Reflections on the importance of indigenous geography

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 73-88

  Herman, R D K ^a  

^a Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 57249116275     PISSN: 01616463     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17953/aicr.32.3.n301616057133485     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. See the excellent discussion by Keith Basso, "Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache Landscape," in Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1997), 53-90.
2. See Robert W. Scribner, "The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the 'Disenchantment of the World,'" Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993): 475.
3. See Han van Ruler, "Minds, Forms, and Spirits: The Nature of Cartesian Disenchantment," Journal of the History of Ideas 61, no. 3 (2000): 381-95.
4. There is no mention of this topic in these well-known histories of geography: David N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition (London: Blackwell, 1992);
5. Tim Unwin, The Place of Geography (New York: Longman Scientific and Technical/John Wiley and Sons, 1992);
6. Geoffrey Martin, All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
7. Scribner, "Reformation, Popular Magic, and the 'Disenchantment of the World,'" 475.
8. The term spiritual is fraught; because of the distinction between science and religious phenomena in the modern episteme, using the term spiritual makes one a virtual target for those who insist on this bifurcation. The spiritual is, by definition, not scientific. However, there are really no good terms to use to describe an animated ("enchanted") world. The hegemonic power of scientific discourse has obviated any ability to talk about the range of spiritual phenomena in any way that sounds reasonable. Livingstone (Geographical Tradition) uses the term esoteric to describe such approaches in premodern geography.
9. In this piece I differentiate between modern Western society and premodern European and Indigenous societies. However, when using the word Indigenous, in the broadest sense, I include the traditional science and knowledge systems of India, China, and other non-Western cultures, where the world is still understood in both material and energie terms.
10. Vine Deloria Jr. details many accounts of such phenomena in his book The World We Used to Live in: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2006).
11. A good example is the work of British biochemist Rupert Sheldrake, whose theory of morphogenetic fields has led skeptics to question whether he deserves to be called a "scientist." The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's interview widi him on its Web site notes he "was once a respected Cambridge botanist" and asks, "Is he still a scientist to be taken seriously?" Dr. Robert Todd Carroll's online "Skeptic's Dictionary" more pointedly asserts that "his continued pose as a scientist on the frontier of discovery is unwarranted."
12. Kelly Besecke, "Speaking of Meaning in Modernity: Reflexive Spirituality as a Cultural Resource," Sociology of Religion 62, no. 3 (2001): 365.
13. Weber is quoted in H. C. Greisman "'Disenchantment' of the World: Romanticism, Aesthetics and Sociological Theory," The British Journal of Sociology 27, no. 4 (1976): 496-97.
14. Ibid., 495.
15. Greisman notes (pp. 500-1) that Adorno observed the way many modern people attempt to create an aura of enchantment in their lives - through popular music, wilderness adventure, or by looking romantically at premodern society (die Internet had not yet been created)-but argued that attempting to revive a presumed preindustrial arcadia would not solve the problem. Rather, capitalism must founder on its own contradictions. I agree, but I argue that the disenchantment is one such contradiction, and Indigenous societies can exemplify what it means to live without that contradiction.
16. Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000).
17. Vine Deloria Jr., "American Indian Metaphysics," in Power and Place: Indian Education in America, ed. Vine Deloria Jr. and Daniel R. Wildcat (Golden, CO: American Indian Graduate Center and Fulcrom Resources, 2001), 2.
18. Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974);
19. E. C. Relph, Place and Placelessness (London: Pion Limited, 1976).
20. For a discussion of the mechanistic paradigm in science and its relationship to bodi traditional knowledge and advances in the sciences, see Stanislav Grof and Marjorie Livingston Valier, eds., Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984).
21. Deloria and Wildcat, Power and Place.
22. Cajete, Native Science.
23. Details of the protocols and processes for doing this project are found on the following page of the Pacific Worlds Web site http://www. pacificworlds.com/ homepage/principl.cfm (accessed 16 July 2008). What is important to know is that the text derives from interviews conducted with knowledge bearers in each community. In every case, the text was woven from these interviews into a single narrative, and each informant had the opportunity to review, edit, or change the text before it was published. In several cases, the final project was reviewed by a recognized culturebearer outside the circle of informants.
24. Daniel Wildcat, Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2009).