2005 Annual Meeting, Association
of American Geographers
April 5-9, Denver, Colorado
Landscape and Epistemology: Reconciling
Indigenous and Western Geographies in Academic Research I
Sponsorships: Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group
Description:
All societies produce geographic epistemologies rooted in their
modes of production, environmental conditions, and understandings
of their place in the universe. But since the Age of Exploration
these been over-written by hegemonic Western discourse of space
and time. This is to the detriment of both the acute environmental
understandings and awareness produced by indigenous geographies,
and the need for greater global understanding of non-Western societies
in the post-9/11 world.
This problem is faced by all geography researchers in non-Western
settings, especially for those working with indigenous peoples and
for geographers of indigenous background who wish to understand
their own 'indigenous geography' within the Western context. Indigenous
science and geography tend to be holistic, understanding the world
as flows of energy across permeable boundaries of matter and spirit.
But the dominant capitalist system and modernist epistemology maintain
a compartmentalized, materialist worldview that naturalizes the
exploitation of nature for financial gain. Western geography, both
a product and producer of this worldview, remains locked in this
epistemological grid.
This is the first of two sessions considering how we, as geographers
operating in the Western academy, deal with this seemingly irreconcilable
difference of worldviews.
Organizer: RDK Herman
Chair: RDK Herman
Participants:
Brian J. Murton
Intrepretations of the Foreshore in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Renee Pualani Louis
Hawaiian place names: mnemonic symbols in a Hawaiian performance
cartography
Kali Fermantez
Re-Placing Indigenous Hawaiian Epistemology and Geography
Sailiemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor
Beyond Migration, the Samoan Concept of Malaga: A Multidimensional
Approach
Victoria Guyatt
Mana Wahine and Science: Exploring relationships between Maori
women, Indigenous knowledge and Western science.
