dissolving nature and culture- indigenous perspectivism in political ecology

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Dissolving Nature and Culture:

Indigenous Perspectivism in Political Ecology

Johannes MorrowPhD Student, University at Albany

[email protected]

Abstract:Environmental movements have encountered significant dilemmas in advancing theirclaims for sustainability and protection of the nonhuman world. Environmentalism hastypically articulated its claims in a conceptual language incorporating the antinomy ofnature and culture. These concepts have created practical problems and conceptual paradoxes which have led to a strategic impasse. Diverse attempts have thus far failed tomove beyond impasse because they inadequately unravelled the antinomy of nature andculture. The task engaged in here is not to privilege nature over culture, or to privilegeculture by observing the socially constructed character of nature, or to examine the innerdialectical relations that connect them; nor is it to explore genealogical the deepersignificance of the antinomy itself. Rather, this essay argues for stepping outside of thisconceptual language into a different cosmology. This task is accomplished through anexamination of the perspectivism and multinaturalism of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro,which he developed in his studies of Amazonian cosmology. It is argued that at the rootof the problems of nature, culture and environmentalism are ambiguities and paradoxeshaving to due with the doctrines of naturalism and objectivism. These ambiguities and paradoxes can only be overcome by recognizing the reciprocal intentionality of humans,animals, spirits and other kinds of subjects.

This paper was originally presented for fulfilling the requirements of RPOS 696, Spring2009 at the University at Albany. An earlier version was presented at the WesternPolitical Science Association Conference, 2009. This will also become of my dissertation.Comments are welcome, please cite with permission.



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Dissolving Nature and Culture:

Indigenous Perspectivism in Political Ecology

You whites possess the power of subduing almost every animal to your use. You are

surrounded by slaves. Every thing about you is in chains and you are slaves yourselves. I fear if I should exchange my pursuits for yours, I too should become a slave.

-Big Soldier (in Vine Deloria 1999)

Introduction

The idea that nature should be the central concept of environmental political theory

seems like a self-evident proposition. That environmental politics and political ecology

are about nature seems so obvious that it is not worth mentioning. However, the concept

of Nature has been the subject of considerable controversy in the human sciences. In the

last ten years or so nature has come under fire in political ecology 1 (Chaloupka 2000,

2007). Bruno Latour (2004), an anthropologist and philosopher of science at Institut

d'Études Politiques de Paris, in his work on political ecology Politics of Nature: How to

Bring the Sciences into Democracy, has gone as far as to say that the concept of Nature

has stymied the conceptualization of political ecology. Green activists and ecologists

have been shocked and defensive about these brazen attacks. They could not comprehend

why intellectuals, supposedly sympathetic to their cause, would attack the idea of nature

just as the environmental movement seemed to be gaining traction (e.g. Soule and Lease

1995). But what was under attack, were not trees, rocks, deer, owls or wolves. The target

was the concept of Nature that has had a dubious and infamous history in political theory

and a dualistic and paradoxical relationship with its twin: Culture or Society. Also a target

1 I use environmental political theory and political ecology as interchangeable terms.



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of criticism was the relations of authority these concepts establish among humans and

between humans and nonhumans.

Part of the problem is that the strategy of appealing to Nature as a normative ruleagainst which society can be judged is it has lost its originality, authenticity and

persuasiveness in contemporary political theory. Environmentalism, for example is only

the latest iteration of political theory to appeal to nature as a source of political authority.

Liberal political theory, for example, beginning with Hobbes and Locke, initiated a long

tradition of justifying favored constitutional orders based assertions about human nature

and what is natural . The varying conceptions of nature in this tradition were used to

enable political orders that were ostensibly free, yet specifically limited what was

politically possible. Or course, this limit has always been a moving target but the

transformative character of the practice has had little influence on the structure of that

rhetorical strategy. This has made many people suspicious of the “naturalness” of the

various presentations of “nature” and therefor its authenticity and persuasiveness has

been undermined. It is not my intention to map out the history of this rhetoric for it is

well documented elsewhere and its criticism is taken up by much of contemporary

political theory and philosophy. I am interested, however, in mapping some of the

different attempts to “solve” the epistemological and ontological problems associated

with “nature” and the dilemmas encountered in this effort. This is not in order to show

that this effort is impossible or futile but rather to suggest a different way of looking at

the problem.

This style of political argumentation and the corresponding conception of science

defined as an inquiry into the separate domain of Nature, (“uncontaminated” by the



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rouge influences of Society), is a defining feature of modernism (Latour 1993). It is this

feature of modernism that is specifically problematic for conceptualizing and

empowering political ecology. Latour (2004) argued that the deployment of Nature in

political ecology actually makes politics impotent and hostage to the laws of necessity,

rather then empowering them. Whereas environmental scientists hoped that authority of

Nature would empower them to influence political processes in novel ways, the logic of

the “appeal to nature” is inherently limiting and disempowering. It is a demonstration in

what is impossible, or conversely, also what is necessary and unavoidable. Therefore,

because of environmentalism‟s relationship to this tradition of theorizing, it is heldcaptive by what it takes to be its strongest asset: scientism. Scientism grants

environmentalism an objective nature to know and speak for, yet at the same time

confines it to an arrangement that has historically supported industrialism and capitalism

(Chaloupka 2007).

This relationship between scientism and capitalism has been elaborated by a number

of traditions. The critical theory of the Frankfort School extended Marx‟s concept of

commodity fetishism into a general critique of “bourgeois thought” and instrumental

reason that included modern science and its technological products (Vogel 1996). The

main gist of these arguments was that the products of science and industry heighten the

domination and alienation of humanity in the name of liberating it. Heidegger and his

followers were also staunch critics of the relationship between scientism and technocratic

capitalism. Both schools of thought were pessimistic about overcoming the combined

power of modern science and capitalism. However, they also both tended accept the false

self-understanding of science and an ontological dualism between nature and culture.



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These problems have continued to bedevil political philosophy and specifically

environmental theory. Thus Latour (2004) argued that political ecology could not be

properly conceptualized before the antinomies of Nature and Culture were dissolved and

redistributed.

If we are at all intrigued Latour's provocative stance, one might ask what that means

for environmental theory? If not Nature, then what kinds of categories are suitable for

political ecology? What the green activists might reasonably ask is what sort of positive

vision does the redistribution of Nature (and Culture) reveal? This is a question that

'critics of Nature' are sometimes hesitant to answer because the question seems to demanda universal and totalizing alternative. What is often denied in this case is a symmetrical

and all-encompassing alternative to Nature and Culture as analytic and normative

categories and a general distaste of universals. While I think it is sufficient that some

theorists offer only critique or imaginative provocations to this conceptual dilemma, the

stimulus for this paper is that there are alternative ways of thinking about the

relationships between humans and nonhumans, „nature‟ and „culture‟. It is possible to

find more suitable and useful non-dualist analytic and normative categories that could be

employed in political ecology. I propose that the conception of indigenous perspectivism

as developed by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2005) is an insightful and heuristic example

for thinking through the dualism of Nature and Culture and unsettling their capture of the

environmental imagination. All this could be suggestive for positive concepts for

political ecology.

In addition to Viveiros de Castro‟s presentation of perspectivism, what follows has

been influenced and inspired by a generation of indigenous intellectuals that have sought



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to explicate and legitimate indigenous cosmologies. First among this cohort is the late

Vine Deloria Jr. It also includes a long list of other contemporary indigenous intellectuals

both within and outside academia2. The belief that indigenous thought has important

things to say about political ecology (and philosophy more generally) is joined by

Wittgenstein‟s invocation that when we come across a dualism or an antimony we ought

to dissolve it. Although there has been extensive debate and confusion about exactly what

Wittgenstein meant with that insight, this paper approaches the dissolution of Nature and

Culture in a very specific way.

