Indigenous Philosophy of the Americas

What does it take to see how autistic people participate in social interactions? And what does it take to support and invite more participation? Western medicine and cognitive science tend to think of autism mainly in terms of social and communicative deficits. But research shows that autistic people can interact with a skill and sophistication that are hard to see when starting from a deficit idea. Research also shows that not only autistic people, but also their non-autistic interaction partners can (...) have difficulties interacting with each other. To do justice to these findings, we need a different approach to autistic interactions—one that helps everyone see, invite, and support better participation. I introduce such an approach, based on the enactive theory of participatory sense-making and supported by insights from indigenous epistemologies. This approach helps counteract the homogenising tendencies of the “global mental health” movement, which attempts to erase rather than recognise difference, and often precludes respectful engagements. Based in the lived experiences of people in their socio-cultural-material and interactive contexts, I put forward an engaged—even engaging—epistemology for understanding how we interact across difference. From this perspective, we see participatory sense-making at work across the scientific, diagnostic, therapeutic, and everyday interactions of autistic and non-autistic people, and how everyone can invite and support more of it. (shrink)

In this article, I offer the figure of the snake-bridge as (a) the coiled central metaphor in Gloria Anzaldúa’s masterpiece, Borderlands/La Frontera, (b) the interpretive bridge connecting the early (This Bridge Called My Back) middle (Borderlands) and late (Light in the Dark) periods of her oeuvre, and (c) an alternate unifying metaphor to mestizaje. My first section offers a close reading of Borderlands, locating snake-bridge in the east-west snake of the Rio Grande that queer Chicana borderlanders cross north and south (...) like snakes, while wrestling earthward with snake demons and skyward with snake goddesses. And my second section autopsies the dismembered snake-bridge in Light in the Dark, calling for a healing thereof in pursuit of a coalitional social justice politics that preserves the strengths of mestizaje without its dangers. (shrink)

If, as asserted by the French collective Tiqqun’s This Is Not a Program (2001), we are essentially living in a global colony, where the 1% control the 99%, then it follows that the revolutionary struggle should strategically reorient itself as guerrilla warfare. The agents of this war, Tiqqun characterize, in part, by drawing on ethnologists Pierre de Clastres and Ernesto de Martino, specifically their figures of the Indigenous American warrior and the Southern Italian sorcerer, respectively. Hybridizing these two figures into (...) that of the “warrior-mage,” the present article posits an actionable present-day exemplar thereof in players of the massively popular trading and online card game, Magic: The Gathering (MTG). More specifically, I propose a strategic mapping of MTG’s five colors of magic onto the five divisions of a coalition against late capitalist Empire, which I call the “Warrior-Mage Guild,” including liberation clerics, animal rights activists, propagandists (in W.E.B. Du Bois’ sense), anti-psychiatrists, hackers, saboteurs, and those who (put strategically vaguely) appear to threaten decolonizing force contra Empire. (shrink)

Agrarianism, according to Paul B. Thompson, is an environmental philosophy focused on agri-culture and the nurturing of food, fuel, and fiber. Agrarianism hopes to reestablish our fundamental connection to the land, helping us approach a tenable understanding of sustainability. Thompson enlists Albert Borgmann’s notion of “focal practices” to discuss farming and the culture of the table. With this, comes a critique of “the device paradigm,” the modern technological way of life that (i) alienates us from quotidian beauty, lifecycles and seasonality, (...) and vital place-based insights embedded in focal practices and (ii) obscures how techno-industrial capitalism limits our opportunities for rich, intimate experiences with our biotic communities. In this paper, the author will outline the contours of Thompson’s agrarian philosophy in light of Borgmann’s focal practices, noting the enduring wisdom in this position. But the author will evoke Sylvia Wynter’s critique of the hegemonic techno-industrial order of things to conjure alternative conceptions of decolonial agrarian futures (that will not foreground bucolic settler-colonial farms). (shrink)

