Engaging Indigenous Knowledges: From Sovereign to Relational Knowers

Morgan Brigg

doi:10.1017/jie.2016.5

Authors

Morgan Brigg The University of Queensland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1017/jie.2016.5

Keywords:

Indigenous knowledges, politics of knowledge, relationality, epistemology, methodology, writing

Abstract

Increasing engagement with Indigenous knowledges (IKs) in mainstream tertiary educational institutions presents both ethico-political and epistemological challenges. This article engages these challenges by first cautioning against making wholesale distinctions between IKs and Western knowledges (WKs) and then examining the epistemological and politico-cultural entailments of the figure of the mainstream WK knower. Although the WK knower is typically cast as a sovereign being in command of knowledge, the practicalities of processes of knowing reveal the knower as at least partially relational. While the sovereign knower typically returns to his/her self in mainstream WKs, thereby disavowing or subsuming cultural others in ways that compromise serious engagement with IKs, relationality suggests more positive possibilities for becoming susceptible to Indigenous concerns and ways of knowing. This does not spell a relativist agenda. Rather, it shows that knowledge is established through relational processes and that WK knowers might better engage IKs by become less sovereign and more relational knowers.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Agacinski S. (1991). Another experience of the question, or experiencing the question other-wise. In P. Connor , J-L. Nancy & E. Cadava (Eds.), Who comes after the subject? (pp. 9–23). New York and London: Routledge.

Bell A. (2014). Relating indigenous and settler identities: Beyond domination. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Brigg M. (2008). The new politics of conflict resolution: Responding to difference. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cajete G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.

Cavarero A. (2000). Relating narratives: Storytelling and selfhood. London and New York: Routledge.

Dallmayr F. R. (1981). Twilight of subjectivity: Contributions to a post-individualist theory of politics. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

de Certeau M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dei G. J. S., Hall B. L., & Rosenberg D. G. (2000). Preface. In G. J. S. Dei , B. L. Hall & D. G. Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in global contexts: Multiple readings of our world (pp. xi–xvi). Toronto and Buffalo: OISE/UT in association with University of Toronto Press.

Deleuze G., & Guattari F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Geertz C. (1979). From the native's point of view: On the nature of anthropological understanding. In P. Rabinow and W. M. Sullivan (Eds.), Interpretive social science: A reader (pp. 225–241). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Graham M. (1999). Some thoughts about the philosophical underpinnings of Aboriginal worldviews. Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion, 3 (2), 105–118.

Henry M. (1991). The critique of the subject. In P. Connor , J.-L. Nancy & E. Cadava (Eds.), Who comes after the subject? (pp. 157–166). New York and London: Routledge.

Huggins J. (1998). Sister girl: The writings of Aboriginal activist and historian Jackie Huggins. St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press.

Latour B. (2002). War of the worlds: What about peace?. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Latour B., & Woolgar S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Levinas E. (1987). Time and the other and additional essays. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.

Levinas E. (1991). Otherwise than being or beyond essence. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

Lloyd K., Suchet-Pearson S., Wright S., Burarrwanga L., & Bawaka Country . (2012). Reframing development through collaboration: Towards a relational ontology of connection in Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land. Third World Quarterly, 33 (6), 1075–1094.

Meillassoux Q., Brassier R., & Badiou A. (2008). After finitude: An essay on the necessity of contingency. London and New York: Continuum.

Muecke S. (2009). Cultural science? The ecological critique of modernity and the conceptual habitat of the humanities. Cultural Studies, 23 (3), 404–416.

Nakata M. (2007). Disciplining the savages, savaging the disciplines. Canberra, ACT: Aboriginal Studies Press.

Nicholls R. (2009). Research and Indigenous participation: Critical reflexive methods. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 12 (2), 117–126.

Ong W. J. (1977). Interfaces of the word: Studies in the evolution of consciousness and culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Ong W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London and New York: Methuen.

Poster M. (1984). Foucault, Marxism and history: Mode of production versus mode of information. Cambridge: Polity.

Taylor C. (1992). Sources of the self: The making of modern identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wagner R. (1986). Asiwinarong: Ethos, image, and social power among the Usen Barok of New Ireland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.