Indigenous Ontologies

Question 1

indigenous communities -> work with environmental groups e.g. Libia Grueso to protect the tropical rainforest

Answer 1

Proceso de Comunidades Negras -> group of Afro-Colombians formed to develop their identity and fight for autonomy (Oslender, 2019)

Question 2

Rights of Nature -> ecocentrism (O’Donnell et al., 2018) -> post-humanism

Answer 2

e.g. River Whanganui -> personhood granted after environmental damage -> protected by the Whanganui River Claims Settlement

Question 3

Conservation -> negatively impacts indigenous communities

Answer 3

Fortress Conservation -> dispossession of indigenous lands
Top-down conservation -> coercion and wealth influences decisions

Question 4

coloniality of conservation -> established through western modernity e.g. land ownership

Answer 4

wilderness = empty land
developed regions = landscapes being actively exploited (Pickerill, 2007)

Question 5

pseudoscience -> racial hierarchies = western man at the top

Answer 5

indigenous ontologies viewed as constructs that lacked objectivity = ignored

Question 6

conservation -> strategies that benefit the west

Answer 6

e.g. biodiversity is a western concept (Pickerill, 2007)

Question 7

capitalism and overconsumption -> exploitation of the environment (anthropocentrism)

Answer 7

e.g. River Red Gum Forest in Victoria, Australia -> exploited by wider community but indigenous communities work to try and protect it (Pickerill et al., 2007)

Question 8

ontological conflicts -> different ways of understanding the world and how things are known and situated (Blaser, 2013)

Answer 8

western ontologies/settler ontologies/ modern ontologies (incorporation of colonialism, capitalism and imperialism Blaser, 2013) vs indigenous ontologies

Question 9

western ontologies -> human/nonhuman and culture/nature dualism

Answer 9

the assumption that western knowledges are superior to alternative ontologies -> views them as primitive and outdated (Blaser, 2013)

Question 10

neo-colonialism under settler ontologies (Driver et al., 2019)

Answer 10

Indian Act in Canada -> gave indigenous people representation but not at the status level of a citizen (no legitimisation) -> still need to abide by Canadian law (Diagle, 2016)
Self-governance packages -> state does not manage the communities but still has influence -> Dakota Pipleline put through by US + Canada despite the indigenous communities protesting it (Diagle, 2016).

Question 11

rejection of indigenous ontologies as unscientific is invalid

Answer 11

Driver et al., 2019 -> indigenous communities given the right to govern water by the US -> Clean Water Act = tended to produce more productive strategies than the US states

Question 12

indigenous ontologies -> kinship relations + relational dwelling (Wilson and Inkster, 2018; Koot and Büscher, 2019) -> view the nonhuman and human as produced through a set of entanglements

Answer 12

E.g. Afro-Colombian Relational Ontology -> along the Pacific coastline of Colombia = human interactions across aquatic environments and they exist with the environment through tidal and lunar patterns (Oslender, 2020)
E.g. Omushkegowuk Cree, Canada, ‘Awawanenitakik’ -> guide everyday life: respectful to land, conduct ancestral practices and ceremonies, speak the local dialect of Omushkego (Diagle, 2016)

Question 13

indigenous ontologies misappropriated

Answer 13

essentially MTHG and wider ‘ontological turn’ because they stole indigenous ontologies (Todd, 2016)

Question 14

Multiple ontologies = pluriverse -> different realities and ways of being (Escobar, 2016; Oslender, 2020)

Answer 14

need to decolonise academia and other power structures (Oslender, 2020) -> hybrid ontologies

Question 15

achieving a pluriverse

Answer 15

acknowledge the nonhuman as autonomous (Collard et al., 2015)
practices like walking -> actively engage with the landscape (Barker and Pickerill, 2020)
decentering on human agency to nonhuman agency (Wilson and Inkster, 2018)
language barriers with indigenous terminology (Koot and Büscher, 2019)
ANT reinforces dualisms -> indigenous ontologies embeds them in unison -> strive to achieve this

Question 16

epistemology

Answer 16

the way in which knowledge is produced and understood (Clement, 2019)

Question 17

Anthropocene

Answer 17

assumes universal contribution to the climate crisis = unfair (Yussof, 2018)

Question 18

collaboration with indigenous communities - community-based management of natural resources

Answer 18

local communities using their knowledge decide what resources need protection (Dessler et al., 2010) -> focus on indigeneity (Radcliffe, 2017) which is controversial -> based on the idea that through a genetic link dispossessed land can be returned but the idea is based on land ownership e.g. conducted in the Southern Kalahari -> set up Communal Property Associations to continue the process = ineffective (Koot and Büscher 2019).

Question 19

collaboration with indigenous communities - market-derived benefits for conservation

Answer 19

neo-protectionism and providing economic incentives for conservation-based protection e.g. ecotourism and carbon trading.

Question 20

collaboration with indigenous communities - Ethnoecology/ hybrid research

Answer 20

conservation in Australia e.g. western methods to identify fauna and flora used by the Mulitjulu community in the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park -> produce effective management to protect the biodiversity of the park (Stevens, 1997)

Question 21

self-determination to be encouraged and allowing indigenous communities to manage their own resources through sovereignty (Diagle, 2016)

Answer 21

mainstream indigenous ideas e.g. Buen Vivir into the 2008 Ecuador Constitution (Radcliffe, 2012)