Public philosophy distinguishes itself from other philosophical undertakings by either addressing public problems, i.e. those with broad social consequence, or doing the work of philosophy in a public setting beyond the confines of a purely academic environment. The ironic and darkly absurd character of the defining features of civilization and progress – realities Indigenous Peoples have confronted with devastating consequences for centuries – is the way in which both generate tremendous unhappiness and destruction. The living historical character of our (...) cultures is captured in the power plus place equals personality axiom that Deloria formulated. The modus operandi of Indigenous solutions not only addresses the “know‐how” but the moral “should we” dimensions of proposed solutions. Most of humankind talks about resources because the worldview guiding the powerful economic and political interests thinks in those terms about our relatives. (shrink)

In this article we endeavour to address the problem of the low levels of Indigenous school attendance in Australia through strategies based on dialectical critical realism and metaRealism. We employ the concepts of the dialectic of the 7 Es, the concrete universal, four-planar social being, the self, active perception and dialectical universality to show how Indigenous education and an approach to school attendance can be developed that leads to a transformation of the underlying relations between educators and (...) class='Hi'>Indigenous communities, families and children. In specific terms we endeavour to show how school connectedness can be given an emancipatory orientation. (shrink)

Personality assessments are frequently used to make decisions and predictions, creating a demand for assessments that are non-discriminatory. South African legislation requires psychological tests to be scientifically proven to be valid, reliable, fair and non-biased. In response to the necessity for a measure sensitive to indigenous differences, South African and Dutch researchers developed the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI). The SAPI represents a theoretical model of personality that uses an indigenous (emic) and universal (etic) approach to capture South (...) Africa’s rich multicultural and multilingual view of personhood. The development of SAPI items and its simultaneous translation from English into all official languages necessitated the investigation of all the translated language versions’ psychometric properties. This study used Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling to examine the factor structure and model fit of two indigenous language versions of the SAPI, targeting the Tshivenda and the Southern Sotho languages. To accomplish this objective, Study 1 (N= 290) was done in South Africa among the Tshivenda ethnic group, while Study 2 (N= 293) was conducted in South Africa among the Sesotho ethnic group. An acquiescence response pattern was noticed in both studies, possibly to adhere to group consensus and emphasizing harmony within relationships. The ESEM solutions generated an excellent fit for both language versions, and most facets loaded acceptably on their expected factors. The Neuroticism factor proved to be problematic in both language versions. Within the Tshivenda version, the Emotional Stability facet did not generate adequate loadings on any SAPI factors. In contrast, neither Emotional Stability nor Negative Emotionality loaded sufficiently on the Neuroticism factor for the Southern Sotho version. While the overall fit of the six-factor model was excellent, the language in which a person completes a personality questionnaire seems to influence such an assessment’s factor structure. The Tshivenda and Sesotho versions of the SAPI cannot yet be positioned as equitable alternatives when using an indigenous version of the SAPI is needed. The implications of the results and proposals for future studies are discussed. (shrink)

This article contends that the environmental release of genetically engineered (GE) animals with heritable traits that are patented will present a challenge to the efforts of nations and indigenous peoples to engage in self‐determination. The environmental release of such animals has been proposed on the grounds that they could function as public health tools or as solutions to the problem of agricultural insect pests. This article brings into focus two political‐economic‐legal problems that would arise with the environmental release (...) of such organisms. To address those challenges, it is proposed that nations considering the environmental release of GE animals must take into account the underlying circumstances and policy failures that motivate arguments for the use of the modified animals. Moreover, countries must recognize that the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights place on them an obligation to ensure that GE animals with patented heritable traits are not released without the substantive consent of the nations or indigenous peoples that could be affected. (shrink)

In our global neocolonial and neoliberal present, so-called solutions to settler-Indigenous conflict are often framed as a reconciliation achieved through a multicultural democratic society. However, this conception of resolution frequently adopts a superficial understanding of culture that ultimately understands cultural difference as reconcilable in the sense that other cultures can be folded into or made compatible with dominant cultural norms. On Turtle Island (North America), especially within the settler colonial context, such reconciliation as resolution becomes a differently fashioned (...) form of domination as assimilation especially from the vantage points of Indigenous nations and Afro-descended peoples. This essay explores the ontological incommensurabilities of cultural difference that resist assimilation or translation into dominant Euro-Western cultural frameworks. It does this through examining the way culture and ontological orientation, or world-senses, are made and live on through various modes of cultural preservation and practice. I examine these ideas through Indigenous practices of orality, origin stories, ceremony, and cultural revitalization. (shrink)

Indigenous understandings of consciousness represent an important inspiration for scientific discussions about the nature of consciousness. Despite the fact that Indigenous concepts are not outputs of a research driven by rigorous, scientific methods, they are of high significance, because they have been formed by hundreds of years of specific routes of cultural evolution. The evolution of Indigenous cultures proceeded in their native habitat. The meanings that emerged in this process represent adaptive solutions that were optimal in (...) the given environmental and social milieu. We argue that it would not be appropriate to handle these meanings as something that science considers to be wrong, or outdated relics of the human past. In contrast, Indigenous concepts and their meanings may be considered to be an important heritage of native human populations, but moreover, they are also an interesting material for analyses and inspiration for recent scientific debates. Furthermore, it is also necessary to mention another reason why the exploration of Indigenous concepts has been so topical recently. Thus far, much psychological theoretical development has been published in English as a result of research conducted in Western countries. The dominance of English and the superiority of research conducted by researchers from Western countries may be considered as a kind of barrier toward other ways of knowing. We argue that the traditional cultural knowledge coming from Indigenous societies may offer an interesting source of new thought for science. The weakening of the strong dependence of science on well-established academic circles dominated by Western theoretical perspectives may be beneficial for stimulating its further development (Sidik, 2022). Therefore, this special symposium of the Journal of Consciousness Studies aims to open the doors for other ways of knowing, For the knowing that emerged in native Indigenous cultures. We argue that the rich cultural heritage of these societies may stimulate the emergence of new analytical perspectives for scientific theorising about the nature of consciousness. For all these reasons, the Indigenous concepts of consciousness captured our interest, and we decided to start investigating them. In 2020 and 2021, we retrieved and analysed pieces of information from past ethnographical field evidence gathered in various Indigenous cultures. After removal of data about the cultures showing a high acceptance of influences from external religious traditions (e.g. Christianity, Islam or Buddhism), a comparative analysis of data from 55 Indigenous groups was conducted and published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies (Trnka and Lorencova, 2022). This primary project revealed many interesting results, but more importantly, it also showed many unexplored avenues that called for further exploration. This special symposium of the Journal of Consciousness Studies is a continuation and new development of research on the Indigenous understanding of consciousness. Past ethnographical evidence involved some valuable pieces of knowledge about Indigenous concepts of consciousness, but the relevant information was often fragmentary or even totally missing in some cases. Moreover, many authors of past ethnographic records applied a strong etic approach that clouded the understanding of native Indigenous thoughts. Therefore, the main goal of the recent symposium was to broaden the overall information basis for the analysis of Indigenous concepts of consciousness or closely related phenomena. In other words, the symposium aimed to bring more detailed knowledge of Indigenous concepts of consciousness, mind and body and their relations in various groups of Indigenous people. In 2022, we contacted potential contributors and were pleased by their positive reactions, which reflected the topicality of this research focus. The authors were asked to draft their papers with a special focus on (a) a cultural Indigenous understanding of the concept of consciousness, (b) a cultural Indigenous understanding of the mind-body differentiation (or consciousness-body differentiation) and (c) cultural metaphors and cultural beliefs related to consciousness, mind and body. Many of contributors were native members of Indigenous cultures that made the descriptions of Indigenous concepts more accurate and reliable. This enabled many truly emic, in-depth insights into the Indigenous concepts of consciousness and related phenomena to be gained. As a result, this issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies introduces eight papers, each focused on a different geographical region/Indigenous groups: Nahua and Maya (Mexico), Guna (Panama), Mapuche (Chile), Maori (New Zealand), Telingit (Altai), Mongolian groups, Igbo (Nigeria) and Asabano (New Guinea). These papers are followed by one more general paper discussing magical consciousness on the case of an Aboriginal wise man (Australia). The symposium closes with our concluding editorial essay, which generalises the findings and introduces three theoretical models of understandings of consciousness inspired by the analysis of Indigenous concepts of consciousness. Aside from the importance for basic research, the exploration of Indigenous concepts of consciousness is also very important for informing practitioners from many applied spheres. Many current methods for treating addictions, traumatic life events, professional burnout and other mental health problems use features of Indigenous healing practices. A proper understanding of meanings related to mind, body and consciousness are quite important for Western psychotherapists to adapt the Indigenous practices to particular Western cultural milieus. Furthermore, a proper understanding of meanings related to mind, body, and consciousness is also important for treating ethnic, linguistic and culturally diverse populations (APA, 1990). For therapists, psychologists and physicians, understanding the meanings of these concepts may promote their own better care of their clients from various Indigenous ethnic groups. Last but not least, Indigenous concepts, meanings and languages are closely related to the continuation of the heritage of Indigenous people (United Nations, 2016). The world’s Indigenous languages have recently been under threat of disappearing; many Indigenous languages are endangered globally, and the rate of loss is high (United Nations, 2016). Importantly, recent research has also shown that the retention of Indigenous languages may be protective for the psychological and physical health of their speakers. All these areas represent fields for potential use of the findings presented in this symposium of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. As a concluding note, the editors of this symposium hope that this collection of papers will inspire academic scholars while also providing important information for practitioners from various spheres. (shrink)

