Reflections on the Importance of Indigenous Geography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18974995 |
|---|---|
| Authors | R Herman (0000-0003-4125-7569, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, University of Hawai'i at Manoa), R D K Herman (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 73-88 |
| Publication date | 2008-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Indian Culture and Research Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0161-6463 • E-ISSN: 0161-6463 |
| Publisher | UCLA American Indian Studies Center (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.17953/aicr.32.3.n301616057133485 |
| OpenAlex | W1949311213 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 20 |
Using storytelling from his experiences with the Western Apache, Keith Basso elaborates the notion that “wisdom sits in places,” that is, the way in which social and cultural knowledge and guidance—wisdom—is based on experience. Because experience occurs in places, landscapes (and their stories and place names) can come to encode social and cultural knowledge. This notion of geography as philosophy would not have been foreign to the ancient Greeks to whom the discipline is often traced, but geography today, with some notable exceptions, is only slowly returning to the quest for wisdom. As an academic discipline, geography must struggle against the limitations of the larger (post)modern episteme within which it is situated. A genuine engagement with Indigenous geography may open a pathway out of this fix.\nWhat I call “modern geography”—meaning the Anglophone geography that has emerged during the past two centuries with influence from France and Germany—grew as both a tool and a product of the colonial era. The discipline helped map out the civilized and the uncivilized and the place of each in a world of empires. Its scholars at times justified territorial expansion with hints at world domination, laid out “scientific” justifications for racial inequality, or provided the technical tools and know-how for conquest and colonial rule. In the process, Western notions of geography—of space, time, and human- environment relations—were imposed on the rest of the world. The hegemonic power of the resulting modernist worldview continues to perpetuate in part through its intimate relationship with global capitalism. It is important to bear in mind that what is now held forth as a “rational” worldview has its roots in a European culture war—the Reformation. Although this worldview is accepted as common sense today, it embodies a distinct ideology that enabled the colonization of the world and the commodification of nature
Biology · Economic geography · Ethnology · Geography · Indigenous · Sociology · Anthropology · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · Ecology
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Indigenous Media
Positioning Solastalgia Within Indigenous Geographies
Reclaiming space
“Old Indian Ways” of Predicting the Weather
Feeling solastalgia
Memoranda of understanding (MOUs), environmental governance, and co-stewardship for non-federally recognized tribes in California
Indigenous Political Ecology
Reinterpreting Traditional Cultural Properties
Envisioning indigenized geography
Writing with research partners ‘from the field’
‘The forest is our inheritance’
The Study of Indigenous Religions in North America
A framework for leveraging 3D heritage preservation and Indigenous place-based learning in the Arctic
Traditional knowledge in a time of crisis
Reflections on the (continued and future) importance of Indigenous geographies
Forgetting the Stories Would Be Catastrophic”
The Evolving State of Gentrification
Place dialogue
Sea Country
| Unique citing works | 20 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,25 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2026 (17) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 19 |