In recent years postcolonial and decolonial feminisms have become increasingly salient in philosophy, yet they are often deployed as conceptual stand-ins for generalized feminist critiques of eurocentrism (without reference to the material contexts anti-colonial feminisms emanate from), or as a platform to re-center internal debates between dominant European theories/ists under the guise of being conceptually ‘decolonized’. By contrast, this article focuses on the specific contexts, issues and lifeworld concerns that ground anti-colonial feminisms and provides a brief survey of the literature. (...) Because the terms implicated in the analysis (Third World, transnational, women of color, postcolonial, decolonial and indigenous feminisms) are highly contested on their own, I only provide provisional and non-foundational histories and definitions for the purposes of resisting philosophical appropriations of anti-colonial feminist theory. (shrink)

According to Mary Midgley, philosophy is like plumbing: like the invisible entrails of an elaborate plumbing system, philosophical ideas respond to basic needs that are fundamental to human life. Melioristic projects in philosophy attempt to fix or reroute this plumbing. An obstacle to melioristic projects is that the sheer familiarity of the underlying philosophical ideas renders the plumbing invisible. Philosophical genealogies aim to overcome this by looking at the origins of our current concepts. We discuss philosophical concepts developed in Indigenous (...) cultures as a source of inspiration for melioristic genealogy. Examining the philosophical concepts of these communities is useful because it gives us a better idea of the range of ethical, political, and metaphysical approaches that exist in the world. Members of western societies do not get a clear view of this range, in part because living in large groups presents its own constraints and challenges, which limit philosophical options. We argue that features of Indigenous philosophies, such as egalitarianism and care for one's natural environment, are not inevitable byproducts of Native material conditions and lifestyles, but that they are deliberate forms of conceptual engineering. We propose that comparative philosophy is an integral part of the genealogical project. -/- . (shrink)

Al tratar de disolver la neta separación entre una mente racional y la materia inerte abogada por el dualismo Cartesiano, el monismo lucha por reunificar estas distintas realidades ontológicas. Tal como para Claude Lévi-Strauss y Baruch Spinoza, esa dicha unificación no puede prescindir de la trascendencia de la mente humana como locus del pensamiento y conocimiento de la naturaleza externa. A través de una discusión entre las abstracciones de la etnología Amerindia (animismo-perspectivismo), las teorizaciones del estructuralismo y las relaciones que (...) estos tienen con algunas especulaciones filosóficas occidentales, este artículo trata de analizar las intricadas interacciones humano-naturaleza entre los Shuar de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana. De esta forma, se argumenta que las realidades metafísicas de las experiencias oníricas y visionarias están ontológicamente determinadas por el grado de intensidad de contacto que los humanos establecen con las subjetividades materiales del ecosistema. (shrink)

Based on a discussion of the theoretical contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Pierre Clastres, this article explores social relationships as more than a human dimension. Though strongly analysed by both anthropologists, these relationships appear to involve indigenous societies’ whole ecological and cosmological system. In this sense, reciprocity, social cohesion, and exchange can be understood as material and immaterial interrelationships between entities of a more than a corporeal world. I argue, then, that to go beyond the mere anthropocentric conceptualisation of sociality (...) in a nature good to think, we need to holistically conceive the interconnected levels of trophic, socio-structural and socio-cosmic relationships and exchanges between human and non-human beings in the ecosystem. (shrink)