In his Indigenous critique of the field of animal studies, Billy-Ray Belcourt (Driftpile Cree Nation) describes it as having an analytic blind spot when it comes to settler-colonialism, a blind spot that manifests through universalising claims and clumsy arguments about ‘shared’ oppressions, through assumptions that settler colonial political institutions can be a neutral part of the solution, and through a failure to engage with ‘Indigenous studies of other than human life’ (20). In the same article, he calls on (...) decolonial projects to do more to include animality within their purview, to include critiques of animal agriculture and to incorporate critiques of anthropocentrism as ‘a key logic of white supremacy’. Belcourt’s critique of both Animal studies and decolonial projects on the basis of an unequal but mutual marginalisation is an important starting point for research projects like ours that hope to bring Animal studies and Indigenous studies approaches into dialogue about the cultural impacts of introduced animals. Our approach sets out to be ‘triadic’, always involving at least three sides; Settler- Coloniser, Indigene and Animal. (shrink)

The existence of current feminist thought in Africa is tainted by colonialism. Colonial and postcolonial anthropological thought and Eurocentric scholarship have misrepresented Africa as a society where social and gender roles were largely lopsided. Hence, current feminist thought (which are largely Western) on oppression of women, subjugation and suppression were imposed on the historicity of Africans. In this article, we argue that the misrepresentations of feminism of the indigenous societal order in Africa should be ignored. We bring to the (...) fore some ideas that advance the view that precolonial African society was not anchored on biology or ordered by gender, but was organised by age or seniority, and provided both men and women a sense of equality. Furthermore, we contend that embracing indigenous cultural values in the 21st century provides, on the one hand, a valuable tool for solutions to issues that women face currently, and, on the other hand, a viable means of detaching feminism from Eurocentric misrepresentations. (shrink)

BackgroundWhen conducting research with Indigenous populations consent should be sought from both individual participants and the local community. We aimed to search and summarise the literature about methods for seeking consent for research with Indigenous populations.MethodsA systematic literature search was conducted for articles that describe or evaluate the process of seeking informed consent for research with Indigenous participants. Guidelines for ethical research and for seeking consent with Indigenous people are also included in our review.ResultsOf 1447 articles (...) found 1391 were excluded ; 56 were relevant and included. Articles were categorised into original research that evaluated the consent process or publications detailing the process of seeking consent and guidelines for ethical research. Guidelines were categorised into international ; national and state/regional/local guidelines. In five studies based in Australia, Canada and The United States of America the consent process with Indigenous people was objectively evaluated. In 13 other studies interpreters, voice recording, videos, pictures, flipcharts and “plain language” forms were used to assist in seeking consent but these processes were not evaluated. Some Indigenous organisations provide examples of community-designed resources for seeking consent and describe methods of community engagement, but none are evaluated. International, national and local ethical guidelines stress the importance of upholding Indigenous values but fail to specify methods for engaging communities or obtaining individual consent. In the ‘Grey literature’ concerns about the consent process are identified but no solutions are offered.ConclusionConsultation with Indigenous communities is needed to determine how consent should be sought from the community and the individual, and how to evaluate this process. (shrink)

Brazil is a geographically large country with a significant indigenous population. Although these tribes strive to maintain their traditional way of life, they have undergone cultural changes over time due to interactions with the modern world. In recent years, especially in the Amazon rainforest, indigenous tribes have been forced to contend with deforestation and environmental threats. Consequently, preserving indigenous peoples and their cultural heritage has become an urgent task in the context of our multicultural world. The Amazon (...) rainforest is crucial for global biodiversity. However, under former President Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation accelerated, leading to the destruction of natural habitats for indigenous peoples and complicating efforts to combat climate change. As a result, Brazil’s indigenous peoples faced serious threats to their land rights, cultural heritage, and shared habitat during his administration. Attacks on indigenous lands caused not only physical damage but also cultural and linguistic harm. Local communities struggled to maintain their traditional way of life and pass on their language and culture to future generations. Environmental groups, human rights activists, and other countries criticized Brazil’s policies and practices on this issue, demanding change. The article highlights the main reasons behind the threats faced by the local population during J. Bolsonaro's presidency. To preserve their existence, solutions such as raising public awareness within civil society, securing national and international support, revitalizing the economy, monitoring to stop encroachment on local lands, and further strengthening environmental protection were considered. (shrink)

Unlike mainstream Western ethics, African environmental ethics has recognized the inter­connectedness and interdependence of all beings and the more-than-human world. To be an object of moral concern, rationality, intelligence, and language are not required, although different beings have different mental capacities and roles. The unity of the whole estab­lishes an ethical obligation for human beings toward nature. Africa has different cultures that have helped to shape positive moral attitudes toward the natural environment and its human and nonhuman components. Although African (...) environmental ethics is increasingly being marginalized by educational establishments and policy makers in Africa, it has the potential to contribute to human well-being and environmental sustainability. However, it is not a panacea for all global environmental challenges, as it has its own limitations and needs improvement. The solution of environmental problems requires multidisciplinary approaches and the cooperation of all nations. African and other concerned scholars should critically study African environmental ethics and identify its positive elements that can en­able humanity to save Mother Earth and its inhabitants. (shrink)

