Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to Global Crisis

Umeek (E. Richard Atleo), Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to Global Crisis. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012. 220 pages. ISBN 978077482178. $32.95 paperback.

Principles of Tsawalk is a thesis about how Nuu-chah-nulth ontology and metaphysics frame the epistemology and axiology of Nuu-chahnulth people. More specifically, it is the claim that the Nuu-chah-nulth way of being and knowing in the world is inherently consistent with respect and sustainability for all people, animals and plants as well as other material and non-material aspects in the world. The further argument is that certain other ontologies, metaphysics and epistemologies are not sustainable. In particular, it is the claim that the worldview of Western industrialized culture has led to the damage and contamination of the world as it exists today. As such, Atleo's book is both an academic and philosophical analysis of differing views of the world and how human action operates within it, but it is also a political cri de coeur for the planet. The dominant culture, it is argued, bases its understanding on a false causality that places humans first and denies the interrelatedness of people, the world, and all its constituent and necessary parts.

Atleo frequently acknowledges that there are many examples in various cultures that show a positive vision of the limited and constrained sets of action with which humans...