Epistemologies have power. They have the power not only to transform worlds, but to create them. And the worlds that they create can be better or worse. For many people, the worlds they create are predictably and reliably deadly. Epistemologies can turn sacred land into ‘resources’ to be bought, sold, exploited, and exhausted. They can turn people into ‘labor’ in much the same way. They can not only disappear acts of violence but render them unnamable and unrecognizable within their conceptual (...) architectures. Settler systems of epistemic and conceptual resources and the relations among them are constructed to preclude certain forms of knowledge. This is not an accident; it is a central goal of colonial violence. Colonization and land dispossession would not be possible without the violent disruption of Indigenous knowledge systems and ongoing organized attempts to disrupt their survival. Violently disrupting the relationships of people to land is as much an epistemic project as it is a material one, and these two projects are inherently linked. The task of theorizing epistemic oppression is not only about epistemic oppression. Epistemic oppression is a story that gives language to a phenomenon in order to get past it, to carry on with the maintaining and reviving the forms of Indigenous and diasporic knowledge that colonialism has worked tirelessly to corrupt and silence. (shrink)

This article aims, starting from a contemporary problem (the destruction of indigenous lives and cultures in Brazil), to think about ethical questions – especially in what concerns other ways of constituting subjectivity and (dis)obedience. Thus, the indigenous obedience issue will be based on Pierre Clastres’ societies against the State, giving an extent to Viveiros de Castros and possible relationships with our western reality. The subjectivity issue, then, will be approached based on what was pointed out to us by Michel Foucault. (...) Facing these Amerindian realities as heterotopias, how could we produce resistances and dissonant possibilities in our present reality? (shrink)

This article describes why I used to teach Introduction to Latin American Philosophy monolingually in English, why I stopped, and how I am now teaching it using a flexible bilingual pedagogy, also sometimes called a translanguaging pedagogy, that has been transformative for my students and for me. By drawing upon the ventajas/assets y conocimientos/knowledge of our richly varied bilingualisms and biliteracies, the revised course contributes to the B3 (bilingual, bicultural, and biliterate) vision of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (...) (UTRGV). Students have the opportunity to honor, theorize, and cultivate their bicultural identities by “philosophizing in tongues” rather than being forced to assimilate to the monolingual and monocultural ideology that prevails across both mainstream Anglophone philosophy and the system of higher education in the United States of America. (shrink)

Introductory courses in political philosophy would benefit from the incorporation of material on the Iroquois Great Law of Peace, including the story of the foundation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Classroom study of this tradition will serve several purposes: introducing a valuable account of political phenomena such as negotiation, consensus, veto, and rational communication; contributing to the diversity of syllabi; tracing the influence of Iroquois law on Western political institutions; and comparing the Haudenosaunee story to early modern social contract theory, especially (...) Hobbes’ Leviathan. This paper draws connections to relevant topics in a standard, historically-oriented course and suggests learning resources and objectives. (shrink)

Este ensaio parte de um movimento de transmutação das noções ocidentais-modernas de Natureza e Cultura. Utilizando-se de uma base nietzscheana como fio condutor, primeiramente, introduzir-se-á a transformação da noção de Natureza dentro do estruturalismo de Lévi-Strauss, assim como suas variações. Após isto, será mostrado dois exemplos contemporâneos que completarão a crítica ao pensamento moderno europeu ao mostrar: as teorias de Philippe Descola, especialmente suas ideias sobre as diversas ontologias, e Viveiros de Castro, no concerne à questão do perspectivismo ameríndio.

The purpose of this volume is to decolonize philosophy; it challenges the continued exclusion of non-EuroWestern philosophies from the Western philosophical canon on the view that these positions are purportedly really religions, mysticism, and mythologies. The authors problematize the notion of a European philosophical canon distinguished by reason and rationality in contrast to “religious” Eastern “wisdom-traditions,” which are purportedly grounded in “faith.” Various philosophers creatively lay the groundwork needed to rethink dominant historical and conceptual categories from a wider global perspective (...) to arrive at a deeper, more plural understanding of the diverse nature of both philosophy and religion. (shrink)