In The Racial Contract, Charles Mills introduces the notion of an ‘inverted epistemology,’ an epistemology that construes social and racial ignorance as knowledge (p.18). As Mills points out, such ignorance can be used to oppress people by creating alternate realities or ‘white mythologies’ about race (p. 19). If the racial contract results in a society that oppresses people of color and supports white supremacy, then the question of how to correct an inverted epistemology becomes critical. Mills proposes the correction of (...) history and the racist thinking underwriting it as a solution to the problem. Others, like Alison Bailey, seek to confront racial ignorance with active resistance by suggesting that individuals from historically marginalized groups exploit what members of dominant society don’t know (p. 77). While Bailey’s solution, referred to as strategic ignorance, may originate from good intentions, I argue that it is in general inappropriate for Indigenous people. Strategic ignorance is a product of the Western worldview, and it privileges Western values. In fact, both solutions offered by Mills and Bailey fail to consider Indigenous values. Mills’ proposed solution, however, is less objectionable. Instead of either solution, a more suitable form of resistance – one that embraces connectedness, balance, and harmony – would be ideal for the Indigenous communities of Turtle Island. (shrink)

Food ethics in the indigenous context is associated with a historical and profound relationship that indigenous groups have with nature. To address this relationship and identify the food uses associated with the maguey plant from a biocultural perspective among the Ngigua indigenous people living in the municipality of Tlacotepec de Benito Juárez in Puebla, the three main communities in the municipality of Tlacotepec de Benito Juárez that make use of the maguey plant were chosen. The study was (...) carried out with a qualitative approach, using a semi-structured interview as a research technique. The analysis carried out recognises the importance of the maguey plant as a biocultural resource for the Ngigua in a context of ethical deliberation. Among the food uses associated with the maguey plant, the following are identified: pulque (a drink of pre-Hispanic origin) and red worm. Women play an important role, participating in 80% of the preparation of both foods. The cultural environment of the maguey is a way of life that, in the case of the Ngigua people, represents a strategic element for survival. In times of food crisis, the study shows how ethnic food strategies in a context of ethical deliberation can constitute an alternative for the design of food solutions in territories with food shortages. (shrink)

Le penseur marxiste péruvien José Carlos Mariátegui fait partie de ceux qui ont pris au sérieux le rôle révolutionnaire des paysans. Lors de la première conférence internationale des Partis communistes d’Amérique latine en juin 1929 à Buenos Aires, Mariátegui présente ses positions sur la centralité du système de propriété agraire dans l’exploitation semi-coloniale au Pérou et sur l’articulation entre classe et race. Il s’oppose à la fois à la solution soviétique d’une indépendance pour les nations opprimées et au pan-américanisme de (...) l’Alliance populaire révolutionnaire américaine (APRA). Cet article étudie les relations compliquées de Mariátegui avec l’Internationale communiste sur les questions paysannes et indigènes. La formation d’une organisation révolutionnaire paysanne suppose la naissance d’un sentiment national qu’il analyse dans ses écrits sur la littérature. (shrink)

The problem of defining culture has exercised anthropologists but not cross?cultural psychologists because psychological science is based on quantitative forms of empiricism where the validity of categorical boundaries is determined by their predictive utility. Furthermore, many indigenous psychologies have been allied to nation?building projects in the developing world that choose to gloss over within state ethnic differences for the purposes of national strength and unity. Finally, Carl Martin Allwood?s target article ?On the foundation of the indigenous psychologies? (2011, (...) Social Epistemology 25 (1): 3?14) is grounded in western thinking about science that privileges analytical philosophy, particularly the importance of constructing definitional categories as the basis of its critique of indigenous psychologies. This is a limited basis for thinking about psychological science whose flaws have been exposed by highly visible critiques on analytical versus holistic thinking. From the point of view of Asian social psychologists, there is no analytical solution as to where to draw the boundaries of culture because culture is a social construction that will vary according to the situation and motives at play in different situations. But this is not an intractable problem because all human psychology is intentionally realized with elements of social construction that are part and parcel of experienced reality. (shrink)

This article examines the political anthropology developed by the Danish philosopher Jens Kraft in his study of Indigenous peoples and their institutions, customs, and opinions. Kraft aims to reconstruct human history by amalgamating insights on man, nature, and society from scholars like Wolff and Rousseau with empirical knowledge on Indigenous cultures worldwide. Through comparative analysis of diverse Indigenous groups, Kraft seeks to identify institutions, customs, and opinions that are identical and thus universal to human nature and history. (...) This examination not only allows Kraft to formulate general laws governing humanity’s progress but also to deduce fundamental natural principles – specifically, natural liberty and charity – against which ‘civilised’ society should be measured and improved. The article argues that, for Kraft, human history is the history of intellectual advancement, driven by humanity’s pursuit for rational solutions to challenges arising from external circumstances such as population growth and the emergence of property. In his work, Kraft, much like Rousseau, criticises contemporary ‘enlightened’ European society as morally debased, but maintains that humans are capable of rectifying their deficiencies and improving their imperfect civil societies through the use of progressively developed right reason. (shrink)

This research parallels Tongan academic Hūfanga ‘Okusitino Māhina’s assertions in the 1994 Contemporary Pacific article Our Sea of Islands, that ‘People are thought to walk forward into the past and walk backward into the future, both taking place in the present, where the past and the future are constantly mediated in the ever-transforming present’ alongside those of Professor Terry Irwin and fellow Transition Designers in which they discuss the use of Indigenous Wisdom to enable designing for the Long Now (...) as defined by Brand in his 1999 book The Clock for the Long Now: Time and Responsibility. In the 2015 Transition Design Monograph Irwin asserts that, ‘Transition Design draws on knowledge and wisdom from the past to conceive solutions in the present with future generations in mind’. This paper draws on the pre-industrial wisdom of indigenous knowledge, specifically that of the Pacific regions, Moana, who have lived and designed sustainably in-place for generations to illustrate the value it holds for the formulation of sustainable and sustaining futures. (shrink)

The research aims to determine cross-cultural virtue ethics. A virtuous culture is most significantly an emotion-related thing consisting of trust, community, and meaning. It is that platform where all the interrelationships can form new advancements and implementations with the caliber of maximizing principles for all collaborators within a community. The research study also analyses moral philosophies across global indigenous societies. Certain suggestions presented by virtue ethics involve the treatment of teachers just like they are lifelong projects. Teachers are those (...) personalities that can change and inspire us from the situation where we are. The research was based on secondary data for determining the research using E-views software and generating results that included descriptive, unit root, variance, and co-integration analysis between them. The objective of this term is not to formulate and build those ethically perfect virtues and consider them perfect without any thought. Instead, do those virtues that can provide such a screen that can make us see the world without any ambiguity and judge things in the most improved way. Overall, the result found that moral philosophies show a direct and significant link with global indigenous societies. Virtue ethics is a term that provides the best understanding of virtuous human beings. This proves to be a good guide for us so that we can live our lives without any specified rules and provide solutions to all those problems based on ethics. (shrink)