As mentioned already above in regards to the Frankford School and Heidegger, theconceptual and strategic problems of the environmental movement have been

characterized as crisis of modernism (Chaloupka 2007). The specific feature of

modernism that are of interest for political ecology is scientism and the social domination

related with it. Laying, often invisibly and unchallenged, under all this are the doctrines

of naturalism and objectivism. Here lies the unquestioned and unquestionable boundary

of “reasonable” and “rational” thought as well as of science and progress. To address that

problem of Nature and Culture in philosophy and in environmental politics I believe it is

necessary to cross this boundary.

Indigenous cosmologies of the Americas do not proceed from the precepts of Nature

and Culture. Instead they propose a multidimensional and transformational universe of

diverse subjects or persons that apprehend reality from distinct points of view. From the

indigenous cosmological point of view, multinaturalism replaces naturalism as an

ontological basis and perspectivism replaces objectivism as the epistemological and

2 A very incomplete list includes Leo Little Bear, Gregory Cajete, Elizabeth Lyn-Cook, Jack Forbes, LindaHogan, Taiaiake Alfred, Winona Daluke, Craig Womack, Robert Warrior, Nimachia Hernandez.



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normative stance. Together, perspectivism and multinaturalism support a protean and

negotiated order of political relations incorporating all beings. All boundaries from this

perspective are contingent and mediated, including those domains associated with „nature‟

and „culture‟.

Understanding indigenous cosmologies has been a difficult and problematic

enterprise (Smith 1999; Deloria 1996). The concepts of Nature and Culture in indigenous

contexts prevent adequate understandings of indigenous practices and their intellectual

contributions (Forbes 2001). A thorny multitude of anthropological problems having to

do with questions of understanding, interpretation, context, commensurably, translationand appropriation are involved in pursing a claim like this. Needless to say these are all

important problems and the subject of considerable controversy. This essay necessarily

takes an a stance on all these issues; comment will be limited, however, to the explicit

epistemological and ontological questions that are raised and form the main content of

this essay. One of the anthropological problems engages the tightly intertwined and

problematic intellectual projects of indigenous ethnology, nature/culture and political

ecology. Because of their intertwined condition, if we can better understand the

categories informing indigenous worldviews, then we will have made considerable

distance in redistributing the concepts of Nature and Culture. Thus if we get some idea of

what the redistribution of Nature and Culture looks like in a certain context, then we may

gain some insights for political ecology that might travel to other contexts.

As I hope to show, the concepts of perspectivism and multinaturalism are fully

reflexive and apply to themselves. Following from this, the characterization of

indigenous cosmologies and the suggestive insights for political ecology are but one



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contingent point of view developed for my specific purposes. It is by no means the only

or best way of looking at indigenous worldviews or the final or complete suggestions for

political ecology. If a little is learned about each and a few insights are garnered, then this

will have been a successful endeavor.

This essay begins by illustrating how the construction of nature and culture as

antinomies creates conceptual and practical problems for environmental politics. I argue

that these problems have created an impasse for environmental politics and political

ecology as practical political strategies, as well as conceptualizations and arguments

about environmental theory and advocacy. Next I survey various efforts to resolve thenature/culture problem. Within environmental studies the culture/nature problem has been

addressed primarily in two ways: The first strategy attempts to enfold culture within

nature, while the second strategy attempts to incorporate nature into culture. This, of

course, is a gross simplification and some the complexities are addressed and discussed. I

argue that both strategies have thus far failed because of conceptual reasons having to do

with the constitution of nature and culture. The work of Bruno Latour (1994; 2004) plays

an important role in coming to this conclusion and his work helps to set up my argument

about indigenous perspectivism. Next, Viveiros de Castro‟s conceptualization of

indigenous perspectivism is presented as a way of dissolving „nature‟ and „culture‟ and

redistributing their referents across a diverse field of subjects. This „redistribution‟ might

stimulate environmental political theorists to think more creatively and imaginatively

about their subject matter. Finally, I suggest that indigenous traditional ecological

knowledge and management are one practical and political application of indigenous

perspectivism to environmental policy.



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The Impasse Created by the Nature/Culture Problem

The traditional approach and dilemma for environmental theory is how to include

humans and 'culture' into the natural world in a just and sustainable manner. Or

conversely, others formulate the problem as how to properly include „nature‟ and

nonhumans into „culture‟ and the human world in a just and sustainable manner. With

both strategies the ideal is some kind of balance or harmony between the two apparently

distinct domains. In other words, the problem is how to bridge the „Great (ontological)

Divide‟ between Nature and Culture, between the nonhuman and the human. This

approach to environmental theory, I will argue, has led to an impasse.In the West, the ontological divide between humans and nonhumans has also meant a

hierarchical of valuation of „culture‟ over „nature‟ as well as the subjects and objects

associated with this divide such as humanity and animality, men and women, civilization

and savagery, animate and inanimate along with many other „dualisms‟. This has

contributed, at least in part, to the continuing domination and denigration of those

domains of life perceived to be on the „natural‟ or 'object' side of the dichotomy.3 While

the problem is recognized in the environmental literature as the need to affect some kind

of consilience between these two domains of life and their associated social spaces, there

is little agreement about how to go about this intervention or the criteria for its resolution

(Brown and Toadvine 2007; Biersach and Greenberg 2006; Wilson 1998; Dickens 1996;

Peet and Watts 1996; Vogel 1996; Cronon 1995; Oelschaeger 1991). But before this

3 It should be noted however that each of these dichotomies have a unique history and logic that do not allline up evenly on one side or the other. Populations and practices identified as unnatural, like gays andlesbians, have been the target of hierarchical valuation (Haraway 1988). The „unnatural‟ is another leg on

the axis of Nature and Culture.



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consilience can be affected and the impasse breached, the conceptualization of those

domains identified in the West as „nature‟ and „culture‟ must be reformulated.

The separation of culture from nature is a problem for environmental politics in two

very specific ways: one more theoretical and the other more practical, both of which have

led to an impasse. In the first case the separation of culture and nature creates difficulties

in making conceptually coherent arguments for the respect, preservation and protection of

animals, forests, and other features of the environmental landscape.4 When, for example,

deep ecology and other ecocentric environmental perspectives attempt to include the

„human animal‟ within the „natural‟ domain they lose the normative appeal of „nature‟ as

a balanced or homeostatic „system‟ in contrast to a cu ltural sphere gone astray. In other

words, when culture is enclosed within nature, nature becomes an endorsement of the

status quo, because the critical distinction dissolves. The construction of Nature and

Culture as antinomies needs to be addressed before these critical questions can be

answered.

Alternatively, assessing the worth of nonhuman life in terms of its cultural value to

humans seems to be at the source of the original problem: that is, central to the processes

that have led to environmental destruction in the first place. For example, anthropocentric

arguments in favor of assessing an „appropriate‟ social utility to the „costs‟ of „natural

resources‟ can only, under ideal circumstances, protect what is currently valued by a

market regime. The utilitarian approach can never attribute an intrinsic value to anything.

4 The identification of conceptual problems in argument does not automatically mean weakness in politicalaction. It does however, at the very least, point to potential vulnerabilities. The stronger claim, which I amalso making, is that many environmentalists misunderstand the fundamental character of the problem theyseek to redress.



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The assimilation of nature to culture, understood in this way, seems no more adequate to

addressing the culture/nature problem.