This article describes my ongoing attempts to more successfully engage the full linguistic repertoires and cultural identities of undergraduate students at a “Hispanic Serving Institution” (HSI) in South Texas by teaching a bilingual Introduction to Latin American Philosophy course in the “Language, Philosophy, and Culture” area of Texas’ General Education Core Curriculum. By uncovering the diverse identities, worldviews, and languages of those who were historically excluded from the Eurocentric discipline of philosophy through the conquest and colonization of the Americas, Latin (...) American philosophers offer us new ways of thinking and living by challenging Anglocentric language, philosophy, and culture. As part of the new B3 (Bilingual, Bicultural, and Biliterate) vision of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, the course is designed to draw upon the richly varied bilingualisms and biliteracies of predominantly Latinx students in order to help them honor, theorize, and cultivate their bicultural identities by “philosophizing in tongues” rather than being forced to assimilate to the monolingual and monocultural ideology that prevails across both mainstream Anglophone philosophy and the system of higher education in the United States of America. (shrink)

This article intends to navigate through three distinctive paths. The first of them being Ancient Greece, through Artemidorus, especially from his absorption by Foucault; The second being Ancient Rome, as worked by Paul Veyne in the Constantine’s analyses; and the third path is constituted from a series of ethnographic reports about the South American Amerindian communities. This theoretical trail will be taken to show other analytical possibilities for what is understoodas oneiromancy, that is, the analysis of dreams, that was not (...) framed by the occidental modernity. (shrink)

The question of what distinguishes moral problems from other problems is important to the study of the evolution and functioning of morality. Many researchers concerned with this topic have assumed, either implicitly or explicitly, that all moral problems are problems of cooperation. This assumption offers a response to the moral demarcation problem by identifying a necessary condition of moral problems. Characterizing moral problems as problems of cooperation is a popular response to this issue – especially among researchers empirically studying the (...) beginnings and limits of moral psychology. However, demarcating the moral in this way severely restricts the domain of moral problems. There are plenty of moral problems that aren’t simply problems of cooperation. In this paper I argue that understanding moral problems as problems of cooperation is too restrictive and offer an alternative way of demarcating moral from non-moral problems. Characterizing what makes a problem moral in terms of cooperation excludes a variety of problems that are ordinarily understood and responded to as moral. The alternative characterization that I propose is based on the American Indian/Native American concept of harmony. Using the concept of cooperation to demarcate the moral removes moral agents from their surroundings or contexts by assuming moral agency applies only to humans or other similarly evolved lifeforms. In contrast, using the concept of harmony allows for moral consideration to be granted to non-humans as well (e.g., non-human animals, plant life, ecosystems, etc.). (shrink)

This text intends on putting what may be called a philosophy of marronage1 in conversation with Indigenous thought, particularly by engaging with the thought of Cherokee Nation philosopher Brian Burkhart from his essay “Locality is a Metaphysical Fact.”2 While the topic is treated in detail in Burkhart’s Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land (2019), my engagement with that specific text will be reserved for a separate project. What is of interest to me here is Burkhart’s elaboration of the concept of locality, (...) which refers to an “ontological kinship with the land” that serves as a bulwark against the sedimentation of the coloniality of being in the ontology of the Indigenous subject. I would like to add some nuance to it from the positionality of a subject whose ontological kinship with the land was severed through the kidnapping and enslavement of the ancestors from the African continent. In the process, my intent is to offer an alternate reading of Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) which may allow Fanonian thought to be reconciled with North Native American Indigenous thought, which has typically rejected Fanon’s rejection of a return to ancestral ways. This alternate reading of Fanon shows that a reconnection with ancestral ways, and reconstruction of locality, constitutes only part of the liberation project for Afro-diasporic subjects. (shrink)

Land is key to the operations of coloniality, but the power of the land is also the key anticolonial force that grounds Indigenous liberation. This work is an attempt to articulate the nature of land as a material, conceptual, and ontological foundation for Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and valuing. As a foundation of valuing, land forms the framework for a conceptualization of Indigenous environmental ethics as an anticolonial force for sovereign Indigenous futures. This text is an important contribution in (...) the efforts to Indigenize Western philosophy, particularly in the context of settler colonialism in the United States. It breaks significant ground in articulating Indigenous ways of knowing and valuing to Western philosophy—not as artifact that Western philosophy can incorporate into its canon, but rather as a force of anticolonial Indigenous liberation. Ultimately, Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land shines light on a possible road for epistemically, ontologically, and morally sovereign Indigenous futures. (shrink)