Agricultural development strategies to date were chiefly based on Western technological solutions, with mixed success rates. Farming Systems Research (FSR) was advanced as a way to increase the use of indigenous knowledge of farming to make new technologies more adaptable and appropriate to farming conditions. FSR has enabled researchers to focus attention on people and their knowledge by increasing people's participation in problem identification and new technology validation. In practice, though, FSR continues to be a top-down approach: technologies (...) continue to be developed (in most cases) in the exogenous, Western knowledge system. Little has been done to develop indigenous technology generating and diffusing capacities already present in the rural areas. In this paper, a model adapted from Bell (1979) will be advanced that is based on cooperation and collaboration between the exogenous and indigenous knowledge systems leading to a synthesis of the two. The underlying principle of the model is that the ultimate solution for rural development is not the dumping of more scientists upon rural people (of whatever discipline) to make exogenously-generated technologies more adaptable and in-line with people's problems, but to strengthen, empower, and legitimize indigenous capacities for identifying problems and developing solutions for these problems. The “empowerment” of the indigenous knowledge/technology system (however difficult that may be politically) so that it has equal footing with Western knowledge may well be the most important step in a strategy of enabling the people in the developing countries themselves to alleviate their poverty. (shrink)

This article focuses on the concept of worldviews, arguing that a change in managerial worldviews is the key lever for addressing the social and global challenges facing humanity. We draw from a new synthesis of science and spirituality, with the addition of “other ways of knowing” that go beyond rational-empirical analysis, to suggest that what we call Quantum Worldviews are capable of generating the prosocial and pro-environmental behavior consistent with humanistic management. Using the yin-yang symbol as a metaphor, we suggest (...) that a transformation in consciousness, at the level of the paradigmatic assumptions held by managers about the nature of reality, can be understood through adult development theory. We also go beyond the metaphor to propose a quantum worldview based on a more literal interpretation of quantum science to fundamentally re-conceptualize what it means to be human, drawing on quantum research that suggests ontological wholeness and interdependence of all. Quantum Worldviews can help leaders, and the various systems of which they are a part, transition to a new science-based consciousness - long intuited by indigenous and nonwestern spiritual leaders - of an interconnected and dynamically coherent world. We identify a variety of practices that give managers a direct experience of Oneness, changing who they are at the deepest level of self-concept. Our research suggests that only when using such practices, and in sufficient numbers, will business leaders become agents of world benefit with the collective influence to bring about meaningful solutions to climate change and other wicked problems—in other words, needed system transformation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Therapeutic Nations, Dian Million highlights the complicated role that neoliberal arenas like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and international dialogues concerning human rights play in the marginalization of Indigenous communities. Neoliberal arenas are empowered by sociopolitical imaginaries, or a metaphorical moral fabric of a given community, that consist in discursive content and affective, felt knowledge. According to Million, the sociopolitical imaginaries that give weight and context to negative stereotypes about Indigenous peoples are the same sociopolitical imaginaries that (...) empower neoliberal arenas. In a sense, the proposed solutions are ‘cut from the same cloth’ as the causes of settler colonial violence. Million does not directly apply her argument to Indigenous language reclamation, but Million’s conceptions of sociopolitical imaginaries and paradoxically imposed neoliberal arenas are useful for framing a discussion of the potential harms in some Indigenous language reclamation projects, specifically, revitalization programming described by UNESCO and those pursued by U.S. research universities. I aim to show that some of these proposed solutions to Indigenous language loss are cut from the very same cloth, justified by the same sociopolitical imaginaries, as attempted linguicide itself. (shrink)

BackgroundImplementation science research, especially when using participatory and co-design approaches, raises unique challenges for research ethics committees. Such challenges may be poorly addressed by approval and governance mechanisms that were developed for more traditional research approaches such as randomised controlled trials.DiscussionImplementation science commonly involves the partnership of researchers and stakeholders, attempting to understand and encourage uptake of completed or piloted research. A co-creation approach involves collaboration between researchers and end users from the onset, in question framing, research design and delivery, (...) and influencing strategy, with implementation and broader dissemination strategies part of its design from gestation. A defining feature of co-creation is its emergent and adaptive nature, making detailed pre-specification of interventions and outcome measures impossible. This methodology sits oddly with ethics committee protocols that require precise pre-definition of interventions, mode of delivery, outcome measurements, and the role of study participants. But the strict requirements of ethics committees were developed for a purpose – to protect participants from harm and help ensure the rigour and transparency of studies. We propose some guiding principles to help square this circle. First, ethics committees should acknowledge and celebrate the diversity of research approaches, both formally and informally ; without active support, their members may not understand or value participatory designs. Second, ground rules should be established for co-design applications and communicated to committee members and stakeholders. Third, the benefits of power-sharing should be recognised and credit given to measures likely to support this important goal, especially in research with vulnerable communities. Co-design is considered best practice, for example, in research involving indigenous peoples in New Zealand, Australia and Canada. (shrink)

The need to regulate access to genetic resources and ensure a fair and equitable sharing of any resulting benefits was at the core of the development of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD established a series of principles and requirements around access and benefit sharing (ABS) in order to increase transparency and equity in the international flow of genetic resources, yet few countries have been able to effectively implement them and ABS negotiations are often paralysed by differing interests. (...) -/- This book not only examines these complex challenges, but offers workable, policy-oriented solutions. International contributors cover theoretical approaches, new significant national legislation, the concept of traditional knowledge, provider and user country measures and common solutions. Exploring specific, salient examples from across the globe, the authors provide lessons for national regulation and the ongoing negotiations for an international ABS regime. Uniquely, this book also looks at the potential for 'horizontal' development of ABS law and policy, applying lessons from bilateral approaches to other national contexts. (shrink)

Mirroring the set of questions explored in the special report in which this essay appears and through a critical Cree standpoint, this essay poses three provocations intended to upend habits of thought relative to notions of goodness, biocitizenship, and the democratization of scientific pursuit. Styled as foreplay, the essay warms the reader up to the desirable possibility of being abadbiocitizen. I briefly establish the colonial conditions under which the fields of genomic science, biomedical research, and bioethics have been made possible. (...) I then offer Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society as an alternative project aimed at disturbing the territorial, political, and morally inflected claims of nation‐states and their citizens, research institutions and their researchers, and bioeconomies and their consumers to continue to possess Indigenous territories and to study Indigenous bodies while controlling the bioethical principles, protocols, and policies for doing so. The work of Indigenous STS seeks to break down the bounded knowledges of disciplinary reason and map the networked interrelations of problems inhibiting and solutions strengthening the empowerment of Indigenous peoplehoods. (shrink)

Investigation of Indigenous concepts and their meanings is highly inspirational for contemporary science because these concepts represent adaptive solutions in various environmental and social milieus. Past research has shown that conceptualizations of consciousness can vary widely between cultural groups from different geographical regions. The present study explores variability among a few of the thousands of Indigenous cultural understandings of consciousness. Indigenous concepts of consciousness are often relational and inseparable from environmental and religious concepts. Furthermore, this exploration (...) of variability reveals the layers with which some Indigenous peoples understand their conscious experience of the world. Surprisingly, Indigenous understandings of global consciousness was found not to be in opposition to local consciousness. The final concluding section of this study discusses the usability of Indigenous concepts and meanings for recent scientific debates. (shrink)