The „practical‟ aspect of the problem is the issue of environmental justice. This

problem is encountered when certain „natures‟ are privileged over certain people or

„cultures‟. Ecocentric environmental organizations are often perceived as privileging the

protection of certain animal species and habitats against the survival and welfare of

humans and their problems of poverty and injustice. Ecocentric approaches to

environmental policy unfortunately, tend to ignore the pressing needs of low-income

communities (people of color, the Global South) and view their problems as notsufficiently „environmental‟ to warrant their concern. As an example of this, Giovanna Di

Chiro (1995) relates a story about local residents in south central Los Angeles who were

fighting to stop plans to build a solid waste incinerator in their community which would

pollute the surrounding air and water. When community activists asked the Sierra Club

and the Environmental Defense Fund for assistance, these environmental organizations

told them that their problem was a “community health issue” and not an “environmental”

one. Rather than see poor communities as victims of environmental degradation,

ecocentric approaches often blame the victim as a cause or aggravating condition of these

problems. The specter of Third World „overpopulation‟ as the major threat to the global

environment is part of this way of thinking. William Chaloupka (2000) points out that a

strain of authoritarianism in the environmental movement often puts them in league with

conservatives who exploit these ecological arguments self-servingly to rationalize

inequality and injustice.



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In the context of human needs, it might appear that an anthropocentric or a human

centered approach would be better suited to the problems of environmental justice. But

this is hardly the case. The economic utility typical of anthropocentric approaches has

never been very helpful to these particular human communities: That is the vast majority

of people that live in material poverty and in the Global South. To the contrary, these

communities more often than not share the fate of their flora and fauna brethren. The

objectification of the „natural‟ world as exploitable natural resources has its corollary in

the treatment of human communities as labor resources or expendable obstacles to

„progress‟. The same logic of domination operates in both domains.

Attempts to Resolve the Nature/Culture Problem

Within the literature on environmental theory, those that aim to incorporate the

human and the cultural into a unified field of nature are most associated with a

„wilderness or nature tradition.‟ This tradition decidedly resolves the nature/culture

problem toward the pole of Nature. The second tradition is a diverse and eclectic corpus

incorporating post-Marxist, poststructuralist and postmodern engagements with

environmental studies. This tradition resolves the nature/culture problem toward the pole

of Culture. This is said with a fair degree of tentativeness, because theorists from these

perspectives often think they are accomplishing something different, like transcending

nature and culture via dialects, materialism or discourse. These two traditions correspond

to the two camps that most bitterly fought the „Nature Wars‟ of the nineteen nineties

where greens accused postmodernists of undermining the environmental movement by

claiming that “nature” was “socially constructed” (Chaloupka 2000). Within this body of



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work, those that failed to critically examine and unpack the mutual constitution of Nature

and Culture as antinomies were unable to provide an adequate theoretical basis for

political ecology. The argument will proceed by examining how nature was conceived

and the dilemmas confronted by these conceptions.

The Nature/Wilderness Tradition

Central to the project of resolving the nature/culture problem in the direction of

nature is the claim that Nature can in some way tell us the right ways to live and organize

the polity. Advocates of deep ecology often take up this claim. Deep ecology is amethodologically diverse grouping of ecological perspectives, claiming intellectual

heritage from thinkers as diverse as Spinoza, Heidegger, Henry David Thoreau, John

Muir, Aldo Leopold among many others (Oelschaeger 1991). Two main principles of

deep ecology are egalitarianism between humans and nonhuman and the belief that nature

is characterized by a fundamental harmony or balance. The modern environmental

movement in the United States originated in the transcendentalism of Henry David

Thoreau and John Muir. In deep ecology, the transcendental spiritual 'nature' of Thoreau,

mets the scientistic „objective‟ nature of ecology. Insofar as this was and is the case,

Nature or wilderness plays a spiritual role for the environmental movement that is not

easily reconciled with its tendencies toward scientism.

Aldo Leopold‟s concept of the Land Ethic in A Sand Country Almanac is one

expression of the uneasy relationship between the 'spiritual' and 'scientific' aspects of

environmentalism and the competing tendencies toward immanence and transcendence.

The Land Ethic was a profound criticism of industrial society and an attempt to bridge



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the gap between scientific concerns for a detached objectivity of ecological systems and

the ethical concerns about making normative judgments on what was right for the land

and for nonhumans. He concluded that, “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the

integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends

otherwise” (Leopold, cited in Oelschlaeger 1991: 238). Leopold used the metaphor of a

community to advocate for human responsibility toward the land and all its creatures

within a single “biotic community.” Leopold‟s emphasis on community attempted to

bring humans, physically and ethically, into the natural world.

What was unclear, however, was the question of what and whose criteria of„preservation‟ should be used to make such judgments. Although the direction Leopold

wanted to go seemed fairly clear, once the logic is made explicit, it is unlikely that

Leopold‟s argument can get us there. Specifically, he wanted to transcend the

culture/nature chasm as a historical process, a chasm that he saw growing ever wider in

his own lifetime. He believed, as did Thoreau, that nature, left to its own devices, would

thrive and maintain a harmonic balance. He also thought that humans had something to

learn from this ecological balance. Leopold could have had in mind Thoreau‟s claim that,

“In wildness lies the preservation of the world.” But as „wildness‟ disappeared, the

opportunity to learn from wild 'nature' was ra pidly disappearing. This „preservationist‟

attitude forms part of the basis for deep ecology and specifically the claim outlined above

that nature has values and can tell us the right way to live.

But if wilderness and nature are more than a description of what ecologists

currently observe, then we must rely on the ecologist's values about what should be

preserved and what constitutes a balanced system. If these values and judgments do not



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come solely from the description of „nature‟, then „culture‟ must be influencing the

judgments and understanding of those values. But if you remember, „culture‟ was

supposed to be the cause of wilderness destruction and therefore sanitized from

ecologists‟ observations. Alternatively though, couldn‟t this situation be described as one

of competing values within „culture‟ or between cultures rather than between a pristine

„nature‟ on the one side and a corrupted „culture‟ on the other? Although culture was

supposed to be enfolded into nature, in the the model of deep ecology, the dualism and

separation would appear to be necessary for a critical point of view. Once the subjective

elements of values and political choices was allowed to enter the model, the conceptualwaters of deep ecology were considerably muddied. What the Nature versus Culture

construction provided environmentalists was a privileged access to an objective truth and

certainty as well as a source of authority beyond cultural values and political debate

(Latour 2004; Chaloupka 2000, 2007). This is, however, an untenable position

conceptually, and anti-democratic as political strategy and policy.

A more recent attempt to resolve the ontological separation of culture and nature in

the direction of a nature is made by Max Oelschaeger (2007). He makes a strong case that

the current environmental problems, and the problems of industrial society more

generally, are rooted in this ontological divide. Combining elements of poststructuralism

with post-Darwinian theory he argues that the culture/nature separation occurred with the

acquisition of language some 50,000-200,000 years ago. This is contrary to the view that

the distinction is a historically recent and culturally relative achievement. But because

Oelschaeger believes that the separation is a linguistic construction and not in a physical

quantity located in the brain, he argues that it is possible and necessary to loosen the grip



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of the narratives of cultural and natural separation, perhaps through Gramscian counter-

hegemonic narratives.

However, this displacement of the nature/nature distinction to the acquisition of

language grants entirely too much to those same dominant Western narratives. It glosses

over qualitative differences in language that point to a deep linguistic relativity (Lee

1996). There is agreement here that the culture/nature distinction is a linguistic

construction, but we cannot assume that the culture/nature distinction or even the

concepts of „culture‟ and „nature‟ are human universals without first submitting them to a

“rigorous ethnographic critique” (Castro 2005: 36). Although Oelschaeger‟s account is an

attempt to shore up the weaknesses and ambiguities found in the Land Ethic, it does not

do any better and likely moves us further away from the target. The ecological attitude,

exemplified by Leopold‟s Land Ethic, is a workable raw material that I will use as a

stalking horse to compare and contrast with the concepts of perspectivism and

multinaturalism.