Esta entrevista feita com Renato Sztutman, professor-doutor do Departamento de Antropologia Social da Universidade de São Paulo, circunda essencialmente a reflexão de Pierre Clastres, etnólogo francês que desenvolveu pesquisas acerca do pensamento político dos povos ameríndios da América do Sul. Passar-se-á por outros autores a isto relacionados, como a esposa, também antropóloga, do escritor supracitado e filósofos europeus que ajudaram a edificar a análise das sociedades contra-o-Estado.

Andreas Hesselius and Pehr Kalm both spent time in eastern North America during the first half of the 18th century. Both came with an ardent desire to observe and learn about the natural environment and inhabitants of the region. Both produced writings, in the form of journals that have proved immensely useful to subsequent scholars. Yet their writings also display differences that illuminate the epistemological and sociological underpinnings of their observations, and which had consequences for their encounters with foreign environments. (...) Hesselius, who served as pastor to the Swedish congregation in Philadelphia from 1712 to 1724, described his experiences and observations with what we might call a historical awareness, while Kalm, known as the first of Linnaeus’s students to travel to the New World, primarily offered dehistoricized and denarrativized taxonomic ethnographic descriptions. At first glance, Hesselius and Kalm appear to illustrate perfectly Michel Foucault’s description of the difference between Renaissance and classical epistemologies. Kalm’s disembodied and decontextualized representations fit well with Foucault’s description of natural history in the classical age as consisting ‘of undertaking a meticulous examination of things themselves…and then of transcribing what it has gathered in smooth, neutralized, and faithful words’. This article, however, points out that while Hesselius and Kalm arrive at similar descriptions of plants and other-than-human beings by employing different methodologies, when it comes to describing indigenous peoples their respective methodologies lead to radically different approaches, with Hesselius writing them into history, while Kalm relegates them to ethnology in the sense of savage ‘peoples without histories’. (shrink)

Kobade teaches that we must recognize all individuals as links in a familial/community chain from ancestors, to the present, and to future generations. With the recognition of kobade, individuals are then called to develop kwe—knowledge of one’s self that is theoretically anchored to and generated through one’s particular ancestral and lived experience. Kwe is a deep personal knowledge that is produced by combining the past with the present through everyday actions. It creates an attitude and process of engagement with the (...) world that responds to oppression by refusing domination of all kinds and generates new ways of engaging and living one’s grounded normativity. Grounded normativity is what stabilizes and motivates a life of meaning that participates in an embodied radical resurgence. (shrink)

Drawing primarily from the cultural traditions and beliefs of the Muscogee peoples, I will provide an account of how harmony can play a foundational role in providing a structure to morality. In the process of providing this account, I will begin (§2) by defining two key Muscogee concepts: ‘energy’ (§2.1) and ‘harmony’ (§2.2). I will also explain how the relationship between these two concepts can provide a structure for morality. Then I will explain the conditions that make promoting harmony a (...) normative principle (§3) by explaining why promoting harmony is relevant to humans (§3.1) as well as a providing a prudential reason to promote harmony (§3.2). Finally, I will explain how harmony can be achieved (§4) by explaining two examples that highlight the importance of non-moral knowledge in promoting harmony. I will then conclude with some remarks about how the Muscogee concept of harmony relates to some contemporary metaethical concerns (§5). (shrink)

