Step 2: methodology

Attempts to learn from another worldview can go wrong. In particular, contemporary Western attempts to learn from Indigenous worldviews have a problematic history in this regard. Firstly, there have been misunderstandings, such as the one involving the term “person” in step 1.

—> Can you say in your own words what that was all about?

Secondly, there has been cultural appropriation: objects and ideas have been taken out of context, often for profit, and often unfairly. The unfairness is reason enough to stop. In addition, these objects and ideas don’t always make sense in their new surroundings - not because they don’t make sense full stop, but because they need their accustomed context to make sense. A memory card only stores and retrieves pictures if it has a mobile phone or tablet around it. Without its mobile phone or tablet, it may easily be mistaken for a useless piece of plastic and thrown out. In a similar way, an Indigenous object or idea may no longer work the the same way as before when it is taken out of the context where it usually belongs.

—> Can you think of your own example of something that no longer makes sense when it is taken out of context?

If things need their own context before they make sense, then that means we can’t successfully use our own worldview to validate what a different worldview is saying: we need its context, not just our own, or we will end up missing things. If an alien comes to earth and doesn’t know what a memory card is, they will need to look at mobile phones and tablets, too, before the card can make sense to them. Their knowledge of space travel, on its own, isn’t going to help. What is more, they won’t, at the beginning, know that it is mobile phones and tablets that they need to find out about if they want to understand the card.

This is where Mary Midgley’s ideas come in. Mary Midgley sees nothing wrong with starting from the familiar when we want to learn about something new: in fact, she doesn’t think we have any other option at the beginning. What she also says, though, is that we then have to let go of the familiar: once we have made our start from where we are, any further questions have to be informed by the unfamiliar. Without that, we won’t even know what questions to ask.

Applied to our aliens in the above example, Mary Midgley would be happy for them to start from their knowledge of space travel when they want to understand the memory card. Maybe their spaceship uses semiconductors, too. At some point, though, they are going to have to look at previously unfamiliar contexts (in this case, at our mobile phones and tablets on planet Earth); otherwise they won’t be able to make sense of the card.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s seminal work Decolonising Methodologies makes a similar point: when we are trying to learn about something unfamiliar, we are going to have to bear in mind that some of our familiar assumptions are not going to work. Her book shows a wide range of ways in which loss of context not only prevents learning, but also helps outdated, colonial structures to carry on casting their shadow. An alien who doesn’t understand mobile phones and tablets could easily get the impression that a memory card doesn’t do very much. A Western settler who hasn’t got to know Indigenous ideas yet won’t see why there is much to learn from them.

Smith’s book is in the bibliography of the PhD thesis where all this came from (the top right corner of each screen on this website has a link to it called “The long version”), as are any other works referenced, and an in-depth discussion of the issues raised here.

For now, here is a quick look at some of the key resources in there that are going to come up in this shorter version of it, too:

First and foremost, the first generation of Indigenous holders of PhDs in Philosophy in the United States published some of their ideas in an anthology, American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays, edited by Anne Waters.

Leroy Little Bear’s thoughts on a cluster of elements of philosophical unity in diversity between Indigenous worldviews provide a starting point for a discussion of some shared concepts.

Examples of how these may be lived then come from a variety of sources: besides contributions to Waters’ anthology and Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s work above, the PRATEC project in the Andes is referenced, as are a number of contributors to John Grim’s work at Harvard, published in his edited volume, Indigenous Traditions And Ecology: The Interbeing Of Cosmology And Community. Contributors to the APA’s Studies on Native American and Indigenous Philosophy also feature prominently.

Unsurprisingly, as the Indigenous philosophers referenced tend to be bicultural and thus good at seeing opportunities to build bridges between the two worldviews, it is largely through their work that the Western stepping stones of American Pragmatism / phenomenology, of Spinoza’s thinking, and of the findings of quantum theory emerged.

As Linda Tuhiwai Smith pointed out above, though, these authors are also going to be the first ones to stress that their stepping stones are just that: the stepping stones are not going to be able to carry us all the way; there is going to be a point where the memory card needs its mobile phone or tablet around it, and our familiar spaceship won’t help.