1.
“Indigenous Ecological Ways
of Knowing”
INDG 2015A//SOCI2810
Fall 2021
Instructor: Dr. Zoe Todd
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share
without written permission from the author

2.
Indigenous Peoples
• “Indigenous peoples are inheritors and
practitioners of unique cultures and ways of
relating to people and the environment. They
have retained social, cultural, economic and
political characteristics that are distinct from
those of the dominant societies in which they
live. Despite their cultural differences,
indigenous peoples from around the world
share common problems related to the
protection of their rights as distinct peoples.” –
United Nations
(https://www.un.org/development/desa/indige
nouspeoples/about-us.html)
https://www.un.org/d
evelopment/desa/indi
genouspeoples/about-
us.html
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share
without written permission from the author

3.
Indigenous peoples (con’t)
• “Indigenous peoples are recognized as being among the world’s most
vulnerable, disadvantaged and marginalized peoples. Spread across the
world from the Artic to the South Pacific, they number, at a rough estimate,
more than 370 million in some 90 countries. While they constitute
approximately five per cent of the world’s population, indigenous peoples
make up 15 per cent of the world’s poor and one-third of the world’s
extremely poor.10” (United Nations OHCHR 2013, p. 3)
• source:
https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IPeoples/UNDRIPManualForNHRIs.pdf
• 10: Citation from: International Fund for Agricultural Development, Engagement with
Indigenous Peoples Policy, 2009
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share
without written permission from the author

4.
Indigenous Peoples (con’t)
• “... Indigenous peoples each have unique and distinctive cultures,
languages, legal systems and histories. Most indigenous peoples have
a strong connection to the environment and their traditional lands
and territories. They also often share legacies of removal from
traditional lands and territories, subjugation, destruction of their
cultures, discrimination and widespread violations of their human
rights. Through centuries, they have suffered from the non-
recognition of their own political and cultural institutions and the
integrity of their cultures has been undermined. Indigenous peoples
are also harmfully impacted by development processes, which pose a
grave threat to their continued existence.” United Nations OHCHR
2013, p. 3)
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share
without written permission from the author

5.
4th World: Manuel and Milando (1970s)
• “Mbutu Milando, who was for some time First Secretary of the
Tanzanian High Commission in Ottawa, was the first diplomat to
welcome a closer relationship with the Indian people through the
National Indian Brotherhood. It was Mbutu who first suggested to me
the concept and nature of the Fourth World—an idea that grew into a
framework for much of my own thought.”
• Manuel, George. The Fourth World . University of Minnesota Press.
Kindle Edition.
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share
without written permission from the author

6.
Global Indigeneity
• This course will explore experiences of Indigenous groups around the
Globe (The Americas, Oceania/Pacific, Asia, Africa, Siberia, Sápmi)
• Thinking through the interconnected environmental impacts of
empire/colonialism/capitalism/white supremacy on self-determining
Indigenous groups in many regions
• Relationality: between and within Indigenous groups but also with
the nonhuman world
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share
without written permission from the author

7.
Indigeneity as solidarities/intersections
• In this course, the focus will be on thinking Indigeneity in terms of
solidarities and intersections of oppressions, genocides, histories of
self-determining Indigenous groups displaced or harmed through
Empire, Colonialism, White Supremacy, and Capital.
• In North America: explicitly thinking through Indigeneity in terms of
intersections of genocides in Africa, the Middle Passage, and in the
Americas.
• Indigenous cosmologies, worldviews, laws, knowledges that flow
from groups who identify as Indigenous
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share
without written permission from the author

8.
Vanessa Watts: Indigenous Place-Thought
• “habitats and ecosystems are better understood as societies from
an Indigenous point of view; meaning that they have ethical
structures, inter-species treaties and agreements, and further
their ability to interpret, understand and implement. Non-human
beings are active members of society. Not only are they active,
they also directly influence how humans organize themselves into
that society...Human thought and action are therefore derived
from a literal expression of particular places and historical events
in Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabe cosmologies” (Watts 2013:
23).
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share without written permission from the author

9.
Watts: Indigenous place-thought
• Take a moment to write out a short summary of
this article for yourself
• What key concepts stood out for you?
• Place is sentient
• In an Anishinaabeg/Haudenosaunee perspective (such
as Watts’): “human beings are literal extensions of
territory’ (Watts, Common World Childhoods Talk,
2015)
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share without written permission from the author

10.
Land as a sentient being with agency *Styres,
2019
• Sandra Styres:
• “Placefulness is not something independent from Land but exists within the
nuanced contexts of Land. Land reaches boundaries of place by embodying the
principles, philosophies, and ontologies that transcend the material geography of
land and the making of place or placefulness. With this understanding in mind,
Land is more than the diaphonousness of inhabited memories; Land is spiritual,
emotional and relational; Land is experiential, (re)membered, and storied; Land is
consciousness - Land is sentient.” (Styres 2019: 27)
• Styres, Sandra 2019 Literacies of Land: Decolonizing narratives, storying and literature in Tuhiwai Smith, Linda, Tuck, Eve and Yang, K. Wayne (Eds) Indigenizing and
Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View. New York and London: Routledge. 24-38.
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share without written permission from the author

11.
Vanessa Watts
• Supplemental Material:
Dr. Watts’ talk
• “Indians, Animals, Dirt:
Place-Thought and
Agency”
• https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=0G_5Hzz
A_vk&ab_channel=Co
mmonWorldChildhood
s
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share without written permission from the author