On Indigenuity: Learning the Lessons of Mother Earth

by Daniel R Wildcat

Overview

Mother Earth is calling on us to act—the collective wisdom of thousands of years of Indigenous knowledge can guide us. 
Indigenuity, or Indigenous ingenuity, stems from an ancient idea and practice that Native peoples have engaged in for millennia. It was born of a careful mindfulness and attentiveness to our planet and all of its creatures, and a recognition that human experience is intertwined with all that surrounds us. As a society, we rarely pay attention to our land, air, and water, exacting a high price for all life on this planet. On Indigenuity is a call for us to learn a key lesson: it’s time to apply ancient Indigenous wisdom to solve modern problems. 
The author, leading Indigenous thinker Daniel Wildcat, discusses some of the most important Native knowledge that is the foundation of science, the environment, biology, and our culture, arguing that restoration through the practice of Indigenuity is essential if we are to make progress toward saving our home.  
By surrounding ourselves with human creations, Wildcat contends that we have created an “insulated ignorance” for ourselves, and what we need to solve the problems of the twenty-first century is a different perspective. Drawing upon history, personal experiences, and extensive research, Wildcat invites readers on a profound journey of discovery, bridging the gap between how we’ve already tried to help our planet and the traditional Indigenous knowledge that could be the key to making a real difference.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682753446
Publisher:	Fulcrum Publishing
Publication date:	11/14/2023
Series:	Speaker's Corner
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	428,680
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Daniel R. Wildcat is a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. His service as teacher and administrator at Haskell spans 37 years. In 2013 he was the Gordon Russell visiting professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. Dr. Wildcat received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. In 1994 he partnered with the Hazardous Substance Research Center at Kansas State University to create the Haskell Environmental Research Studies (HERS) Center.

Read an Excerpt

Let’s Stop Lying
 
Lying in most instances cannot be justified, especially when it results in harm to others or is selfishly motivated. Our Earth climate-change situation is made worse today by some who knowingly mislead the public with lies, half-truths, and by withholding the truth. Among the liars are corporations who continue to tell you they are “green” when they continue to pollute and heat up the planet. Among those spreading half- truths are those who knowingly invoke factual claims without properly contextualizing or placing those facts in our current extreme global situation. And as for those who withhold facts to protect their financial interests at the expense of biodiversity and environmental and ecosystem well-being, all while perpetuating human suffering, most recognize that omission plays a fundamental role in producing logical errors and distrust. Certainly, Exxon’s knowledge of climate change and the role that burning fossil fuels plays suggest that over the course of the last half century, Exxon officials used all three methods of misrepresenting the facts about how their activities have produced it. I start this essay with these difficult facts—difficult for what they say about Earth’s current situation—because as difficult as honesty can be at the present moment, I see it as the most important attribute of anything we do today. The distance between those who intentionally misrepresent what they think they know, and those whose error is based on what they honestly think they know, is vast. I want to make it clear that the lying perpetrated now by people who “know better” is an important part of the climate crisis and other crises we face, but one only implicitly, not directly, addressed in this essay.
 
What is addressed in this book are the mistakes made by those who are honestly wrong, who misunderstand—as opposed to those who misrepresent—the world and our human place in it. Therefore, I hope the ideas offered here might cause them to rethink how they see and understand the world. Many of the problems we currently face, I believe, are associated with the dominant modern, overwhelming, Western-influenced worldview that has culminated in the age we now rightly call the Anthropocene, the age of humankind: a worldview that plays a large role in many of the global crises we now face and one not likely to produce any solutions. As I have argued for more than a decade, we cannot successfully address the physical global climate change facing us until we have a cultural climate change. And here is the good news— there are better, more realistic ways of understanding the world in which we live. There are Peoples on the planet who see and understand the biosphere we live in very differently from those who created global climate change. Indigenous Peoples view the natural world through a lens that sees different features of the world we live in. My hope resides in the belief that a fair amount of humankind’s bad behavior is an artifact of the cultural lens through which most of modern humankind understands the biosphere and our—dare I say—natural role in it.
Therefore, a different worldview, or lens, is in order. What is offered in the following essay is a worldview—an Indigenous worldview, not the Indigenous world, for there is no such thing—different in fundamental respects from the dominant view manifest throughout the modern institutions of government/politics, education, economics, and science. The worldview, the cultural lens, presented in this essay sees and understands that the diversity of Indigenous traditions resides in the nature culture nexus (NCN). A lens that sees a symbiotic nature–culture relationship as opposed to a dichotomous or dualistic tension. A worldview grounded literally and figuratively in the Earth. Think of what follows as an Earth work.
Take the ruminations, indignations, and imagination shared here and the honesty with which they are offered as an invitation to critique, disagree, correct, and improve because, after all, hasn’t everyone found themselves honestly wrong many times in their life?
 