Criticism of the Nature/Wilderness Tradition

Before moving on to the alternatives, the concept of nature/wilderness needs to be

explored. One of the conceptual difficulties with the Land Ethic‟s reformulation of the

„human-natural‟ relationship is that it lacks any historical/empirical referent. Most of the

places identified as „wilderness‟ in the Americas were places of Native habitation and

these landscapes were profoundly influenced by indigenous practices. The problem was

that Europeans misrecognized these landscapes as the 'natural' or original state of the



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world. They imagined that if humans disappeared from Europe, the landscape would

revert to something similar to the one that they found in America.5

The idea of an untouched and sublime wilderness has been a persistent idea since

these first European encounters in the Americas and continues to inspire the imagination

of environmentalists even though it is empirically and historically unsupported. William

Cronon (1983), the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and

Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, emphasized that the

abundance of game animals, wild edible plants and the large ancient trees that Europeans

encountered in colonial New England were all enhanced and cultivated by Native practices. Intentionally set fires played an enormous role in creating the „park -like‟

atmosphere of many New England landscapes. Clearing the detritus and brush promoted

old growth trees and berries in the open spaces, as well as new grazing grounds for game

animals. Natives also preferred the open spaces that the fires created for hunting and

travel. In another article, Cronon (1995) writes about the origins of the conservation

movement and the circumstances under which the national parks in the western United

States were created. The vast and empty so-called wilderness of the West, seen by well-

to-do vacationing Easterners, was the newly emptied “Wild West” created by the

processes of colonialism. Cronon points out that concern for disappearing wilderness and

the political motivation to preserve certain landscapes for future generations to

experience occurred precisely at the conclusion of the Indian wars and with the

confinement of Natives to reservations. War, disease and the internment of Natives made

the West safe to be enjoyed as wilderness and „untouched‟ pristine Nature, providing a

5 One famous expression of this idea that “in the beginning all the world was America,” is made by JohnLocke in the Two Treatises of Government, p. 158.



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temporary escape from the „infirmities of civilization‟ in the East. The irony was that the

form of life that created the economic wealth that enabled people to enjoy the „wilderness‟

of the West as a past-time, was the same root cause of the need for preservation in the

first place. Industrialization and colonization built cities and spaces felt to be lacking in

„nature‟ and causing „man‟ to become effeminate for lack of rugged wilderness to test „his‟

mettle on. For these reasons wilderness, or the idea of untouched pristine nature, is an

equivocal and problematic concept.

Beyond Nature?

A second generation of environmental theorizing sought to resolve the nature/culturedistinction on the side of culture. However, their efforts also led to a dead-end at a

problematic impasse. Studies that embrace the Culture pole of the nature/culture dualism

also face sticky theoretical and historical problems because they do not properly address

the mutual constitution of Nature and Culture. For example post-Marxist approaches to

environmental studies, see the nature/culture problem resolved through dialects or the

continual transformation of culture to nature and vice versa. The borders of nature and

culture at one particular time and place are never clear or certain. What can be known is

what Marxists and post-Marxists call second nature, which is acknowledged to be marked

by human labor, or in other words, thoroughly cultural. The commodification of human

labor and its products is the prime example of second nature. This is why post-Marxist

approaches are categorized in the tradition that resolves the nature/culture problem in the

direction of culture.

The conceptual hurtles throw up by Nature and Culture are encountered by Aletta

Biersach (2006), in an introduction she wrote to a collection of essays on political



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ecology. There she attempted to weld together an eclectic set of conceptual approaches

invoking culture/power/history/nature in an all encompassing critique. She strings

together, post-Marxism, functionalism, poststructuralism, feminism and postcolonialism

without adequately examining each of the approaches or inquiring into their compatibility

with one another. What is striking about this montage of theoretical approaches is the

ease at which the „modern critique‟ allows one to move back and forth between

incommensurate theoretical resources. What marks this grand critique as post-Marxist

perhaps is its intellectual heritage and social commitment and the double denunciation

that dialectical thinking enables. Dialectics allow for the rapid transition andtransformation of Nature to Culture as the essence of historical process. Nothing about

this is seen as contradictory. Rather, to the contrary, this is viewed as the unfolding of

truth and reality.

While the attempt at synthesis and the social commitments may be admirable we

might keep in mind Bruno Latour‟s suggestion for constructing political ecology:

Political ecologists have supposed that they could dispense with the conceptual work,without noticing that the notion of nature and politics had been developed over centuries insuch a way to make any juxtaposition, any synthesis, and any combination of the two termsimpossible. And even more seriously, they have claimed, in the enthusiasm of ecumenicalvision, to have “gotten beyond” the old distinction between humans and things, subjects of

the law and objects of science — without observing that these entities had been shaped, profiled, sculpted in such a way that they had gradually become incompatible (Latour,2004:3) Emphasis added.

It is not at all clear that the glue of culture and history can hold nature and politics

together without first carefully retracing the steps that created nature and politics as

contrary concepts.

Poststructuralist and postmodern approaches to environmental studies resist their

categorization into a single frame. Four positions can be identified depending on what

sort of status they grant to „nature.‟ Theorists taking the first position come essentially to



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the same conclusions as the post-Marxists; that is, that nature is knowable only though its

particular cultural manifestation. As a discursive artifact, nature is variously constructed

and contingent. Arturo Escobar‟s essay, “Constructing Nature: Elements for a

poststructuralist political ecology,” (1996) tak es up this position. The second position

simply denies the concept of nature has any real referent and relevance. The third position,

which is most characteristic of postmodernism, remains agnostic about nature,

recognizing that the ontological divide between nature and culture is inherently unstable,

yet unwilling to concede to its irrelevance. Instead, theorists in this group prefer to

explore the paradoxes and contradictions manifested by nature and culture as antinomies(e.g. Chaloupka and Cawley, 1993). Lastly, there are those that explicitly want to break

down the boundaries of nature and culture and to re-image the world. I do not address the

literature taking up the second and third positions. Rather I address them conceptually

with arguments from the forth position. I find this line of research the most interesting

and draw on their insights and criticisms to support my argument for perspectivism and

multinaturalism and the dissolution and redistribution of Nature and Culture.

Dissolving Nature and Culture as Antimonies

These „posthumanist‟ theorists, often feminist, are deeply suspicious of the

boundaries between nature and culture, and their associated divisions between humans

and animals, animate and inanimate, physical and mental. Donna Haraway writes,

“Nothing really convincingly settles the separation of humans and animals,” arguing for

the breakdown of the “last beachheads” of human uniqueness such as language, tool use,

social behavior, and mental states (Haraway, 1991: 193). For example, each of these



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„beachheads‟ had been chipped away at by studies of nonhuman primates (e.g. Haraway

1988). The implications of these claims are, of course, by no means slight. Haraway

understood, perhaps more than others, that the consequences of collapsing the ontological

partitions of „nature‟ and „culture‟ meant a redefinition of the „human‟ being and the very

meaning of „humanity‟. Later, I will argue that humanity needs to be understood in a

very distinct way.

These attempts to dissolve the nature/culture divide have provoked a backlash.

