Indigenous Peoples and Settler Peoples: Immiscible World Views

Wednesday, Mar. 2, 2022
11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. MT

Indigenous STEM practitioners experience a collision of world views: traditional teachings of relationality or all my relations meaning human, non-human, living and what Western science calls “inanimate” entities with the Enlightenment perspective dominated by a deliberate separation of being (ontology) from knowing (epistemology). This dualist and positivist perspective is foreign to Indigenous understandings of reality. For us, knowing something is inseparable from its relationship with the knower. This collision implies having to make a choice, or having to live in two different realities. Indigenous STEM practitioners by necessity become “worldview bilingual”. Indigenous cosmologies mirror concepts in physics suggesting this collision is not universal.

Beginning with the history of the Métis Nation, a framework describing the worldviews in contrast will be developed. This looks at reports and media stories highlighting the contrasting perspectives through a narrative approach. The ultimate goal is to explore Indigenous cosmologies to leave listeners with a better understanding of why communication between those cosmologies can be challenging.