Although cognitive science was multidisciplinary from the start, an under-emphasis on anthropology has left the field with limited research in small scale, indigenous societies. Neglecting the anthropological perspective is risky, given that once-canonical cognitive science findings have often been shown to be artifacts of enculturation rather than cognitive universals. This imbalance has become more problematic as the increased use of Western theory-driven approaches, many of which assume human uniformity (“universality”), confronts the absence of a robust descriptive base that might (...) provide clarifying or even contrary evidence. We highlight the need for remedies to such shortcomings by suggesting a two-fold methodological shift. First, studies conducted in indigenous societies can benefit by relying on multidisciplinary research groups to diminish ethnocentrism and enhance the quality of the data. Second, studies devised for Western societies can readily be adapted to the changing settings encountered in the field. Here, we provide examples, drawn from the areas of emotion and facial expressions, to illustrate potential solutions to recurrent problems in enhancing the quality of data collection, hypothesis testing, and the interpretation of results. (shrink)

In the field of psychology, filial piety is usually defined in terms of traditional Chinese culture-specific family traditions. The problem with this approach is that it tends to emphasize identification of behavioral rules or norms, which limits its potential for application in other cultural contexts. Due to the global trend of population aging, governments are searching for solutions to the accompanying financial burden so greater attention is being focused on the issue of elder care and its relevance to filial (...) practices. We contend that the psychological investigation of filial piety in Chinese societies has progressed to the point that it can now provide a solid structure for research targeting intergenerational relations in other cultures. We describe an indigenous psychology approach that integrated Chinese historical, philosophical, and social trends to construct a model of filial piety in terms of the dual reciprocal and authoritarian filial aspects underlying parent-child relations: the dual filial piety model (DFPM). We use this model to re-conceptualize filial piety from its usual definition as a set of Chinese culture-specific norms to a contextualized personality construct represented by a pair of culturally-sensitive psychological schemas of parent-child interaction. We then describe how the DFPM can provide a framework for research on filial relations on individual, structural, societal, and cross-cultural levels. We conclude with a discussion of how the model may be able to integrate and extend Western research on intergenerational relations and contribute to the issue of elder care beyond Chinese societies. (shrink)

Utría National Park is a remote biodiversity hotspot in Colombia. It encompasses ancestral territories of the Embera indigenous peoples and borders territories of Afro-descendant communities in El Valle. We explore environmental value conflicts regarding the use of the park, describing them as a Wicked Problem that has no clear solution. Juxtaposing how the territory is perceived by different communities, we employ Faber et al.'s heuristic of the three tele of living nature to search for deficiency in the third telos, (...) service, which we take to be symptomatic of Wicked Problems. Based on field data encoded using the three-tele heuristic, concerning how the respective communities would like to use the park area, we identify deficiencies in the third telos and develop recommendations regarding how these might be addressed. (shrink)

In Mexico, the management of public resources has been questioned by the State, and mainly the results that the public administration at its three levels (federal, state and municipal), by the lack of transparency in the application and verification of public resources. The experience that gives us the operation of different emerging programs that focused on reducing social and economic inequality in the country, we can locate them as the first attempts in the search for a solution that is complex. (...) Moving from the role of the benefactor and welfare state to the promoter of the regions and in the recognition of the focalization of priority attention areas, the path that has been taken is not only the beginning. Recognizing the public nature of public finances as a promoter of social development, we must understand it as the one assumed by the State through social, political and economic co-responsibility to solve poverty and marginalization of its own public policy orientation and vision of solution has been made since the eighties. From the above, we can point out some preliminary conclusions including the study of the indigenous language-speaking population with a high level of social exclusion in the methodology for the definition of multidimensional poverty in Mexico, will allow the allocation of public resources in the fight against poverty to be effective since it will make it possible to identify to the target population that is subject to social exclusion and marginalization. This invites us to a final reflection: What to do to address the just social demands of the indigenous population that is immersed in poverty, marginalization and exclusion? What to do so that they do not leave their communities, and if they have already done so, how to attend to the needs of family groups that are due to the expense of a remittance that may never arrive? (shrink)

A considerable section of the population in India accesses the services of individual private medical practitioners (PMPs) for primary level care. In rural areas, these providers include MBBS doctors, practitioners of alternative systems of medicine, herbalists, indigenous and folk practitioners, compounders and others. This paper describes the profile, knowledge and some practices of the rural doctor in India and then discusses the reasons for lack of equity in health care access in rural areas and possible solutions to the (...) problem. (shrink)

This article critically examines the plain exit principle of Kukathas that argues as the best system to conciliate the demands of belonging to an indigenous culture and the right to dissent from their women members. We first review the tension between feminism of equality and the situation of indigenous women with their internal cultures. Second, we explore the thesis of Kukathas for conclude that it alone is not enough. Finally, it analyses an alternative solution that overlapping the right (...) of exit, a model of multicultural jurisdictions and adequate conception of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Black, Indigenous and otherwise minoritized communities of color are amongst the most vulnerable to the adverse consequences of environmental crises and the solutions proposed to remedy them. The participation and subsequent erasure of non-White youth activists and organizers within environmental sustainability struggles, and their subsequent erasure in global media coverage on climate activism has complicated any neat hierarchy of single concerns facing humanity. How is it that White and Western climate activists come to be the faces of the (...) global youth climate movement? This essay examines the salience of race to the education and framing of environmental and sustainability efforts. It suggests that the separation of environmental concerns from the socio-political (and thus racial) contexts that produce them not only further marginalizes the contributions of non-White activists and the communities that they represent, but also engenders a violently White, and thus narrow, vision of a global, Green future. (shrink)

Post‐Marxist critical sociology of education has influenced the development of indigenous (‘kaupapa’) Maori educational theory and research. Its effects are examined in four claims made for Maori education by indigenous theorists. The claims are: indigenous kaupapa Maori education is a revolutionary initiative; it is a cultural solution to Maori educational under‐achievement; it has reversed the decline of the Maori language; it provides a valid educational alternative for an ethnically and culturally distinctive population. The analysis suggests that the (...) indigenous theory approach is representative of the position‐taking strategy that characterises post‐Marxist critical sociology of education, concluding that claims made in kaupapa Maori voice discourse are not supported by the empirical evidence which indicates a more complex social reality. (shrink)