Reinventing Nature: Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (1995), is collection of

essays dedicated to militating against the excesses of postmodernism and the „assault‟ on

the idea of nature in environmental theory. Gary Lease, a co-editor of this volume and a

professor in History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz,

declared in exasperation that: “Haraway wants to focus attention on the fact that even the

attempts to rescue the nonhuman from the human, to rescue nature from the onslaught of

modern technologized humanity, is itself a human construction” (Lease, 1995:3). Lease

then demurs by wondering “What can Haraway mean?” In this statement Lease hopes

that his audience with will be equally as frustrated as he is, and impatient, with doing the

careful thinking required for the conceptualization of political ecology. These comments

express an anxiety over the loss of Nature as source of objectivity and authority. Because

they fail to respond to the criticisms put forth by Haraway, Cronon and others, they lack

merit. Chaloupka argues that these defensive responses express a crisis in green theory,

perhaps similar to the crisis feminism went though over its „third wave‟ (Chaloupka,

2007).



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If there is any merit to these worries, it is the apparent lack of a positive program for

environmental theory. Haraway‟s program, for example, does not translate easily into

terms that are desired by environmentalists. This may be intentional, as she often wants to

push the limits of imagination for thinking about the world, both as it currently is, and as

it could be. That having been said, there are alternative models of ecology and politics

available. Indigenous perspectivism as I have been suggesting is one of them. Although

the formulation I present is specifically developed to address the nature/culture problem,

indigenous peoples have been expressing similar sentiments ever since confronted with

these peculiarly Western intellectual dilemmas. Luther Standing Bear, in Land of the

Spotted Eagle (1933), insightfully commented on the problem of viewing nonhuman

beings as „wild‟ and „wilderness‟: “Only to the white man was nature “wilderness” and

only to him was the land “infested” with wild animals and “savage” people. To us it was

tame” (Standing Bear, 1933: 38). The fact that modern environmentalism places a

positive valence on the concept of wilderness, and nature as wilderness, does not remove

it from its structural relationship to a colonial project. What is needed is not simply a

change in vocabulary, but a change in concepts and conventional ways of thinking and

acting.

Redistributing Nature and Culture

What this latter „post-nature‟ group (the group that resolves the nature/culture

problem in the direction of culture) may have in common is a desire to go beyond all the

modernist dualisms, exemplified by Nature and Culture, and an uncertainty of where to

go from there. What sort of world is envisioned without this ontological divide? My



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suggestion, (that is the insights I hope to show coming from indigenous cosmologies),

most closely follows the philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour in this work We

Have Never Been Modern (1993). In this work he argued that the necessary approach to

envision the world without Nature and Culture as opposing ontological domains is neither

modern nor postmodern, but rather amodern or nonmodern. He argues that the

uncertainties and ambiguities of postmodernism and poststructuralism depend on

theoretical moves that created the world as “modern.” Retracing the steps of these

theoretical moves is necessary to envision the world without Nature and Culture as

antinomies, because they were constructed as constitutive conditions of modernity(Latour, 1993).

Viveiros de Castro cites We Have Never Been Modern as an initial inspiration for his

article on perspectivism and multinaturalism. Latour coined the term „multinaturalism‟ to

distinguish it from cultural relativism and Viveiros de Castro has developed that concept

further in order to highlight certain feature of indigenous cosmologies. This should not be

a great surprise because the insights flow both directions : Latour cites Phillipe Descola‟s

anthropology of the Archurs of the Peruvian Amazon as an exemplar of holistic

knowledge. Hence, there is a dialogical process in these Western theoretical discussions

about transcending the dichotomizing tradition, where indigenous points of view are

beginning to make an impact. This essay, hopefully, adds to that intellectual exchange.

Viveiros de Castro, a Brazilian anthropologist at the National Museum of the Federal

University of Rio de Janeiro, began his research in indigenous Amazonia, but his essay

on perspectivism and multinaturalism reflects on themes covering indigenous thought

throughout the Americas. He argues that the concept of indigenous perspectivism cannot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universidade_Federal_do_Rio_de_Janeiro






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be reduced to current understandings of relativism “which at first it seems to call to mind”

(Viveiros de Castro, 2005:36-37). Rather, it resists the opposition between relativism and

universalism which characterize the dominant intellectual traditions in the West. The

critique of these Western intellectual traditions “requires the disassociation and

redistribution of the predicates subsumed under Nature and Culture: universal and

particular, objective and subjective, physical and moral, fact and value, the given and the

constructed, necessity and spontaneity, immanence and transcendence, body and spirit,

animality and humanity, among many more” (opt. cite). This “conceptual reshuffling”

leads Viveiros de Castro to the concept of multinaturalism to describe the contrastingindigenous ontological categories. Whereas cultural relativism rest on the assumption of

the unity of nature and the diversity of cultures, multinaturalism suggest the unity of

spirit and the diversity of bodies. Viveiros de Castro admits that all of these contrasts are

too neat and too symmetrical to be anything more than speculative, however they are

heuristic and edifying in the effort to unthink the dualism of nature and culture and the

conceptual traps they lead us into. What follows will attempt to show this.

Indigenous Perspectivism

Indigenous cosmologies of the Americas do not proceed from the precepts of Nature

and Culture. Instead they propose a multidimensional and transformational universe of

diverse subjects or persons that apprehend reality from distinct points of view. “Typically,

in normal conditions,” Viveiros de Castro writes, “humans see humans as humans and

animals as animals.” Conversely, “predator animals and spirits see humans as animals of



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prey to the same extent that animals of prey see humans as spirits or predator animals”

(Viveiros de Castro 2005: 38). More specifically:

Seeing us as non-human beings, animals and spirits see themselves as humans. They perceive themselves to be or become anthropomorphic when they are in their ownhouses or villages and experience their own habits and characteristics in the form ofculture. Thus they see their food as human food (jaguars see blood as manioc beer, thedead see crickets as fish, vultures see the maggots in rotting flesh as grilled meat, etc.).They see bodily attributes (fur, feathers, claws, beaks, etc.) as adornments or culturalinstruments, and they see their social system as organized in just the same way humaninstitutions (with chiefs, shamans, rituals, marriage rules etc.) (opt. cite).

Therefore, animals are people, or „persons‟ too. Seen in this way, the idea of community

or communities comes to life in a much more direct and literal sense, in comparison to

Leopold‟s idea of an ecological community in the Land Ethic. However, while ethical

concerns thoroughly permeate relations between human and nonhuman persons, the

underlying logic is significantly different. Rather than a homeostatic balance in a

mechanistic system, ethical relationships are seen to be continually negotiated among

diverse sorts of „persons‟ and entities that are considered to have agency or intentionality.

For many indigenous peoples of the Americas this idea extends to plants and other

aspects of the environment. The Achuar of the Ecuadorian rainforest, for example,

stipulate that many plants possess souls that are formally “identical to the one humans are

endowed” (Descola 2005: 22). This gives plants consciousness, intentionality and the

ability to feel emotions and communicate with each other and with humans. The

„perspectival‟ principle is illustrated by this example of the relations between salmon,

bears, cotton trees and humans:

If one is to follow the main myths, for the human being, the world looks like a humancommunity surrounded by an spiritual realm, including an animal kingdom with all

beings coming and going according to their kinds and interfering with each others' lives;however, if one were to go and become an animal, a salmon for instance, one would

discover that salmon people are to themselves as human beings are to us, and that tothem, we human beings, would look like naxnoq, or perhaps bears feeding on their

salmon. Such translation goes through several levels. For instance, the leaves of the

cotton tree falling in the Skeena River are the salmon of the salmon people. I do not



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know what the salmon would be for the leaf, guess they appear what we look like to the salmon unless they looked like bears. (Guedon 1984:141-42, cited in Viveiros de Castro2005: 51).

Predator-prey relationships exemplify the relational perspectives of the subject, where the

subject takes the form of the human being.