The article follows the theme of dealing with adversaries and conflict resolution. As an exercise in intercultural philosophy, the paper explores the philosophies of two different regions, the Amazon of South America (Jivaro and Yanesha/Amuesha people of Peru) and Western Province of Kenya, East Africa (with a focus on the Bukusu people). Exploring the insights of other researchers as well as drawing upon interviews by the author, the article explains each group’s philosophy of conflict resolution referencing myths, folktales, proverbs, and (...) interviews with sages. In the case of both communities, practitioners of peace must engage in bravery to reach out to others and address them with a message of peaceful relations. The Yanesha have a founding myth that emphasizes the role of a woman in establishing harmonious relations, whereas the Bukusu folktales emphasize men’s leadership. (shrink)

American Indian Thought is a contemporary collection of twenty-two essays written by Indigenous persons with Western philosophical training, all attempting to formulate, and/or contribute to a sub-discipline of, a Native American Philosophy. The contributors come from diverse tribal, educational, philosophical, methodological, etc., backgrounds, and there is some tension among aspects of the collection, but what is more striking is the harmony and the singularity of the collection’s intent. Part of this singularity may derive from the solidarity among its authors. In (...) addition to the fact that all belong to Indigenous tribes, there is also a striking sensitivity to the interconnection between distinct Western disciplines—particularly between philosophy and poetry. I take the latter to be a thread which can be strategically woven into the center of the anthology’s weave. In this book discussion, I aim to draw out the poetic aspects of five of the anthology’s essays, which deal with philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, respectively. In this way, I hope to illuminate a poetic quality at the heart of the collection, and thus also of the burgeoning field of Native American or Indigenous philosophy in general. In the process, I will also consider ways in which Indigenous philosophy resonates with the Western philosophical traditions of phenomenology and American pragmatism. With the latter tradition in particular this connection has become more fully appreciated, especially through the work of Bruce Wilshire and Scott Pratt. (shrink)

This paper briefly highlights a small part of the work being done by Indigenous groups in Canada to integrate science into their ways of knowing and living with nature. Special attention is given to a recent attempt by Mi'kmaw educators in Unama'ki (Cape Breton, Nova Scotia) to overcome suspicion of science among their youth by establishing an 'Integrative Science' (Toqwa'tu'kl Kjijitaqnn, or 'bringing our knowledges together') degree programme at Cape Breton University. The goal was to combine Indigenous and scientific knowledges (...) in a way that protects and empowers Mi'kmaw rights and lifeways. (shrink)

"Co-published with the American Philosophical Society.".

A curious feature of Aztec philosophy is that the basic metaphysical question of the “Western” tradition cannot be formulated in their language, in Nahuatl. This did not, however, prevent the Aztecs from developing an account of 'reality', or whatever it is that might exist. The article is the first of its kind to compare the work of Aristotle on ousia (being) and the Aztecs on teotl and ometeotl. Through this analysis, it suggests that both of the Nahuatl terms are fundamental (...) for expressing the basic character of reality as process for the Aztecs. It also defends their notion as prima facia reasonable, despite its wide divergence from Aristotle's view. (shrink)

Indigenous peoples often embrace different versions of the concept of food sovereignty. Yet some of these concepts are seemingly based on impossible ideals of food self-sufficiency. I will suggest in this essay that for at least some North American Indigenous peoples, food sovereignty movements are not based on such ideals, even though they invoke concepts of cultural revitalization and political sovereignty. Instead, food sovereignty is a strategy of Indigenous resurgence that negotiates structures of settler colonialism that erase the ecological value (...) of certain foods for Indigenous peoples. (shrink)

The environment, particularly, land and water, play a powerful role in sustaining and supporting American Indian and Alaska Native communities in the United States. Not only is water essential to life and considered — by some Tribes — a sacred food in and of itself, but environmental water resources are necessary to maintain habitat for hunting and fishing. Many American Indian and Alaska Native communities incorporate locally caught traditional subsistence foods into their diets, and the loss of access to subsistence (...) foods represents a risk factor for food security and nutrition status in indigenous populations. Negative health outcomes, including obesity, diabetes and cancer, have accompanied declines in traditional food use in indigenous communities throughout the United States. (shrink)

