| Title | Author | Created | Published | Tags | | ----------------------------------- | ---------- | ------------------ | ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------ | | Traditional Indigenous Perspectives | Jon Marien | September 21, 2025 | September 21, 2025 | [[#classes\|#classes]], [[#PHIL28877GD\|#PHIL28877GD]] | ![[File_588d93764a224ce8abf538b3bb3a120d_image.png]] # Traditional Indigenous Perspectives In the last unit, we looked at traditional perspective from Western/European thinking and considered how utilitarianism, deontology and anthropocentrism justify our culture of 'stuff'. In this Unit, we consider another traditional perspective, but this time from the original people of North America and Canada. In broad terms, we may consider the indigenous ethical perspective using the following guidelines: - there is a deep, interconnected, holistic web between people and land so that actions have consequences for ourselves, communities and natural world - a reverence and responsibility towards community, other living beings (human, animal, and plant), and nature (which is immediate and divine) that can be connected to, and related with, via locations and objects - striking a balance, reciprocity, or harmony in relationships and actions that can be expressed in ceremony and practice - being guided by traditional teachings and community - strong oral traditions - that listening and learning is best captured in teachings passed down through unmediated oral traditions with strong imagery that the next generation participates with and embodies - sources of insight are not strictly a 'doxology' or expressed as organized 'principles', arguments or written word, but can be found in art and stories, sacred sites and locations, ceremonies and practices, or embodied by a people This is an alternative to the European perspective of either rationally calculating consequences to result in the most pleasure or abstracted rational 'duty'. Both of these European perspectives largely prefer to think only of human interests (personal, corporate, or national) and both may consider nature to be a separated, limitless 'resource' to be used or at least an 'object' without stakes. These European perspectives, in their darker forms, now often seem to overlap and overshadow both nature and native people. Consider both Indigenous and European perspectives as we look for justifications for city structures and suburban sprawl. How can we justify, from one of these perspectives, our cities' growth? That is to ask: "what preposition describes urban growth better: is the city either 'above', 'through', 'against' or 'with' nature?" > "It is important to remember that when engaging with Indigenous knowledge, people and culture, just as there are many different European cultures and people, so too are there many different Indigenous cultures and people. Indigenous people do not exist as a monolith. Indigenous ways of knowing differ between groups and cultures. It's important to be specific about the culture you are referring to and to avoid sweeping generalizations" > University of Waterloo, Indigenous Ways of Knowing. In Canada, broad indigenous groups are First Nations, Inuit and Métis, but as you can see in the map above, these can break down even further just in Ontario. In our video, Navarre Scott Momaday is Kiowa (Indigenous people in the Rocky Mountains, now in Oklahoma, United States). He is a novelist , short story writer, essayist, and poet. His novel "House Made of Dawn" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969. From our readings, Jeannette Armstrong is Syilx Okanagan. She is a Canadian author, educator, artist, and activist. In 2013 she was appointed "Canada Research Chair in Okanagan Indigenous Knowledge and Philosophy" and her 1985 work "Slash" is considered the first novel by a First Nations woman in Canada. --- Documentary: Native American Novelist N. Scott Momaday DESCRIPTION: Personal identification as a Native American and connection with the landscape play a major role in Momaday's writing. Being an American means something different to Native American Indians who were historically persecuted by white men.