All aspects of the landscape are not equally significant however. Different peoples

recognize different species, objects and locations as more or less powerful, more or less

imbued with spirit or subjectivity. The attribution of spirit or intentionality depends on

the particular place and on the „original instructions‟ or stories that established that place

and maintain the relationships between a particular „human‟ people and other nonhuman

peoples that share that place (Deloria 1997). The importance of place cannot be

underestimated when discussing indigenous cosmologies. It is central to notions of

identity, material welfare as well as conceptual formation. Physical and conceptual

geographies are in fact inseparable (Hernandez 1999). This fact is central to the idea of

traditional ecological knowledge which will be discussed further on.

The idea of universal sociality or agency is related “with the idea that the visible

form of every species is an envelope (a 'clothing'), concealing an internal human form

which is normally only visible to the eyes of the particular species, or to certain trans-

specific beings, such as shamans.” This incorporate the idea that the “internal form is the

spirit of the animal” which is “an intentionality or subjectivity which is for mally identical

with human consciousness, materialisable, let us say, in a human bodily schema

concealed behind an animal mask” (Viveiros de Castro 2005: 38) However, it is

important to note that this is not a dichotomous “distinction between an anthropomo rphic

essence of a spiritual kind, common to animate beings, and a variable bodily appearance,



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characteristic of each species,” because bodily appearance is “not a fixed attribute but

rather changeable and removable clothing” (opt. cite). In other words:

„This notion of clothing‟ is, in fact, one of the privileged expressions of universalmetamorphosis — spirits, the dead and shamans who assume animal form, animals thatturn into other animals, humans who are inadvertently changed into animals — anomnipresent process in the “highly transformational world” (Riviere 1994) proposed byAmazonian cultures (Viveiros de Castro 2005: 38).

The processes of transformation are ever present. This leads to the “possibility that a

hitherto insignificant being reveals itself (in dreams, in shamanic discourse) as a

prosopomorphic agent capable of affecting human affairs is always present. In this regard,

personal experience, one's own or that of others, is more decisive than any substantive

cosmological dogma.” Therefore the distinction between animals and spirits or animals

and plants seen in their spirit form is “not always clear or pertinent” (Alexiades 1999:194,

cited in Viveiros de Castro 2005). Something that appears as an animal, a plant or an

object of some sort might be a spirit in disguise of something of an altogether different

nature (Viveiros de Castro 2005: 39).

Knowing as a Way of Doing

This thoroughly social and relational ontology proposed by indigenous cultures of

the Americas implies a way of knowing altogether different from the objectivist

epistemologies arising from the naturalistic ontology of modernism and rhetoric of

Western science. The Western scientific ontology presupposes that, at the root of

everything, physical and universal laws (like gravity) govern and are the final cause of all

phenomena. Even the apparently most complex phenomena like human bodies and minds

or ecosystems, are the result of these physical laws and can in principle be reduced to

them. Knowledge of the world, from this perspective, is measured by the degree of

objectification that can be applied to an object or a process. Along these lines, Daniel



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Dennett has argued that we should attribute only the minimum amount of intentionality

necessary in order to explain a given action or phenomenon with the epistemological

ideal of „reducing intentionality to zero‟ (Dennett 1978).

Knowledge of an ecosystem, from the „Western‟ science perspective, exemplifies the

ideal of objectification. Ecosystems management attempts to identify the complex

mechanisms and feedback loops that govern an ecosystem so that they can intervene and

make adjustments. The efficacy of this approach depends on correctly identifying the

mechanisms and feedback loops in operation, as well as the short term and long term

anthropocentric requirements and aesthetic judgments. Biology, from this same „Western‟

perspective, is the objectification of the human body into its constitutive parts and the

processes which ultimately reside in the chemistry and physics of molecular biology.6 A

subject is always an insufficiently analyzed object. Therefore a Western evolutionary

biologist sees:

…humanity as built from animal foundations which are normally hidden by culture.Having once been „completely‟ animals, „deep down‟ we remain animals. By contrast,

indigenous thought concludes the inverse principle, that having once been humans,animals and other beings of the cosmos continue to be humans, albeit in a non-evidentway” (Viveiros de Castro 2005: 41)

If objectification is the name of the game in the epistemology of western science,

then subjectification is its counterpart in indigenous epistemologies. Gaining knowledge

about something means adducing the maximum amount of intentionality and agency to

that thing. This means that knowing involves understanding and participating in the

characteristic ways and customs of that subjective domain; in other words, seeing a

nature as culture. That is to say, acquiring knowledge is the processes of turning an

artifact or an object into a subject or agent.

6 It should be noted that the reduction of physics and chemistry to quantum physics has been considerablymore problematic project. This type of research depends, ultimately, on a faith in reductionism.



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Shamanistic practices and discourses exemplify this approach to knowledge.

Shamanistic knowing is a way of doing or interacting in the world and communicating

with diverse kinds of agents in order to manage the relations between humans and

nonhumans. Above all, shamans are capable of seeing others in their human form, what is

ordinarily not possible for most „laymen‟.

Seeing non-human beings as these beings see themselves (as humans), shamans arecapable of playing the role of active interlocutors in transspecific dialogues. But aboveall they are capable of returning to tell the tale, which is something that laymen arehardly able to do. The encounter with or exchange of perspectives is a dangerous process, it is a political art — a diplomacy (Viveiros de Castro 2005:42).

The ideal of knowledge here is nearly opposite to the ideal of objectification advocated

by western science. From indigenous perspectives, the science of the body is the process

of communicating and negotiating with its spirits or souls (some peoples claim that an

individual has a plurality of souls) and the other spirits or spiritual forces affecting them

(e.g. the spirit of smallpox, for disease; the spirit of jaguar perhaps, in the case of fright or

trauma). An object is always an insufficiently analyzed subject.

I want to emphasize the notion that the processes of knowing and knowledge, from

an indigenous point of view, are a „political art or diplomacy.‟ This is the case with

something like „ecosystem‟s management‟ or its indigenous equivalent. From the

indigenous perspective the ideal is a dialogue and political negotiation (consistent with

the notion of diplomacy) of diverse perspectives and interests, rather than the idea of

intervention in a mechanical system of feedback loops. This is an ongoing, give and take

that requires constant attention in order to maintain and renew beneficial relationships

(Cajete 2000). Social institutions incorporate shamanistic doctrines in the maintenance of

these relationships. Some of these occur on an everyday level though practices of

reciprocity and renewal. For example, making an offering of tobacco, coca leaves, corn



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dust or other „spiritual currency‟ is a typical act of reciprocity and thanks for use of a

plant or taking of an animal. Another example of reciprocity is the way Natives of the

Pacific Northwest throw their salmon bones back in the river so that they can return to the

ocean and be reborn (Menzies 2006). Respect is the appropriate attitude for these

relationships.

While respect and reciprocity are the social ideal for all relationships in indigenous

contexts, on another level, predatory relations are unavoidable. This necessitates

shamanistic interventions and ceremonial practices of renewal and sacrifice (Cajete 2000).

One could say that just living or existence accumulates a karmic debt, so to speak, thatmust be balanced. As mentioned above, humans are indebted to animals and plants, but

also rivers, ancestors, the earth, moon, and stars among many others. All these are

subjectivities with the intentionality to choose to grant humans and others the possibility

of life. From this cosmic perspective, humans may play as vital role to another

subjectivity which may be just as significant as water is for humans. Ceremonies like the

Sun Dance of the Great Plains indigenous nations and sacrifices like fasting contribute

and are vital to cosmic processes of renewal and continuity (Cajete 2000, Deloria, 1999).

The Tairona of northern Columbia, for instance, call themselves Elder Brother and view

themselves to be the keepers of the earth, their mother. They view all other humans as the

„Younger Brother‟ who they view as foolish and destroying the earth through a predatory

culture. They see their role as Elder Brother to balance the cosmic debt created by

Younger Brother, through spiritual practices and informing younger brother to the

worsening condition of earth (See Ereira 1993).