Social studies of science have often treated natural field sites as extensions of the laboratory. But this overlooks the unique specificities of field sites. While lab sites are usually private spaces with carefully controlled borders, field sites are more typically public spaces with fluid boundaries and diverse inhabitants. Field scientists must therefore often adapt their work to the demands and interests of local agents. I propose to address the difference between lab and field in sociological terms, as a difference in (...) style. A field style treats epistemic alterity as a resource rather than an obstacle for objective knowledge production. A sociological stylistics of the field should thus explain how objective science can co-exist with radical conceptual difference. I discuss examples from the Canadian North, focussing on collaborations between state wildlife biologists and managers, on the one hand, and local Aboriginal Elders and hunters, on the other. I argue that a sociological stylistics of the field can help us to better understand how radically diverse agents may collaborate across cultures in the successful production of reliable natural knowledge. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that John Rawls’ later work presents one of the most fruitful liberal frameworks from which to approach global cultural diversity. In his Law of Peoples (1999), the normative architecture Rawls provides is much more open to an intercultural/religious dialogue with various non-Western communities, such as the First Nations, than are other liberal approaches. Surprisingly, this has gone unnoticed in the literature on multiculturalism. At the same time, Rawls’ framework is not problem free. Here, I am (...) concerned with Rawls’ conception of overlapping consensus as political, rather than comprehensive; or the idea that dialogue and discussion concerning issues of justice must necessarily, as a matter of principle, exclude philosophical or religious reasons. I argue that this constraint will only add to the unfair exclusion of legitimate concerns. I demonstrate this in Rawls' discussion of so-called non-public spiritual perspectives of land, non-human animals, and the environment – views strikingly similar to those held by many Indigenous and Native Americans. Rawls’ framework unjustifiably and unjustly excludes such views from participation in the public and political realm. In the context of a globally diverse world, and in light of a history of Western colonialism, oppression, and domination of Indigenous peoples, I would argue that justice and fairness require that such others at least be able to articulate their concerns in the public and political domain, according to their own self-understandings and as they see fit, even if we do not agree with these. I argue that Rawls’ proviso is insufficient as a response. (shrink)

The American Indian Movement, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, burst into that turbulent time with passion, anger, and radical acts of resistance. Spurred by the Civil Rights movement, Native people began to protest the decades--centuries--of corruption, racism, and abuse they had endured. They argued for political, social, and cultural change, and they got attention. The photographs of activist Dick Bancroft, a key documentarian of AIM, provide a stunningly intimate view of this major piece of American history from 1970 to 1981. (...) Veteran journalist Laura Waterman Wittstock, who participated in events in Washington, DC, has interviewed a host of surviving participants to tell the stories behind the images. The words of Russell Means, Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, Pat Bellanger, Elaine Salinas, Winona LaDuke, Bill Means, Ken Tilsen, Larry Leventhal, Jose Barreiro, and others tell the stories: the takeovers of federal buildings and the Winter Dam in Wisconsin, the founding of survival schools in the Twin Cities, the Wounded Knee trials, international conferences for indigenous rights, the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan and the Longest Walk for Survival, powwows and camps and United Nations actions. This is the inside record of a movement that began to change a nation. Dick Bancroft has been the unofficial photographer for the American Indian Movement since 1970. He has traveled the world to take these photographs. Laura Waterman Wittstock, a writer and media consultant, covered the early years of the American Indian Movement as a journalist. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, recipient of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, is an activist for indigenous rights in Guatemala. (shrink)

In order to counter the steady erosion of tribal powers of self-government, this book argues for redirecting the trajectory of tribal-federal relations to better reflect the formative ethos of legal pluralism that operated in the nation's earliest years.

