Decolonizing Western-Indigenous Dialogues

This groundbreaking book offers a unique collection of Indigenous and non-Indigenous approaches to decolonizing international development.

The world is facing enormous challenges, from ever-growing global inequality to climate change to the continuing fallout from the Covid pandemic. It is becoming increasingly clear that the origin of these challenges lies in the economic models and imperial lifestyles perpetuated by the Global North. In order to find new answers to the world's biggest challenges, then, it is necessary for the Global North to acknowledge Indigenous knowledge systems as unique and legitimate epistemologies and to engage in dialogues with them.

This collection brings together contributions from Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors to promote that dialogue. It provides a unique, rare forum for discourse between the expressive potentials of differing world views, and ultimately, for developing cooperation in the terms of Eisenstein’s notion of interbeing, which counteracts the “History of Separation” between nature and culture and between Global South and Global North. What emerges is a path forward towards a new, interwoven modernity characterized by an embrace of separate, but mutually constitutive, ways of knowing.

For its wide topical and geographic breadth, and for its bringing together of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars around the world, this book is a must-read for researchers and students interested in indigenous studies and decolonial approaches to international development.

Gregory Cajete is Professor of Native American Studies and Language, Literacy and Sociocultural Studies at the University of New Mexico, USA.

Ditlhake Kefilwe Johanna is a social worker and Lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Maria do Carmo dos Santos Gonçalves is the Director of the Scalabrinian Centre for Migration Studies (CSEM), Brazil.

Ronald Lutz is Lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences of Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany, Lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences of Erfurt, Germany, and Research Associate at the School of Social Work, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Karsten Kiewitt is Professor of Inclusive Education at the Clara Hoffbauer University of Applied Sciences, Potsdam, Germany.