Beyond Epistemic Provincialism: De-provincializing Indigenous resistance

Abstract

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.

Ethical internationalisation in higher education: interfaces with international development and sustainability

“…Thus, the critical orientation to sustainability could question some of these attachments and assert a more critical version of the civic role of HEIs when a liberal orientation is easily re-framed by a corporate rationale. This could, for example, draw on work in indigenous approaches to global citizenship and global change (e.g., Ahenakew, Andreotti, Cooper, and Hireme, 2014). Yet, in being so closely tied to the liberal configuration which in turn is strongly framed by neoliberal rationales, we found that in the current 27 HE strategy documents relating to internationalisation that we studied, the critical orientation is similar to the other two orientations in its imaginary and resulting reliance on and reassertion of a modern subject and a modern nation state.…”

What is philosophy for indigenous people, in relation to education?

“…Is it compatible with indigenous notions of the world? Ahekanew, Andreotti, Cooper, and Hireme (2014) have argued that education, derived from the West, is tied up with modernity and that any solutions proposed are derived ultimately from that source (and will automatically bolster this ontology). One of the authors, Georgina Stewart, has earlier identified (see Stewart, 2012) that indigenous knowledge assumes a counter to the essentialist epistemology of the West.…”

Lost in translation: western representations of Māori knowledge

“…We have seen that this 'transportation' is actually a 'Translation', and, though not disputing the worth of translation in principle, are reminded that translation is never a politically neutral process (Blommaert, 1999). Care must be taken when one set of indigenous concepts (and indigenous terms for those concepts) is about to be somehow equated with another set of concepts, derived from Western knowledges and languages (Ahenakew, Andreotti, Cooper, & Hireme, 2014). It is here that translation becomes Translation: the point at which the colonising machinery accelerates the process of remaking other concepts according to its own categories and methodologies.…”