When Alain Locke developed a philosophy of valuation that he termed “functional relativism,” he contrasted his position to “value realism,” apparently because he wanted to keep valuations free from being bound to status quo existence. This article considers Locke's philosophy of valuation in relation to the “realism” of Charles S. Peirce in order to show that there is an approach to realism that answers to requirements of dynamic, evolutionary growth and creativity. The argument begins by placing Locke's cardinal values onto (...) a compass-like diagram inspired by Black Elk's ritual acknowledgment of cardinal directions. The illustration of a hoop of valuation is used to explore the usefulness of thinking in terms of diagrams, with explicit reference to Peircean semiotics. Next the article pursues a context of valuation developed through the psychical philosophy of George Herbert Mead and recent work on Peircean realism. It shows how valuation may be viewed as an exercise in freedom, not confined to status quo existence. Sources of error are acknowledged and reviewed. In the end, Peirce's choice of realism versus nominalism is found to be consistent with Lockean commitments to shared living in communities of inquiry. A Lockean philosophy of valuation, therefore, is not necessarily antirealist. (shrink)

In contemporary Indian Country, the majority of people who identify as “Indian” fall into the “urban” category: away from traditional lands and communities, in cities and towns wherein the opportunities to live one’s identity as Native can be restricted, and even more so for American Indian religious practice and activity. This article will explore a possible theoretical model for discussing the religious nature of urban Indians, using aspects of the contemporary powwow as exemplary, and suggest ways in which the discourse (...) on Native American religious practices can inform the larger discussion of religion in general by implying a comparative direction between urban Indians and other religious actors in American secular society. (shrink)

In this article, the authors highlight connections between research on Two Spirit Native Americans and standard social studies curriculum. Two Spirit is a Pan-Indian term describing Native Americans who believe they embody both masculine and feminine characteristics/traits in one physical body. Findingsfrom this research expand the field's conception of multiple perspectives and diversity, while creating opportunities for nuanced understandings of genderexpression and gender that go beyond the male/female dichotomy currently accepted as the norm. The authors utilize historical research and a (...) semi-structured,in-depth interview with a current Ojibwe leader to better understand and theorize Native Americans' acceptance of diverse ways of being. The authors conclude that modern-day social studies teachers and students have much to learn from this traditional Native worldview. Specifically, the authors believe that encouraging students to adopt more inclusive perspectives on gender expression and to recognize the plausibility of multiple genders may lead to more advanced, social learning. Combined with reinforcement from responsible adults at school, this recognition would lessen a variety of present-day social ills, including the incidence of teen suicide caused by homophobia. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the affinities between current theories of North American Indigenous trickster narratives and continental philosophy where they are both concerned with the question of responsibility in subject formations. Taking up the work of Judith Butler, Franz Kafka and Gerald Vizenor, the author works to show how both continental and Indigenous intellectual traditions work against any assumed stability for the ‘I’ in the narration of the self, yet toward responsible relationality. Such affinities, however, emerge from differing socio‐cultural (...) and linguistic horizons that are not reducible one to the other. This is particularly so with regard to the natural world and the ways in which Indigenous narratives are developed to foster responsible subjects to a larger biotic environment. Through discussion of such affinities and differences, the author seeks to broaden and multiculturalize contemporary debates in philosophy. (shrink)

The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools is a novel foray into a genre previously associated with so-called “transitional” democracies from the post- Communist world and the global South. This basic fact notwithstanding, a systematic comparison with the broader universe of truth commission-hosting countries reveals that the circumstances surrounding the Canadian TRC are not entirely novel. This article develops this argument by distilling from the transitional justice literature several bases of comparison designed to explain how a truth (...) commission’s capacity to promote new cultures of justice and accountability in the wake of massive violations of human rights is affected by the socio-political context in which the commission occurs; the injustices it is asked to investigate; and the nature of its mandate. It concludes that these factors, compounded by considerations unique to the Canadian context, all militate against success. If Canadian citizens and policymakers fail to meet this profound ethical challenge, they will find themselves occupying the transition-wrecking role played more fami- liarly by the recalcitrant and unreformed military and security forces in the world’s more evidently authoritarian states. (shrink)