Table of Contents

Introduction
Let’s Get Started
For Our Children
Let’s Stop Lying
 

1. Beauty Surrounds Us

Why Indigenous Voices Will Be the Most Important in the Twenty-First Century
Smoothing the Ground
 

1. A Time for Mending

Indigenuity—A Beginning
 

1. Land Back!

Land Back—Indigenuity in Action
The Ioway Tribal National Park
Right Relations
The Nature–Culture Nexus
A Non-Anthropocentric Worldview
 

1. To See in a Different Light

Indigenuity, the Waste Problem, and a Wetlands Example
A Wetland’s Healing and Restoration: An Exercise of Indigenuity
 

1. A Poem for Emma Olivia

A Grand Transformation Needed to Address Climate Change
 

1. Out of Doors

Finding Our Home with Mother Earth
Take Education Out-of-Doors
 
 

Editorial Reviews

"Dan Wildcat’s evocative essay  . . . On Indigenuity, is a compelling framework to rethink the role of the western worldview in shaping our physical and cultural landscapes. These critical reflections invite deep engagement with Indigenous ways of knowing and being, to heal land and our relationships to the living world. He helps us to remember ourselves as kinfolk, in service to mutual thriving of people and planet.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Author of Braiding Sweetgrass
 
“In On Indigenuity, Daniel Wildcat makes a passionate plea for a paradigm shift to viewing the world as full of relatives instead of resources. This eco-kinship vision of the world, rooted in Indigenous wisdom and ingenuity, provides us with a powerful approach to addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene. Given the climate crisis now upon us, this book is a must-read!”
—Marika Holland, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
 
"On Indigenuity is a value-based, ethical blueprint for partnering with ourselves and the planet to heal and protect, guiding us through the challenges of climate change toward regenerative living, a type of living our Indigenous relatives have known for hundreds of years.”
—Jerry Floersch, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University School of Social Work
 
“If you believe that, in order to confront the pending and growing global climate crisis, we need to do something differently, or even if you are merely open to that idea, you should read this book. Professor Wildcat draws from his lifetime of experience and exposure to many Indigenous cultures of this hemisphere, and many of the greatest Indigenous thinkers of our time, to carefully and clearly explain the only hopeful way out of our current predicament. Wildcat calls for Indigenuity, an application of thinking grounded in worldviews that see humankind as living in a world of relatives, in relationship, rather than full of resources to be consumed and exploited. We must abandon the anthropocentric worldview that has led to the Anthropocene era in which we have been living  to correct the destructive ways that have led us to the current predicament. Indigenous worldviews, and their resulting approaches to living in the world, offer the only compelling path to continued human existence. For those who have worked to help protect and revitalize those traditional Indigenous cultures and worldviews, Dr. Wildcat’s message comes at a critical time, as we all face the consequences of the dominant settler-based worldview that has led us to this point. Now, increasing numbers of descendants of settlers are recognizing the importance of listening to and meaningfully collaborating with Indigenous peoples as they recover and breathe life into their own place-based cultures derived over millennia of experiential learning about how to live in collaboration with the rest of life in their locales. We are living in a time where we must make room for a new, old, way to come to the forefront of how we approach our position in this world.”
—Brett Lee Shelton (Oceti Sakowin Oyate-Oglala Lakota), Senior Staff Attorney, Native American Rights Fund  
 
 

From the Publisher