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Clearly, from a Western science perspective, these kinds of practices have little

ecological value and are viewed, for the most part, as superstitions. There are other

practices, however, like control burning, as mentioned before, practices of permaculture,

like planting crops together like corn, beans and squash that create a natural nitrogen

cycle and control weeds as well as knowledge of medicinal plants that can be understood

and appreciated from the „functionalist stance‟ of ecological science, wildlife biology and

chemistry. However, the point must be emphasized, that the different point of view on

these matters is exactly what is in contention. It is precisely because these „natural‟ beings

and objects are perceived as agents or subjects possessing intentionality that theserelationships cannot be very well interpreted according to a functional logic.

From indigenous perspectives the relations between humans and nonhumans are

social. Humans, animals, plants and other beings exist and interact within a single socio-

cosmic domain and field of normativity. This may be recognized as animism. That people

typically recognize boundaries between themselves and other beings, which are only

transgressed under unusual conditions or by specially trained individuals is

perspectivism.7 From this point of view the persistent culture/nature distinction dissolves.

What is natural and given from one perspective, is cultural and enacted from another. The

cultural is the form of the universal and the natural is the form of the particular. This

leads to multinaturalism or the idea that there are many „natures‟ , but natures that are

always contingent and transformable.

This is the inverse principle to the one operating in western science. Viveiros de

Castro writes that:

7 There is at least one context in which boundaries are ordinarily crossed: dreaming, see Lee Irwin, 1996.



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In our naturalist ontology the nature/society interface is natural: humans are organismslike others, body-objects in 'ecological' interaction with other bodies and forces, all ofthem ruled by the necessary laws of biology and physics; 'productive forces' harnessnatural forces. Social relations, that is, contractual or instituted relations among subjects,can only exist internal to human society. But this is the problem of naturalism: how„non-natural‟ can these relations really be? Given the universality of nature, the status of

the human and social world is profoundly unstable and, as our tradition shows, it perpetually oscillates between a naturalistic monism (socio-biology or evolutionary psychology being two of its current avatars) and an ontological dualism ofnature/culture (culturalism or symbolic anthropology being some of its contemporaryexpressions) (Viveiros de Castro 2005: 45).

It was the „unstable‟ status of the human social world that I identified as a problem for

deep ecology and Leopold‟s attempt to create a conceptual basis for the land ethic. The

unstable status of „culture‟ is why the culture/nature distinction is such a persistent

problem. A naturalist ontology may provide a basis for the idea of an ecological system inhomoeostasis, but it cannot account for ethical questions or the anomalous status of

human beings as both „natural‟ and „non-natural‟ beings. Stated a little differently, in

terms of epistemology, naturalism has a reflexivity problem. It cannot apply to itself,

because when applied to itself, the self dissolves into an object, and objects do not have

knowing capacities, consciousness, intentionality, and so on. From the western

perspective, the culture/nature dualism must come back in to create a special knowing

subject: which is currently, but has not always been, the human species.

Universal Humanity

The common condition of humans, animals and other beings is humanity and not

animality. Whereas in popular evolutionary theory humans are, really at base, animals;

from the indigenous perspective, animals and other beings are, really at base, human. Our

ecocentric critic might argue that this is insufficient because it is still anthropocentric and

evaluates all life in terms of a human metric. But indigenous perspectivism is not



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anthropocentric, if by this we mean dominated by one set of interests and understanding

of the world. It is anthropomorphic, however, which is an important conceptual

distinction. Anthropocentricism is more like speciesism where the „human species‟ is a

special evolutionary achievement above all other forms of life. Anthropomorphism here

entails the idea that the form of the subject or spirit is prototypically a human form

(Viveiros de Castro 2005: 45).

This leads to a necessary distinction between the idea of humanity as condition and

humanity as a species. The conflation of these contrasting notions has led environmental

politics into the philosophical binds of the culture/nature dualism and the practicalmisrecognition of environmental justice as not sufficiently „environmental.‟ The idea that

environmentalists can speak about, or on behalf of, all of humanity in terms of

generalizations about its character or worries about third world „overpopulation‟ is an

example of the conflation of humanity as a condition of all life and humanity as a species.

The proposition that humanity is a general background condition for all being and

subjectivity makes humanity as species specific form very problematic. Indigenous

concepts of self and collectivity illustrate the need to distinguish these two concepts

(Viveiros de Castro 2005: 47).

One aspect of indigenous thought that has been widely commented on is the idea that

humanity stops at the boundaries of the group; a clear expression of ethnocentrism. On

the other hand, the animistic character of indigenous thought extends humanity well

beyond the borders of the group and human beings as a species to diverse forms of life.

What reconciles these two apparently contradictory principles is the idea that full

personshood is expressed through human particularity rather than through human



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genericity. Particular humanity or „peoplehood‟ is most closely associated with the

prototypical ontological perspective. This is why animals have their particular fur,

feathers, colorings and characteristic behaviors which are seen as cultural adornments and

performance rather than natural expressions of species determination. If the human form

is the model of the spirit and universality, then the animal body is the model of

particularity and full personhood. This particularization takes the form of body art and

adornment such as piercing and tattooing, as well as behaviors like food proscriptions and

prohibition and language; really all socialization. In other words, it is a habitus. Viveiros

de Castro puts it this way:…emphasis on the social construction of the body cannot be taken as the culturalisationof a natural substrate but rather as the production of a distinctly human body, meaningnaturally human. Such a process seems to be expressing not so much a wish to „de-animalise‟ the body through its cultural marking, but rather to particularise a body thatis still too generic, differentiating it from the bodies of other human collectivities aswell as from those of other species. The body, as the site of differentiating perspective,must be differentiated to the highest degree in order to completely express it (Viveirosde Castro 2005: 59) original emphasis.

What this repeats is the idea that culture is the form of universal and nature is the form of

the particular. The full expression of the self and personhood through particularization

and naturalization of the body severs the idea of species distinctiveness in favor of

particular peoplehood. Here, intra-species differentiation may be as significant as inter-

species differences. In this sense also, the dualist dichotomy of Culture and Nature

dissolve into a common humanity of the spirit and particular expressions of peoplehood. 8

A critic might argue that the colorings and fur of animals do not equate with

human tattoos or ornamentation because a human person can choose how to color their

8 There is perhaps an interesting analogy here with Agamben‟s idea of bare life in Homo Sacer . If a personis tripped down to bare life that is the human being at its most generic, but this genericity is, Agamden

points out, barely living; not dead but not really alive. This is what indigenous people has been sayingabout community and identity all along. “Killing the Indian to save the man,” is a kind of spiritual death

and loss of personhood. One „person‟ literally dies and becomes something else.



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hair or what tattoo to get, while a fox cannot choose its fur and colorings. In one sense

this is true. Tattoos and hair coloring are viewed as „free choices‟ and „self -expression‟ in

the popular culture of the West. However in indigenous contexts the expression of the self

resides closer to the expression of the collectivity. Tattoo practices, in the Pacific for

example, typically depict ancestral designs that follow authorized patterns that express

particular historical meanings and community recognized achievements among other

things. Tattoos are generally viewed as connecting a person with their ancestors and thus

enabling them to become more fully „Samoan‟, for example, and therefore more fully

achieving „personhood‟ or a „particular humanity‟ as I suggested. As for the fox, the first

rebuttal might ask how we know that the fox does not choose its coloring (at least in the

sense that Samoans “choose” their tattoos). It certainly is the conventional “coat” of their

ancestors, and perhaps it is the one they like the best? Arctic foxes do, after all, change

their colorings twice a year; and all foxes molt in the spring and grow thinker coats in the

fall. So perhaps in regards to choice, convention, and determination, the two examples

are at least closer than they might have initially appeared.