Introduction Reza Davari Ardakni, the Iranian contemporary philosopher, distinguishes development from Western modernity; in that it considers modernity as natural and organic changes that Europe has gone through, but sees development as a planned design for implementing modernity in other countries. As a result, the closedness of development concerns only the developing countries, not Western modern ones. Davari emphasizes that the Western modernity has a universality that pertains to a unique reason and a unified world. The only way of thinking (...) in this world is a philosophical thought based on human self-centered reason, and given the pervasiveness of Western civilization. Therefore, Davari does not consider Westernization as mere imitation of Western customs and methods, but rather as a way of existence in the world. Westernization is a subjective view of the world and beings. Westernization is not optional, enabling non-Western people to avoid it. According to the Westernization scenario, the world today is entirely Westernized, and Davari considers Westernization as the inevitable fate of the people of this era, seeing two alternatives for them, both of which ultimately lead to the same destination, which is to embrace development; either they seize the power of science and technology and join the process of global modernization and participate in it, or they become subdued by this process and accept it without participation. Davari regards the first type of Westernization as active and the second type as passive. Problematique Therefore, underdevelopment is not a concept of the ancient world, nor even of a world between the ancient and the modern, or on the threshold of modernization. Underdevelopment is a condition of suspension and timelessness and being exposed to modernization. To escape the paradox of underdevelopment, which is the inevitable historical fate of non-modernized societies, Davari sees no way out other than embracing development. In other words, Westernized societies, which have become confused due to modernization, have no escape route other than turning to development. Therefore, some critics of Davari accuse the theory of Westernization of being a theoretical rupture. M. T. Tabatabaei, by rejecting the theoretical rupture in the theory of Westernization, believes that in the argument of Davari, we are only faced with a shift from a philosophical to an intellectual level. Tabatabaei, by avoiding providing a philosophical response to the critics of the theoretical rupture, believes that the introduction of active Westernization and collaboration in science and technology as a solution to escape from underdevelopment conditions, is only a shift from a philosophical level to an intellectual level and does not involve a rupture. Therefore, it seems that the philosophical issue of how or the possibility of escaping from underdevelopment conditions is still an open non answered problem. In this study, seeking a philosophical answer to this problem, an attempt has been made to summarize Davari's definitions of development, underdevelopment, participation in the world of science, and the role of humanities and social sciences in development, using his writings and speeches. It is proposed that a way to escape from the clesedness of development based on Davari's views, is to make use of analytical method with emphasizing on concepts and theories of the philosophy and metaphysics of science. Argument According to Davari, the social and human sciences that are responsible for development planning in underdeveloped societies must consider the characteristics of underdevelopment in order to facilitate the transition to more favorable conditions. Davari identifies the following conditions for successful development: 1) replacing tradition with science as the organizing and coordinating principle in society, 2) recognizing the universality of philosophy and science of the Western modernity and the impossibility of blindly imitation and adopting it, 3) inevitability of actively engaging and interacting with development, 4) recognizing the internal dynamics of scientific progress and avoiding authoritarian control, and 5) promoting free participation in the scientific paradigms. Therefore, Davari suggests the following steps towards development: 1) recognizing and understanding the problems of society and the local ecosystem, 2) understanding the philosophical and cultural foundations of Western civilization, 3) understanding the historical context and paradigms of science, 4) understanding the philosophical and metaphysical foundations of science, 5) recognizing the intellectual and philosophical capacities of our own community, and 6) reflecting our own philosophical and metaphysical assumptions in the scientific world in a way that is compatible with scientific methods. Given the motivations for change in science at both the global and national levels, including the emergence of heterodox or indigenous sciences, and the inevitable nature of development, Davari points to the possibility of a path between absolute rejecting or accepting the mainstream social and human sciences. However, this path is challenging and contingent upon the aforementioned conditions and steps of transition. Conclusion It is necessary to seek this path within the realm of the philosophy and metaphysics of science, particularly in the origins and foundations of the social and human sciences. Research in the metaphysics and philosophy of the social sciences provides the opportunity for active scientific engagement in the scientific paradigms and a reconsideration of the foundations of science, allowing for different philosophical foundations while are compatible with scientific methods. Successfully finding a path between absolute rejecting or accepting the existing social sciences will lead to an internal transformation within the field of science and, in fact, will advance the boundaries of knowledge. Therefore, it is possible, while adhering to the conditions of transition and actively participating in the world of science and technology, and accepting the unity of modernity and avoiding selectivity and imitation, to search for a way to overcome the closedness of development through a reconsideration of the philosophical and metaphysical foundations of science, while recognizing our own intellectual heritage and critically assessing Western science and technology. (shrink)

The rise of blockchain as a techno-solution in the development sector underscores the critical imbalances of data power under ‘computational capitalism’. This article will consider the political economy of techno-solutionist and blockchain discourses in the developing world, using as its object of study blockchain projects in Pacific Island nations. Backed by US State Department soft power initiatives such as Tech Camp, these projects inculcate tech-driven notions of economic and political development, or ICT4D, while opening up new terrains for data accumulation (...) and platform control. Blockchain developers in search of proof of concept have found the development sector a fecund space for tech experimentation as they leverage a desire for tech-development and exploit regulatory weakness. The material implications of blockchain projects and discourse have been to create governance solutions which bypass the developing world state as a largely corrupting intermediary. In the Pacific, this has meant blockchain supply-chain management systems, proprietary financial innovation in humanitarian relief and an Asian Development Bank project to manage indigenous Fijian lands exclusively on the blockchain. In all these instances, discourses of solutionism, innovation and data empowerment have been deployed in aid of blockchain cartographies of control. (shrink)

Background This paper describes the design, implementation, and process outcomes from three public deliberations held in three tribal communities. Although increasingly used around the globe to address collective challenges, our study is among the first to adapt public deliberation for use with exclusively Indigenous populations. In question was how to design deliberations for tribal communities and whether this adapted model would achieve key deliberative goals and be well received.Methods We adapted democratic deliberation, an approach to stakeholder engagement, for use (...) with three tribal communities to respect tribal values and customs. Public deliberation convenes people from diverse backgrounds in reasoned reflection and dialogue in search of collective solutions. The deliberation planning process and design were informed by frameworks of enclave deliberation and community-based participatory research, which share key egalitarian values. The deliberations were collaboratively designed with tribal leadership and extensive partner input and involvement in the deliberations. Each deliberation posed different, locally relevant questions about genomic research, but used the same deliberation structure and measures to gauge the quality and experience of deliberation.Results A total of 52 individuals participated in the deliberations across all three sites. Deliberants were balanced in gender, spanned decades in age, and were diverse in educational attainment and exposure to health research. Overall, the deliberations were positively evaluated. Participant perceptions and external observer datasets depict three deliberations that offered intensive conversation experiences in which participants learned from one another, reported feeling respected and connected to one another, and endorsed this intensive form of engagement.Conclusion The adapted deliberations achieved key deliberative goals and were generally well received. Limitations of the study are described. (shrink)

Disproportional morbidity and mortality experienced by ethnic minorities in the UK have been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement has exposed structural racism’s contribution to these health inequities. ‘Cultural Safety’, an antiracist, decolonising and educational innovation originating in New Zealand, has been adopted in Australia. Cultural Safety aims to dismantle barriers faced by colonised Indigenous peoples in mainstream healthcare by addressing systemic racism.This paper explores what it means to be ‘culturally safe’. The ways in which (...) New Zealand and Australia are incorporating Cultural Safety into educating healthcare professionals and in day-to-day practice in medicine are highlighted. We consider the ‘nuts and bolts’ of translating Cultural Safety into the UK to reduce racism within healthcare. Listening to the voices of black, Asian and minority ethnic National Health Service (NHS) consumers, education in reflexivity, both personal and organisational within the NHS are key. By listening to Indigenous colonised peoples, the ex-Empire may find solutions to health inequity. A decolonising feedback loop is required; however, we should take care not to culturally appropriate this valuable reverse innovation. (shrink)

Shamans of the Piaroa ethnic group (southern Venezuela) conceive of power in terms of knowledge derived from visionary experiences. Märipa is an epistemology concerning the translation of knowledge derived from the integrative mode of consciousness, induced primarily through the consumption of plant hallucinogens, to practical effect during waking life. I integrate mythological, neurobiological, experiential, and ethnographic data to demonstrate what märipa is, and how it functions. The theory and method of märipa underlie not only Piaroa shamanic activity, but all aspects (...) of Piaroa life; mythology, causality, eschatology, and history. Piaroa shamanic practices involve conditioning the mind to achieve optimal perceptual capacities that facilitate accurate prediction and successful psycho‐social prescription. Piaroa shamans describe their technologies of consciousness in terms of gods and spirits, but also in terms of studying and the acquisition of information. Because neurobiological processes underlie the development and experience of märipa, the language of neurobiology enables a partial translation of this indigenous epistemology. The concepts of feed forward neural processing and somatic markers are central to the processes of mental imagery cultivation that Piaroa shamans employ to divine solutions to adaptive problems. Piaroa 'techniques of ecstasy' involve the ability to apply mythological templates of human adaptation to schemas of human behaviour based on years of social analysis in association with heightened information processing capacities derivative of refined experimentation with the integrative mode of consciousness. Keyordsshamanism, neurophenomenology inugrativeconsciousness, hallucinogens. (shrink)

