Exploring Indigenous relationality to inform the relational turn in sustainability science

An Opportunities Framework for Improved Integration of Cultural-Benefits-Knowledge in Environmental Decision-making

“…To resonate with existing decision-making institutions and processes, the framework uses terms that function within a nature/culture divide, such as 'human-nature relationship' (Himes & Muraca, 2018) and 'ecosystem.' And yet it does so in a way that seeks space for cultural benefits arising in association with diverse human-nature relationships, including those that assume nature-as-subject and humans as inseparable from the larger, beyond-human collective (Gould et al, 2023).…”

Toward Just and Sustainable Futures: Human Learning and Relationality Within Socio-Ecological Systems

“…It will also require reckoning with the ways extensive and ongoing lineages of Indigenous, Black, critical, and decolonial thought have been systematically marginalized within the social and behavioral sciences and the constructions of disciplinary canons (Deloria, 1997;Fanon, 1952;Morris, 2015;Morrison, 1988;Said, 1978;Tyrell et al, 2023;Wynter, 2003). Across fields, relational turns that work to disrupt core ontological assumptions of individualism and the bifurcation of interrelated phenomena but fail to engage with these deep genealogies of thought not only participate in ongoing erasure but also fail to build with the specific insights developed through heterogeneous understandings of relationality and socio-ecological systems (R. K. Gould et al, 2023). Given the species-level challenge of recognizing how the assumptions that structure our fields have played forward particular cultural worldviews, we see this as a remarkable opportunity for collective learning and maturation of human knowledge and understanding.…”

“…Such biases overdetermine the metaphors and meanings through which socio-ecological phenomena are studied, with significant consequences for extractive versus interdependent and sustainable approaches to practices such as forestry. Developments in the study of plant communication and their relationships with long-standing concepts within Indigenous knowledge systems also provide important opportunities for students to engage in critical intellectual history across disciplines, attuning to the ways settler-colonialism and patriarchy have fundamentally shaped and constrained scientific knowledge production and how the substantive diversification of disciplinary domains can transform fields (R. K. Gould et al, 2023;Medin & Bang, 2014;Medin et al, 2017;Murphy et al, 2020).…”

“…Kim et al, 2023;Kimmerer, 2013;Simpson, 2017;Whyte, 2013). Although Indigenous scholarship and perspectives have not yet been deeply engaged in the learning and developmental sciences beyond cultural comparison, broader scientific fields are experiencing dramatic paradigmatic shifts, both ontological and epistemological, through their engagement with Indigenous peoples, places, and knowledge systems (R. K. Gould et al, 2023). These fields are grappling with the ways in which global economics and politics-specifically, coloniality-have shaped assumptions and scholarship (e.g., Brondízio et al, 2021;Raja et al, 2022) and increasingly working toward broad-scale rethinking of foundational assumptions in some fields.…”

Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands by Ronald L. Trosper. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press. 2022. 218pp. ISBN-13: ‎978-0-8165-3345.

“…Relationality is at the core of Ronald Trosper's Indigenous Economics, a book that investigates relationality and its effects on economics and economic analysis. There is a growing body of work on relationality, with scholars in multiple fields writing about it in connection with their respective disciplines (Chilisa, 2012;Gould et al, 2023;Kovach, 2009;Martinez et al, 2023;Tynan, 2021;Wilson, 2008). However, Trosper's work offers a unique perspective by looking at economics through the lens of relationality.…”