Counter-Colonial and Philosophical Claims: An indigenous observation of Western philosophy

Abstract

Providing an indigenous opinion on anything is a difficult task. To be sure, there is a multitude of possible indigenous responses to dominant Western philosophy. My aim in this paper is to assess dominant analytic Western philosophy in light of the general insistence of most indigenous authors that indigenous metaphysics is holistic, and to make some bold claims about both dominant Western philosophy in line with an indigenous metaphysics of holism. There will, of course, be different ways of expressing holism according to the indigenous group, but most of the literature states, as a most basic concern, that a general indigenous philosophy is concerned with the groundedness (or otherwise) of an individual as an entity related to and indivisible from the rest of the world.¹1. See for instance: Deloria and Wildcat (2001 Deloria, V., & Wildcat, D. (2001). Power and place: Indian education in America. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Resources. Google Scholar]), Calderon (2008 Calderon, D. (2008). Indigenous metaphysics: Challenging Western knowledge organization in social studies curriculum (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of California, Los Angeles. Google Scholar]), and Marsden (1985 Marsden, M. (1985). God, man and universe: A Maori view. In M. King (Ed.), Te Ao Hurihuri: The world moves on: Aspects of Maoritanga (pp. 143–164). Auckland: Longman Paul Ltd. Google Scholar]) for specific discussion on the nature of indigenous relationships with all things. The consequences of any assertion about the holistic nature of metaphysics are vast, including for the interpretation of what is often perceived of as the antithesis: Western philosophy.