The allocation of self-determination rights to minority groups is a highly charged issue around the world, but the difficulties are particularly acute in the case of indigenous peoples within the white settler states. While liberal multiculturalism offers a 'solution' to this 'problem of diversity' through a system of differentiated citizenship rights, this comes only at the expense of excluding dissenting voices from the intercultural dialogue. Through an engagement with the multi-faceted critique of liberal multiculturalism advanced by Native American political (...) theory, the limits of the recognition paradigm are identified, and the possibilities offered by a reconstructed Proudhonian federalism are described. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The militarization of Alaska during and after World War II created an extraordinary set of new facilities. But it also reshaped the imaginative role of Alaska as a hostile environment, where an antagonistic form of nature could be defeated with the appropriate combination of technology and training. One of the crucial sites for this reformulation was the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, based at Ladd Air Force Base in Fairbanks. In the first two decades of the Cold War, its employees conducted (...) numerous experiments on acclimatization and survival. The laboratory is now best known for an infamous set of tests involving the application of radioactive tracers to indigenous Alaskans—experiments publicized by post–Cold War panels established to evaluate the tragic history of atomic-era human subject research. But little else has been written about the laboratory's relationship with the populations and landscapes that it targeted for study. This essay presents the laboratory as critical to Alaska's history and the history of the Cold War sciences. A consideration of the laboratory's various projects also reveals a consistent fascination with race. Alaskan Natives were enrolled in experiments because their bodies were understood to hold clues to the mysteries of northern nature. A scientific solution would aid American military campaigns not only in Alaska, but in cold climates everywhere. (shrink)

The problem of methodological pluralism in psychology is addressed. The dominant paradigm, in which experimental methods are assigned top priority and quantification is preferred over qualitative methods, is no longer tenable in light of criticisms by philosophers of science and psychologists. The emergence of a panoply of alternative methods is reviewed and the problems of constructionism, eclecticism, and fragmentation are delineated. Solutions based on an indigenous epistemological foundation for psychology are sought in Continental philosophy. The commensurability of experimental, (...) psychoanalytic, and phenomenological psychologies is explored in an effort to secure unity among diverse methods. Educational requirements for a new kind of scientific research in the twenty-first century are discussed. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The historical product aspects affect consumer happiness and choice, it is important to consider they affect tourists' impressionslike their market worth, genuineness, and remembrance value which affect travelers' opinions and purchase choices. The essential elements that influence travelers' choices and draw attention to disparities differently men and women value these attributes. The results imply that cultural products might be made more appealing by adjusting them to suit the tastes of tourists. This offers insightful information that can be used to enhance (...) the creation and promotion of products and plansfor the cultural tourism industry. To analyze the data, use the SPSS software. Due to any possible prejudices in expressed data and the personal nature of visitor views, the assessment has limitations. Furthermore, the range of elements affecting tourist choices is not fully captured by focusing on certain cultural characteristics of products. To surmount challenges in evaluating the correlation between indigenous products attributes and visitor opinions, guarantee a varied sample to apprehend differing inclinations and incorporate sophisticated analytics to more effectively comprehend and cater to particular customer requirements. Furthermore, collaborating with cultural specialists can improve product solutions' validity and credibility. By aware of these variables, marketing campaigns can be more focused and successful in raising visitor happiness and involvement. (shrink)

Businesses and governments in postcolonial countries frame investments in wind energy as efforts to address climate change and sustainable development. However, when wind energy projects encroach on indigenous peoples’ lives and land, there is often a lack of recognition and participation of these peoples and an unequal distribution of cost and benefits of such projects toward them, which leads to opposition against wind energy projects and often triggers conflicts for justice. Worryingly, such conditions have repeatedly resulted in the assassination (...) of human rights defenders, which further inflames the conflict. Herein, I discuss these concepts based on a longitudinal study centered on a wind energy project in Oaxaca, Mexico, with the aim of exploring and understanding the conditions under which wind energy investments fail to respect current laws and norms, as well as the consequences of such negligence. My in-depth analysis of the actions of the government, businesses, and indigenous peoples revealed a phenomenon that is less discussed in environmental justice research: the gradual and continuous transformation of indigenous peoples’ norms and behaviors away from their traditional economic and cultural livelihoods. This phenomenon helps to extend the conceptual understanding of environmental justice with regard to social turbulence, which is defined as the unpredictable behavior of political and social systems in contexts in which existing laws, regulations, and norms regarding environmental justice are not observed. The concept of social turbulence of environmental justice helps to explain how indigenous peoples sacrifice their territories, norms, and traditions to a technical solution to climate change and sustainable development. (shrink)

The fact that young people from Nigeria and Asia make up the largest populations of illegal immigrants overseas is no longer news. The rationale for illegal migration is structural injustice and individual decision-making. Migration has led to increased cultural variety but has also contributed to segregation, racism, and cultural disputes. Stress on the infrastructure, sadness, and anxiety in the host community, and the resurfacing of violence-related post-traumatic disorder attributed to illegal migration. The typical methods for limiting illegal immigration have been (...) nationwide border closures and the repatriation of illegal immigrants. These methods failed to address the issue. Using the method of philosophical analysis, this study maintains that migration has strengthened the economies of many nations and promoted global citizenship and cosmopolitanism, but has led to the deaths of many young Nigerians. The Indigenous Moral Theory of Native-Centric Ethics (togetherness) will be applied to advance and comprehend the causes of illegal immigration as well as potential solutions. Native-centric ethics is the moral of togetherness based on the principles of reciprocity, mutual respect, and working towards the common good. This study concludes that Native-centric ethics should be used by policymakers so that citizens can have faith in their leaders. Of course, this would aid in lowering international unlawful migration. (shrink)

Background Community involvement in research has been advocated by researchers, communities, regulatory agencies, and funders with the aim of reinforcing subjects’ protection and improving research efficiency. Community involvement also has the potential to improve dissemination, uptake, and implementation of research findings. The fields of community based participatory research conducted with indigenous populations and of participatory action research offer a large base of experience in community involvement in research. Rules on involving the population affected when conducting research have been established (...) in these fields. But what is the role of community engagement in clinical research and observational studies conducted in biomedical research outside of these specific areas? Main body of the abstract More than 20 years ago, in the field of HIV medicine, regulatory bodies and funding agencies recommended the constitution of a formal organism, the Community Advisory Board, as part of the study requirements for HIV trials. More recently, CABs have been adopted and used in other fields of medical research, such as malaria. CABs are not without limitations, however, and there is little research on the effectiveness of their use in achieving community protection and participation. Nevertheless, CABs could be a model to import into clinical trials and observational research where no alternative model of community representation is currently being used. Conclusions Allocating more resources to training and shifting more power to community representatives could be part of the solution to current CAB limitations. However, for researchers to be able to apply these recommendations on community involvement, certain conditions need to be met. In particular, funding agencies need to recognize the human and financial resources required for serious community involvement, and the academic environment needs to take community involvement into account when appraising, mentoring, and training researchers. (shrink)

