Red Alert!: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge (Speaker's Corner)

proselytizing:

the deepest insights are gained in our doing.

The dualisms or dichotomies between the spiritual and material, culture and nature, subjective and objective, sacred and profane that operate so deeply in the Western worldview appear largely absent from the American Indian and Alaska Native worldviews of which I am familiar.

The unfortunate situation for societies that begin to behave as if knowledge primarily resides in words (images) in a book is that they forget we had words before books, stories before books, and analytic abilities before we had texts. For humankind, words—languages—were never only about us, but signifiers of our rich relationships in a complex and

Indigenous peoples, as the term is used here, refers to peoples or nations who take their tribal identities as members of the human species from the landscapes and seascapes that gave them their unique tribal cultures.

Before we focus exclusively on looking for new technological solutions—and there will certainly be some—we should look at indigenous tribal knowledges for insights into how humankind might not merely survive this global crisis, but thrive in indigenously inspired cultures of life enhancement.

Collins reminded me that scientific knowledge can be useful to humankind, but, in and of itself, insufficient in generating life-enhancing knowledges for humankind.

we have a responsibility to live respectfully for our children seven generations into the future.

Rather, to know “it”—reality— requires respect for the relationships and relatives that constitute the complex web of life. I call this indigenous realism, and it entails that we, members of humankind, accept our inalienable responsibilities as members of the planet’s complex life system, as well as our inalienable rights.