Exploring Indigenous relationality to inform the relational turn in sustainability science

Abstract

There is growing attention to the idea of a relational turn in sustainability science. Scholarship that names and discusses this trend briefly recognizes Indigenous knowledge traditions as relevant to relational turn conversations, but it has not yet elaborated on this deep source of insight. To begin this elaboration, we describe how Indigenous understandings offer practices and approaches that are highly relevant to sustainability science’s relational turn. We engage in this elaboration with two core goals. The first is recognitional (or epistemic) justice – that is, to recognize and credit the foundational and profound elements of relationality within Indigenous thinking, which has embodied, understood and practiced deep relationality for millennia. The second goal is to elucidate how Indigenous thinking can help to re-envision the practices of sustainability science – specifically, via the directive that research must be conducted in service of the needs of the larger, beyond-human collective. We summarize three tenets of Indigenous thinking strongly related to sustainability science’s relational turn: a centering of natural law, ethics and protocols rather than human well-being; a focus on a collective beyond humans; and relationality that involves more than ontology. We describe how Indigenous understandings can inform sustainability science on three levels: researchers’ internal processes and motivations; conceptual foundations; and research practice. We close with reflections on the role of Indigenous epistemologies in a paradigm shift in sustainability science.