A political challenge facing constitutional democracies in Africa is the lack of adequate representation and participation of citizens in democratic processes and institutions. This challenge is manifest in the vesting of power solely in, and the exercise of this power by, a sectional group – the majority party – to the exclusion of others; as evinced in the liberal democratic systems extensively practised on the continent. Wiredu proposes as a solution to these challenges the adoption of consensual democracy; an (...) class='Hi'>indigenous, non-party democratic system rooted in the traditional African humanist and communitarian conceptions of the individual and the community, in which political decisions are characteristically reached by consensus. In this article, I present a critical exposition of Wiredu’s consensual democracy and defend it against liberal democracy on the one hand, and criticisms levelled against it on the other hand. I also offer some modifications to Wiredu’s theory in a bid to render it more suitable for practice in Africa. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify two major philosophical crises confronting medicine as a global phenomenon. The first crisis is the epistemological crisis of adopting an epistemic attitude, adequate for improving medical knowledge and practice. The second is the ethical crisis, also known as the “quality-of-care crisis,” arising from the traditional patient-physician dyad. I acknowledge the different proposals put forward in the quest for solutions to these crises. However, I observe that most of these proposals remain inadequate given their over-reliance (...) on the Western biomedical tradition and the medical hegemony that underpins the proposals themselves. Contrary to the approach employed in these proposals, I propose medical pluralism as a viable platform for resolving the philosophic crises in medicine, by critically engaging non-Western medical traditions and thought systems. Ultimately, I make a push for the deliberate inauguration of an African philosophy of medicine and bioethics and other context-specific or indigenous philosophies of medicine and bioethics that will ensure continuous investigations into NMTs and their contribution to global medical issues. (shrink)

Between 1906 and 1909, the Austrian-born German anthropologist Richard Thurnwald undertook an expedition to Germany's Pacific colonies on behalf of the Berlin Museum for Ethnology. There he carried out a series of experimental psychological tests to investigate the mentalities and intelligence of Melanesian subjects. Due to the limitations on verbal communication, Thurnwald privileged non-verbal experiments, especially involving drawings made by his local assistants and guides. His 1913 publication Ethnopsychological Studies on South Seas Peoples reproduces some 200 of those images, which (...) have seldom been studied since. This article examines Thurnwald's experiments in ethnopsychology through the lens of these visual materials and situates his project within larger international trends of scientific colonialism. Despite purporting to further native welfare, his application of experimental psychology to the colonial field was meant to provide solutions to the administration's most urgent problems: pacification, labour recruitment, and a declining birth rate. Yet, as this article argues, the images he collected can also be read against the grain as documents of indigenous response to German colonial rule. (shrink)

Migration is a process that brings about numerous problems regardless if it is forced and mass or voluntarily and individual. It is not simply a move from one place to another, but it starts in the mind of immigrant and continues with the move to a new place. It alters the social and cultural sets and relocates the immigrant into a peculiar web of connection. It is a process that requires adaptation, change and transformation about the issues from health to (...) education, from housing to employment and from economy to organization In recent years, the forced and mass migration from Syria to Turkey has compelled both the immigrant Syrians and the hosting Turks to face the unprecedented conditions of migration. However, this largest migration of the recent past has been handled with minimum problems in contrast to its vast size. The factors that have realized such outcomes are the common values in historical, cultural and social matters, close kinship and ethnic relations between two nations and most importantly the support provided by the Turkish government and the contribution made by indigenous NGOs. During the first five years of this mass and sudden immigration, almost all sides in Turkey from the government officials to the local authorities as well as the bureaucracy and all non-governmental organizations have been undertook a donation campaign. It has been constituted a basic dynamics for the discourse of the fraternity between ansar/the helper and mukhajir/the immigrant that help and solidarity. So to speak, Turkey proved that the fraternity of the helper and the immigrant could be re-constructed in modern times. As to the later years, this immigration has started to shape more rationally in accordance with economical and social facts.This study deals with the forced-mass migration from Syria to Turkey from the points of problems, solutions, adaptation and integration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The End of This World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada by Angele Alook et al.Evangeline KroonAngele Alook, Emily Eaton, David Gray-Donald, Joël Laforest, Crystal Lameman, and Bronwen Tucker. The End of This World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2023. 240 pp., paperback, $25.95. ISBN 9781771136129.[End Page 280]The End of This World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada by Angele Alook, Emily Eaton, David Gray-Donald, Joël (...) Laforest, Crystal Lameman, and Bronwen Tucker is both an imagining of a utopic, fossil-fuel-free world and a spirited call to action. Written in plain language and aimed at a wide audience, the book examines contemporary so-called Canada through an indigenous-centered,1 decolonial lens and frames the current climate crisis that we are in as one of relationship failure. The authors state: "We believe it is important for a just transition discussions to be accessible to all audiences because, fundamentally, what we're talking about in this book is repairing relationships. Repairing relationships with each other and with the land" (13). Key to repairing this relationship is putting indigenous rights and sovereignty at the center of any proposal or policy, instead of appearing as an add-on or afterthought. As the authors lead us through their plan for a just energy transition, they assert that any change, any movement, and any economic strategy that does not assert indigenous rights is not only "greening theft," it is also doomed to fail (7).The book is organized into two parts. The first part consists of the introduction and the first two chapters, where the authors outline broken promises and political and private decisions that have led to the current climate crisis in so-called Canada. The second half then outlines indigenous-informed solutions and possible paths forward, with the most concrete and "winnable" strategies in the last two chapters (153). The End of This World is a collaborative piece, written in one voice, while the individual authors' voices can be heard through various examples and anecdotes given throughout the book.In the first half of the volume, they lay out the rise and reliance on fossil fuels, the ongoing empowerment of the industry, and the swaths of broken promises the Canadian government has made since public concern for climate has been on the rise. The authors focus on two dynamics that they believe are the worst contributors to this crisis in so-called Canada: "the violation of indigenous people's inherent rights and sovereignty, and the fossil fuel economy that relies on this violation" (11). This is done by tracing the sordid history of indigenous-settler relations through official documents such as the [End Page 281] Indian Act and the residential school system, which systematically destroyed traditional indigenous relationships with each other and the land and replaced them with patriarchal capitalist colonial hierarchies. The authors argue that this destruction, along with the forced removal of indigenous people from their lands, effectively brought about an apocalypse, the aftereffects of which indigenous people across all of so-called Canada are still dealing with. This is an incredibly effective rhetorical strategy, pulling on the popular cultural imagination of the apocalypse and reframing the settlers' view of this world as an indigenous dystopia.The authors then lay out how the official policies and privatization of the industry by the Canadian state laid the groundwork for weakening resistance against fossil fuel projects on traditional indigenous territories, and for stripping the lands of resources and further alienating all people from their relationships with the land. They point out that when indigenous mobilization was finally recognized in the 1970s and 1980s, a swell of popular support from unions, labor activists, and environmentalists pushed back against rampant development and extraction. However, instead of strict regulation and limitation, the authors make it clear how the government and industry simply switched from climate denialism to "climate delayism," using terms like "sustainable development," "net zero goals," and "carbon neutrality" to push responsibility to the future and make no real changes, all while actually increasing development and projects in the industry.The greatest strength of this section is how... (shrink)