and Synthesis, and Application) framework organizes methods for braiding knowledge systems at different stages of a project. Methods are also presented using themes: open your mind to different values and worldviews; prioritize relationships with collaborators (human and other-than-human); recognize that different ways of regarding the natural world are valid; and remember that each Indigenous partner is unique. Appropriate principles and practices are context-dependent, so collaborators must listen carefully and with an open mind to identify braiding methods that are best for the project.

Intra‐Asian Creativity in Hong Kong Education and Activism

ABSTRACTThis essay draws on empirical research from two studies examining creativity, activism, and education in Hong Kong. We use a decolonizing and deimperializing approach to centering creativity as a lever for social change, and demonstrate the ways in which the specifics of culture, region, time, and place uniquely produce forms of creativity, as has long been documented by creativity scholars. We build upon Kuan‐hsing Chen's Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (2010), applying it to creativity and the ways in which we can better attend to cultural and regional differences rather than adhere to universalizing “creative industries” or developmental psychological discourses. Here we are not interested in documenting “non‐western” modes of creativity, in the ways this has sometimes been addressed as local craft or traditional cultural practices. Rather, we advance a theory of intra‐Asian creativity (including Australia) with its own onto‐epistemological legacies and innovations. We celebrate these formations as emergent from and imbricated with conceptual traditions such as Taoism and Western knowledge systems, rejecting binarized individualist “versus” collectivist approaches. The emerging field of critical creativity studies points to the ways in which decolonizing, deimperializing and collaborative research are reorienting our work toward benefit for all, rather than the (white) (western) few.

Exploring relationality in African knowledge systems as a contribution to decoloniality in sustainability science

ABSTRACT The current solutions offered by Western sustainability science to address prevailing global environmental destruction and social injustice are still largely embedded in the Western knowledge system established by colonisation, limiting the efficacy of these solutions for a large part of the planet. Conversely, it may be reasonable to imagine that the concept of relationality is beneficial in all cultures and knowledge systems. Relationality, elementally referring to a web of relationships, as considered from an African Indigenous and local knowledge perspective, could play an important role in decolonising Western sustainability science. Two valuable approaches, namely ubuntu (humanness) and ukama (relatedness), as predominantly observed in southern Africa, are essentially immersed in human-nature relationality. This type of relationality considers everything as interconnected, and therefore that nothing happens in isolation, and that the well-being of humans is inextricable from the well-being of nature. The way relationality is approached in African Indigenous knowledge systems is inclusive, holistic and perpetual, broadening its usefulness to a large audience, making it a sensible contributor to decoloniality in sustainability science. A collective knowledge could emerge, including cooperative, multidirectional interactions with different types of information from diverse human and non-human sources, increasingly eradicating the relational divide among knowledge systems caused by persistent colonial discourse and attitudes.

Cultivating Pearls of Wisdom: Creating Protected Niche Spaces for Inner Transformations amidst the Metacrisis

The impetus for this paper emerges from the growing interest in leveraging inner transformations to support a global shift in ways of seeing and being. We caution that without sufficient individual and systemic maturity, inner transformations will be unable to hold the whole story and that attempts to drive paradigmatic shifts in ill-prepared systems will lead to insidious harms. As such, interventions for inner change will not have sufficient protected niche space to move beyond the boundaries of best practices towards wise practices. Drawing on Indigenous trans-systemics, we offer the metaphor of pearls as an invitation to recontextualize how inner transformations are conceived and approached in the metacrisis. To further develop this notion, we share a story of Wendigo and Moloch as a precautionary tale for the blind pursuit of inner and outer development. Weaving together metaphor, story, and scientific inquiry, we bring together Anishinaabe and Western knowledge systems for the purposes of healing and transformation. We hope that this paper will create space for wise practices—gifts from Creator to help sustain both Self and the World—to emerge, establish, and flourish. We invite readers on an exploration into the whole system of systems that are endemic to Anishinaabe cosmology, and a journey of reimagining new stories for collective flourishing amidst the metacrisis.

Reimaginar el espacio y la seguridad en el Centro de Escritura de Sudáfrica

This paper will begin by highlighting how five major social turns in South Africa’s history have impacted issues of space and safety in the South African writing centre. The paper will attempt to define the concepts of space and safety through a social justice lens alongside the philosophy of ubuntu pedagogy. Embracing philosophy’s from the Global South allows us to juxtapose indigenous and western knowledge systems without privileging one while marginalising the other, thus putting an end to epistemic injustices that devalue indigenous knowledge systems such as Ubuntu (Ngubane & Makua, 2021). Crucial to the interrogation of issues of space and safety is a close reading of the ways in which the writing centre space has been theorised and metaphored, reflecting the evolution of the writing centre. Close interrogation will demonstrates how such metaphors conflict with the space of the South African writing centre. The last part of this paper proposes the reimagining of the writing centre space, allowing us to reinvent the space of the writing centre, into one that is vibrant and brave. Importantly, it hopes to propose that such reimagining may allow writing centres to move from margin to centre.

