Indigenous Epistomologies

Wendy Red Star, 1880 Crow Peace Delegation: Peelatcchiwaaxpaash / Medicine Crow, 2014, 10 Inkjet prints and red ink on paper.

                                       

When learning about epistemologies this week, I first wondered what an epistemology even is. It is pretty much a fancy term for theory of knowledge. This week’s reading related to Indigenous vs. Western epistemologies. When we looked at the difference, one thing that stood out was language. There are many benefits to learning multiple languages. Knowing multiple languages can help you to understand the culture and personal identity of the people who speak the language. It can really change your perspective of the world. 

 

“Language matters because it holds within it a people’s worldview. Language is a primary concern in preserving Indigenous philosophies, and it is something that must be thought through within research epistemologies.” – Margaret Kovach

 

Another thing that Kovach presents with this quote is that in Western research, they do not think about the language when researching. In the Indigenous methods, they do. This relates to the idea that in Western research, they want you to speak factually without any biases. I remember in every one of my English classes we were told to only write based on facts and statistics. Unless it was creative writing, you were not allowed to seem biased. 

 

“The deeper that I submerge myself into tribal knowledge systems, the more I resist Western ways of knowing as a given for all academic research, even though I know this demands a long swim against a strong current.” – Margaret Kovach

 

Kovach here is explaining that the more research she does, the more she does not support using Western methods for research. She states “all” academic research given because in the past and even still today, Western methods for research is the primary if not only way in the education system. The removal of biases is simply impossible. If you have an opinion about something, there is no way to be objective. 

 

The next point I learned from this week is that cultures are collaborative. It is found in many Indigenous methods that you should learn to appreciate natural beauty. Humans are all part of the ecosystem. There are relations in respecting the Earth. It is also best not to segregate things. Separation is a man-made Western ideology. Whereas in Indigenous epistemologies, they believe in collaboration. One example of Western vs. Indigenous that came to my mind is that when the Western people came to America, they wanted power. They were greedy and wanted land for resources, land for control, and land for power. The Indigenous lived on the land before the Western people, and the Indigenous worshipped the land. They had their separate communities, but they did not fight for complete control. Instead, they worked together. 

 

I chose this art for this week for a specific reason. This piece is made using inkjet prints and red ink on paper. Wendy Red Star essentially annotated this print by writing comments on it in the red ink. She wrote many things describing the man. However, she described him in a unique way. She gave the man a voice. Her annotations were basically talking as the person she was describing. Wendy Red Star annotates these images of Indigenous people as people, rather than curiosities. This goes back to Western vs. Indigenous epistemologies because Western Ideologies would deem oral history as less reliable. Wendy was using oral history to describe the man as a person, rather than scientifically. Western Ideologies would only annotate him as a scientific being, not a person with thoughts and personality. 

One other thing I wanted to mention is a project I did in Mr. Garcia’s Digital to Darkroom class. We used cyanotypes to create prints of plants directly from Pueblo. The way to create a cyanotype is by covering a paper in a special ink, then placing objects on the paper in the sun. Then when the color of the ink has changed, you remove the objects to see where they had been blocked out. Then you wash the paper, and you have a cyanotype. Cyanotypes were originally used to describe plants scientifically. However, our cyanotypes combined art and voice with the scientific methods. This was breaking traditional Western methodologies. 

    

Margaret Kovach, "Epistemology and Research: Centring Tribal Knowledge," Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009).