Multinaturalism

With this way of thinking, the great dilemma of human versus nonhuman interests,

or anthropocentric versus ecocentric approaches to environmental politics dissolve into

the particular dilemmas of specific group of persons (human or nonhuman) versus other

group of persons (human or nonhuman). Of course, this hardly solves the „on the ground

problems of environmental politics or environmental justice. But I believe it does

dissolve the endless and intractable debates about social justice versus environmental



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preservation, human culture versus the natural world and their various iterations. It may

also help in another way. If the dichotomizing intellectual tradition that has led to the

culture/nation distinction in the first place has at all contributed the environmental

degradation we are currently experiencing, than thinking about these things differently,

through a different intellectual framework, may be one step toward establishing more

balanced and sustainable relationships among all beings.

Aldo Leopold was on the right path with the idea of an ecological community, but

he bumped up against an invisible wall in attempting to submit that idea to a naturalist

ontology. The precepts of naturalist ontology have had great difficulty and are perhapsincapable of accounting for subjectivity and dealing with them in an ethical manner. The

objectivist epistemology that is the twin of naturalism can only „objectify‟ the many

beings of the cosmos. Starting out with the premise that all things in the world operate

according to physical laws, objectivists conclude that all things in the world operate

according to physical laws. Anomalous phenomena that do not (yet) follow any (known)

physical laws will be deciphered in the future. Stated in that way the circularity I think

becomes clear. An article of faith must support the foundation of objectivist research

programs, where all „faiths‟ were supposed to have been eliminated. Worry about the

status of this „faith‟ underlies a number of projects in the post-empiricist philosophy of

science. W.V.O. Quine‟s argument for a „naturalized epistemology‟ and Stephen

Toulmin‟s arguments for an „evolutionary epistemology‟ can be viewed as efforts to

(re)establish a foundation for this faith.

Perspectivism and the social and relational ontology associated with it easily

assimilate the anomalous phenomena left over by objectivist research programs. But



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indigenous cosmologies also compete to interpret the so-called law governed phenomena

as well. We need not necessarily accept shamanistic epistemologies of subjectification,

although we may learn something from them in order to appreciate indigenous

cosmological perspectives. Empirical research is still possible within a perspectival and

relational ontology. To be clear, from the indigenous point of view, Native approaches to

knowledge are seen as more empirical and less doctrine driven in contrast to Western

objectivist approaches to knowledge.

Western ecological scientists and environmental managers can learn from indigenous

scientific traditions in the same way that indigenous peoples say they learn from bear orwolf peoples about how to hunt or from plant peoples about how to heal and so on.

Indigenous knowledge is not a static or self contained object locked to a „pre-modern‟

time-capsule (Fabian 1983). It is transformed and transferred through relations with other

peoples, human and nonhuman, and therefore remains a flexible and living process of

many indigenous communities.

The normative relationships established by indigenous perspectivism support

practices of traditional ecological knowledge. Traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK,

is one practical solution to the problems of environmental destruction (Cajete 2000; Little

Bear 2000; Deloria 1999). Traditional ecological knowledge is the communal and

intimate knowledge of indigenous peoples about their territories which promotes

environmental sustainability and biological diversity (Barsh and Henderson 2003; Berkes

1999; Brush and Stabinsky 1996).

TEK is first and foremost, a political solution to environmental management in

that it supports maximum autonomy and self-determination for indigenous nations and



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their territories. It does not require nor depend on the understanding or participation of

western scientists and environmental policy makers. It is only secondarily a knowledge

resource for the later (and the general public). In addition, the transmission of TEK

should occur under the terms and conditions established by the communities from whose

territory the knowledge originates. This is especially important because indigenous

knowledge has become the latest exploited commodity and site of colonialism in the

twenty-first century. Biopiracy is a clear example of the continuation of colonial relations

in the domain of intellectual property (Mgbeoji 2006: Shiva 1997; Brush and Stabinsky

1996;). Perspectivism is an attempt to present one aspect of the theoretical basis of TEKthrough indigenous cosmological categories. My hope is that this intervention would

support the greater autonomy, self-determination and intellectual confidence for

indigenous peoples as well as an increased interest in appropriate research in TEK by

non-indigenous scientists, environmental policy makers, as well as by the general public.

The theory of indigenous perspectivism contributes to environmental politics by

dissolving the impasse of the pernicious debate about „culture‟ and „nature‟. Within

indigenous cosmological framework the culture/nature distinction dissolves into the unity

of the spirit or a profound and universal humanity that incorporates all beings. Nature and

culture turn out to be distinctions particular to specific cultural perspectives, and not an

ontological condition fundamental to reality.

Perspectivism addresses the particular impasse faced by ecological thinkers who

want to conceptually reconcile human beings into the natural world. As it turns out, the

manner in which they were going about this reconciliation, while productive in some

respects, was highly problematic for conceptualizing political ecology and has led to a



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strategic impasse. Nature(s) are internal to culture(s) in the plural, and not the other way.

In addition, the concepts of culture and humanity, incorporated in these theories were

askew. As long as culture was thought to be an outgrowth or an emergent property of

nature and animality, then the dualism could not be breached. These ecological thinkers

were captured by a concept of the human being from evolutionary biology that was

confused with the concept of humanity as a condition for all beings. The correction to this

mistake and the way though the impasse is another perspective. Particular peoples

establish particular relations with a place and the other „peoples‟ that cohabitate the place.

The „doings‟ of establishing and maintaining these relationships, are the „knowings‟ of

indigenous epistemologies.

The concept of multinaturalism captures the idea that a community‟s fundamental

perceptions of nature are ontological and constitutive for its particular way of life. Using

the more familiar term of cultural relativism to describe the relationship between

indigenous worldviews and “Western” thought always leaves the status of the former

uncertain and a question of “mentality.” The perception of nature(s) are inseparable from

a perspective that is structured by a communities set of intellectual traditions.

Multinaturalism suggests that the differences in perspective are less to be found in the

subjective differences in the thinking, than in objective differences in worlds.

Conclusion

The conceptual and strategic problems of the environmental movement have been

traced back to a crisis of modernism. The features of modernism that are problematic for

political ecology are the doctrines of naturalism and objectivism and the rigid and



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hierarchical form of political authority it establishes and regulates. Unfortunately these

were precisely the doctrines that were often enthusiastically embraced by

environmentalists as the solution to environmental troubles rather than seen to be part of

the problem. They sought to deploy Nature, the domain of necessity, and they assumed

this would guarantee authority and political action. As we could see, from indigenous

perspectives there was a classic means ends disjuncture. The objectification of

nonhumans (and much of humanity) led to their disregard as „persons‟ with their own

ways of life, habits and, dare I say, culture.

If we take indigenous points of view seriously, then we might recognize adifferent way of understanding and relating to nonhuman persons as an expanded and

ongoing constitutional negotiation.9 Naturalism must give way to multinaturalism if we

are to fully extend the principles of respect and recognition to nonhumans. Perspectivism

and multinaturalism support a protean and negotiated order of political relations

incorporating all beings. All boundaries from this perspective are contingent and

negotiated, including those domains associated with „nature‟ and „culture‟. Thus, this

indigenous „model‟ of „cosmic politics‟ dissolves the antimonies of Nature and Culture

and redistributes the domains of necessity and spontaneity across a field of diverse

agential action.

9 For example, James Tully‟s arguments in Strange Multiplicity (1995) could apply very easily tononhumans. He suggests as much in his discussion of Bill Reid‟s “Canoe” and its mythological inter -species beings.



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