Ontologies of Eco Kin: Indigenous World Sense/ing

Authors

  • Esme Murdock

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25365/jso-2024-7692

Keywords:

world sense, Indigenous philosophies, culture, reconciliation, original instructions

Abstract

In our global neocolonial and neoliberal present, so-called solutions to settler-Indigenous conflict are often framed as a reconciliation achieved through a multicultural democratic society. However, this conception of resolution frequently adopts a superficial understanding of culture that ultimately understands cultural difference as reconcilable in the sense that other cultures can be folded into or made compatible with dominant cultural norms. On Turtle Island (North America), especially within the settler colonial context, such reconciliation as resolution becomes a differently fashioned form of domination as assimilation especially from the vantage points of Indigenous nations and Afro-descended peoples. This essay explores the ontological incommensurabilities of cultural difference that resist assimilation or translation into dominant Euro-Western cultural frameworks. It does this through examining the way culture and ontological orientation, or world-senses, are made and live on through various modes of cultural preservation and practice. I examine these ideas through Indigenous practices of orality, origin stories, ceremony, and cultural revitalization.

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Published

2024-05-07

How to Cite

Murdock, Esme. 2024. “Ontologies of Eco Kin: Indigenous World Sense/Ing”. Journal of Social Ontology 10 (2). Vienna, Austria. https://doi.org/10.25365/jso-2024-7692.

Issue

Section

Special Issue Cultures & Ontologies: Empirical, Ethical & Political Consequences