Week 4 Lecture 1: Indigenous Ways of Life: Land and Reciprocity

Indigenous Worldviews

Anishinaabe

Multiple culturally related groups historically from the Great Lakes region

Worldview

Lens/ conception of the world

Helps us learn, but is not the complete account

A distinct way of being, doing, and knowing

Influences everyday actions, ethical understandings, set of values

Sense of rootedness within a community

Why worldview and not “religion”

“Religion” comes from Eurocentric perspectives of ritual, language, etc.

Indigenous “religion”

An essentializing term

Does not fully encapsulate the nature of Indigenous relationships with spirit, language, land, etc

Worldview and lifeways are more culturally grounded terms

Indigenous worldview and Place

Vary by location

The order of life is in constant flux - characterized as change

Interconnectedness

Life is sacred and all life forms are connected in a web of interdependent relationships

Humans are neither above nor below - they are part of the web

Eurocentric worldview of land

Land is external to humans

A resource to be owned, exploited, and sometimes protected (to serve human interest)

Linear progress - the directness of reality towards a goal

• Time is linear

• Human societies progress towards civilization

Indigenous worldview of land

Lands as the context of existence

Circular

• Focus on relatedness

• Existence is circular - all things are connected, past, present, and future

Humans as part of Creation, not outside of it

More-than-humans are relations, not resources

Within Anishinaabe worldviews, land is a metaphor for all of existence, a teacher

Anishinaabe Bimaadiziwin

Relationship with everything around

Everything is alive and related

7 ancestral Anishinaabe teachings

• Love

• Honesty

• Respect

• Truth

• Bravery

• Wisdom

• Humility

Anishinaabe Creator’s 4 truths (and environmental applications (Bell)

• Vision

• Time

• Reason

• Movement

Provides directions for environmental change

Fire, Wind, Water

Teachings and healing are cyclical and continued

Ethic of reciprocity

Very central

Moral responsibility

• Resolves the ethical tension of taking a life/ resources by giving back

• Thanksgiving ceremonies, land stewardship, science, art, everyday reverence

The Honorable Harvest

Indigenous canon of principles and practices

How much can be taken without overconsumption

Based on accountability to physical and metaphysical worlds

Honorable Harvest Guidelines

• Introduce yourself, be accountable

• Ask before taking, honour the answer

• Never take the first or the last, never take more than half

• Use everything, take in a way that does little harm

• Give a gift in reciprocity

Land as pedagogy

Education that is land-based and makes place for Elders and Indigenous languages, and does not separate traditional knowledge, science, and practice

• i.e. Harvesting wild rice, building a birch bark canoe

Ceremonies, stories, and language are linked to land

Direct response to settler colonialism and residential schools