Indigenous Ontologies and Conservation

Pierotti + Wildcat 2000

Definitive framing of TEK. Against the "noble savage" stereotype, argue that indigenous peoples are not romantics communing with nature but skilled empiricists living in community with non-human others, with detailed, dynamic, place-rooted knowledge of animal and plant behaviour. Example: Coyote-Badger relationship observed by TEK, dismissed, then validated by the West

Kimmerer 2013

The environmental crisis is fundamentally driven by the way western societies ontologically perceive nature. We ned ontological change, not technical.

Thomas 2015

Identifies a synergy between Western more-than-human (MTH) geographers and indigenous geographers in rejecting the human/non-human dualism and affirming non-human agency. Hurunui River in Aotearoa New Zealand

Whakapapa

Word for genealogical relationships binding people, environment, and spiritual world (Ngāi Tahu te reo Māori)

Mana

Word for dignity of the river (Ngāi Tahu te reo Māori)

Kaitiakitanga

Word for guardianship with rights of use (Ngāi Tahu te reo Māori)

Sullivan 2017

Subjects the green economy to an ontological critique. Market-based conservation, such as offsetting and payment for ecosystem services, operationalises a western ontology in which ecological harms in one location can be "netted" against ecological goods in another. Treats nature as an external, quantifiable stock can permit spatial and temporal substitution of ecological value.

Mazzocchi 2018

The difficulties of integration are systematically underestimated. Co-management schemes have achieved only partial expected outcomes. Integration on western terms does not achieve knowledge dialogue but knowledge absorption. Asymmetry is built into the very framing of integration as a process western institutions design and manage.

Deborah Rose 1999

Western thought is characterised by a monologue: a singular knowledge production system that cannot hear other voices as legitimate. The alternative is "intersubjective mutuality," where responsibility and care extend beyond human community to all living beings and environments. “Deep colonizing” = seemingly benign policies and practices (including participatory conservation programmes) that can perpetuate structures of oppression and environmental destruction. Fix: "situated availability," which requires acknowledging one's own positionality within a political economy of violence before speaking.

Suchet 2002

Conservation practice perpetuates colonialism. Dominant conservation discourses are rooted in Enlightenment science and Judeo-Christian beliefs. "situated engagement": an open-ended, embodied approach that promotes co-construction of knowledge rather than imposing pre-existing frameworks.

Curley 2018

Failure of 2009 Navajo Green Jobs initiative- attempted to transition energy production from coal to wind and solar. (1) Decentralised governing authority away from the tribal government toward "the community," undermining tribal sovereignty. (2) It promoted private entrepreneurship over public investment, importing neoliberal assumptions incompatible with collective indigenous governance. Navajo thus pivotted back to coal.