The role of curation in botanic gardens: platforms for environmental and social transition

Botanic gardens collect, care for, distribute and display living organisms, preserved plant specimens, and their derived artifacts. As cultural collections, they are used for research, conservation, education and cultivated as living collections that provide tangible and intangible amenity. Curation is an integral consideration of this melee, which informs the content and confers value, through framing the public presentation and interpretation to further the mission of the host organisation. This paper reviews the evolution of western botanic gardens as institutions of power, inferred by knowledge. Exploring the key externalities that have informed their collection acquisitions since their renaissance origin while exploring the epistemic function of the curator’s role. Looking to provide insight into how these collections can better be directed towards the prescient externalities that result from an imbalance of the human social and wider ecological system. The framework of a Sustainable Development is reviewed as the dominant sustainability narrative and top-down transformative solution pathway. While Nature-based Solutions are identified as potential tools to help mitigate and adapt to emerging challenges from anthropogenic climate change and continuing biodiversity loss. Finally, the concept of a Just Transition is identified to inform policy and direct practice from a bottom up and top-down process, to ensure equality for all stakeholders independent of their economic means or collection interests. An approach that could bring benefits for species conservation while providing a new lens for botanic garden research and curatorial practices. These include acknowledging the benefits of Indigenous and western knowledge systems and making intrinsic values work; integrating intrinsic values of the more-than-human. The case for botanic gardens to be considered as centres of knowledge or ‘Hortus apertus’ is made to acknowledge the continual evolution of these institutions, and revaluation of their role in a time of global change.

Building a Meaningful Bridge Between Indigenous and Western Worldviews: Through Decolonial Conversation

In this paper, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars used a decolonial conversation framework to build a meaningful bridge between Indigenous and Western worldviews. Our decolonial conversations approach is a unique and transformative space where Indigenous and Western knowledge systems intersect, facilitating a rich exchange of valuable insights for fostering intercultural dialogue and breathing new ways of knowing and acting into Indigenous cultures. The decolonial conversation provides a platform for transmitting Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices across generations by uniting Indigenous land-based knowledge, community members, and Western researchers. Integrating Indigenous and Western knowledge systems in these environments fosters collaboration, dispels stereotypes, and forges partnerships grounded in reciprocity and trust. Through this collaborative process, traditional cultural camps emerge as potent catalysts for instilling cultural pride, fostering community resilience, and co-creating knowledge. This collaborative approach aligns with the broader objectives of decolonization and cultural revitalization. In our exploration following the decolonial learning conversation, we, comprising an Indigenous woman land-based educator and a racialized academic scholar, focused on the transformative potential and synergies realized by integrating these knowledge systems within the context of traditional cultural camps.

Decolonising Research for Justice: Ethical Imperatives and Practical Applications

This article examines coloniality of research and discusses the theoretical foundations, ethical imperatives, and practical ways for conducting decolonial research for justice. It emphasises the need to shift away from research paradigms and approaches that perpetuate coloniality to a commitment to embracing the complexities and challenges of conducting decolonial research. The article contributes to the broader discourse on decolonising knowledge production. Drawing on the works of scholars addressing disobedient and defiant research, the article advocates for transformative decolonial praxis, suggesting the need to reimagine research and displace the hegemony and dominance of Western knowledge systems, which marginalise and delegitimise other epistemological traditions. Beyond critiquing coloniality embedded within research, the article proposes practical ways to inform anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-oppressive research practice. It argues that decolonial research requires defiance and resistance against non-relational, hierarchical, and extractive practices, involving critical examination of assumptions and values, centring non-Western voices and perspectives, dismantling coloniality and working towards social and epistemic justice in solidarity with Indigenous and other historically marginalised and oppressed groups. It calls researchers to integrate decolonial principles and frameworks into their research practices.

HUI: Beautiful scars.

This article is the written account of a discussion between a group of indigenous women (trained both in Western and Indigenous knowledge systems), on the relevance of diagnosis in their conceptualisations of health and illness.

Youth as coresearchers: Social justice means youth as knowledge makers too

Dominant knowledge systems rely on a Western perspective of creating and disseminating new information. These systems marginalize traditional ways of knowing including co-creating knowledge, personal narratives and lived experiences, as well as inherited cultural knowledge. Additionally, Western knowledge systems have centered the White adult male as the primary knowledge creator both through what has been valued in contemporary scientific traditions and culturally in the image of who is considered capable of creating knowledge. Those who do not fit this image have historically been marginalized and exploited in the pursuit of knowledge making including youth and particularly youth with diverse racial/ethnic identities. It is these narrow epistemological systems that have informed school psychology research and practice since its inception. Recent calls for social justice as central to school psychology work have challenged the status quo and emphasized the amplification of marginalized voices in research and practice. Therefore, this article outlines methodologies that subvert more traditional knowledge-making strategies foundational to school psychology work and critiques these to provide guidelines for methodologies that can truly incorporate youth as co-researchers, particularly Black, Indigenous and youth of color within a US context. A case study illustrating the implementation of these guidelines is included.