Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

I. Scope
societies have diverse ideas and
Indigenous
relating to citizenship, governance, laws,
practices
teaching and learning, ceremony, ritual,
ethics,
and healing, and relationships, among
health
These ideas, and the way that knowledge
others.
them is organized, produced and shared
about
not align with how you understand
may
explain the world. If that is the case, we
or
your curiosity towards this feeling of
invite
As this chapter will make clear, we
unfamiliarity.
much to learn from Indigenous knowledges,
have
the more legitimacy and authority they are
and
the more comprehensible and accessible
given,
will begin to appear. While Indigenous
they
are rooted in rich intellectual
knowledges
they are not a thing of the past and
traditions,
be spoken about in the present tense.
should
knowledges and Peoples are also
Indigenous
recognized as holding important keys
increasingly
our way out of the climate and ecological crises.
to
United Nations Permanent Forum on
The
Issues (UNPFII) estimates that there are
Indigenous
Indigenous people worldwide, living
370million
over 70 different countries. Who calculates those
in
and how? What are the different ways
numbers
has been defined and understood?
indigeneity
are important questions associated
These
identity and rights. Those recognized
with
Indigenous are granted protections within
as
and international law and, in some
national
benefits in relation to affirmative action.
contexts,
May 2016 the Fifteenth Session of the UNPFII
In
that since Indigenous Peoples continue
affirmed
be vulnerable to exploitation, marginalization,
to
assimilation and genocide, they are
forced
to special protections. Agreeing on
entitled
can be a high-stakes and deeply
definitions
political issue.
challenging
is no official definition of “Indigenous”
There
international law, because of the diversity
under
experience among Indigenous Peoples. There
of
also no such thing as one “Indigenous world
is
would be correct to be suspicious
view”—you
any textbook that purports to explain such
of
view. Sometimes writers and thinkers will
a
refer to themselves as Indigenous, or
not
collective term, because it defines
another
experience through the pathology of
their
and obscures the specificity and
colonization,
of distinct Indigenous cultures. The
diversity
of these groups is commonly called
knowledge
knowledge, but it would be more
Indigenous
at times it has served the political
However,
of Indigenous Peoples to unite under one
cause
globally, as sovereign peoples independent
banner,
the nation states that marginalized them.
of
Chakravorty Spivak calls this “strategic
Gayatri
(2010) using one essentializing label
essentialism”
advance strategic political goals. The word
to
was used by Aboriginal leaders inthe
“Indigenous”
as a way to identify, unite and represent their
1970s
in political spaces such as the United
communities
(UN). Until then their common cause had
Nations
dismissed by international organizations as
been
problems to be dealt with within nationstates.
domestic
By uniting under one banner, Indigenous
could express their common cause and be
Peoples
as a sovereign and independent force.
seen
and organizations have adopted various
Nations
definitions of “Indigenous” to enable
working
decisions, but these are not intended to
policy
definitive. You may have also heard the terms
be
“Native”, “First Nations”, “Tribal”
“Aboriginal”,
“Amerindian”, among others. “Indigenous”
and
chosen because other terms carried negative
was
or had been imposed by colonizers.
connotations
5
I . S C O P E
accurate to call it Indigenous knowledges.
I.1 Who and what is Indigenous?
It has been said that being born Indian is being born
into politics. I believe this to be true; because being
born a Mohawk of Kahnawake, I do not remember a
time free from the impact of political conict.
(Alfred 1995)
The use of the plural “peoples” is intentional and
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