This article examines issues that arise when Indigenous epistemologies are interpreted through non-Indigenous ontologies in research settings. I use the concept of grafting to refer to the act of transplanting ways of knowing and being from a context where they emerge naturally to a context where they are artificially implanted. I start exploring this context through a poem that outlines the difficulties Indigenous people tend to face when inhabiting academic spaces whose architecture is built on the violent historical foundations of modernity. Next, I briefly outline critiques of recognition and inclusion in political and educational spheres to highlight how liberal discourses have tended to offer only conditional forms of integration that support dominant ways of thinking by presenting them as benevolent and inclusive. I then turn to a discussion of the implications of this analysis for Indigenous research methodologies. I conclude with tentative suggestions for further work in this area.
This article is part of a transnational collaboration between Indigenous scholars concerned about the provincialization of Indigenous struggles within modern metaphysics. This can be seen at work in notions of land as property, tribe as (modern) nation, and sovereignty as anthropocentric agency grounded on rational choice. Drawing on critiques of modernity articulated by Latin American scholars, as well as Indigenous scholars exploring the limits of current forms of political resistance, we argue that this modern metaphysics generates a form of politics that neglects an important existential dimension of Indigenous heritages. We use Indigenous education as an example to affirm that epistemic provincialization has been both necessary and problematic in the current context. We argue that the limitations of strategies for recognition, representation and redistribution need to be complemented by existential insights that can revitalize possibilities of existence based on ancestral wisdom and on the urgency of considering our shared fate in a finite planet facing unprecedented challenges.
This paper offers a brief analysis of aspects related to the signifi cance and the complexities of introducing "different" epistemologies in higher education teaching and learning. We start by introducing the metaphors of abyssal thinking, epistemic blindness and ecologies of knowledge in the work of Boaventura de Souza Santos. In the second part of the paper we use Santos' metaphors to engage with the tensions of translating aboriginal epistemologies into non-aboriginal languages, categories and technologies. In the third part, we offer a situated illustration of an attempt to introduce epistemological pluralism in addressing central concepts in teaching in higher education. In our conclusion we emphasize that political, ontological and metaphysical questions need to be considered very carefully in the process of introducing different epistemologies into higher education. Epistemological dominance The idea of epistemological dominance is a central object of critique in various fields, including indigenous studies, postcolonial, decolonial, world systems and critical race theories. Theorists, sociologists and educators articulate this critique using different terms and metaphors. First Nations scholar Marie Battiste, for example, defines epistemological dominance as "culturalism". She describes culturalism as an academic and pedagogical
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