Indigenous and Subaltern Knowledges

Indigenous and subaltern knowledges are ways of knowing marginalized by colonial science, now recovered and asserted as legitimate sources of insight.

Definition

The study of indigenous and subaltern knowledge systems marginalized by colonialism and Western science, and of projects to recover and validate them.

Scope

This topic examines knowledge systems suppressed or devalued by colonialism and modern science: indigenous methodologies and research sovereignty, Santos's epistemologies of the South against 'epistemicide', and Mignolo's border thinking. It addresses how subaltern knowledges can be recovered and brought into dialogue with dominant ones.

Core questions

• Which ways of knowing did colonial science suppress?
• How can indigenous knowledge guide research and methodology?
• What would epistemic justice across knowledge systems require?

Key theories

Decolonizing methodologies

Linda Tuhiwai Smith argued that research itself has been colonial and outlined indigenous-led methodologies grounded in community sovereignty and values.

Epistemologies of the South

Boaventura de Sousa Santos argued against 'epistemicide' and for an ecology of knowledges that values diverse subaltern ways of knowing.

History

Drawing on indigenous and decolonial movements, scholars from the late 1990s argued that colonialism destroyed and devalued non-Western knowledge. Tuhiwai Smith's methodologies, Mignolo's border thinking, and Santos's epistemologies of the South consolidated this strand of critique.

Debates

Recovery versus appropriation

Scholars debate how indigenous knowledge can be validated without being extracted or assimilated into dominant frameworks, a concern central to Tuhiwai Smith.

Key figures

• Linda Tuhiwai Smith
• Boaventura de Sousa Santos
• Walter Mignolo

Seminal works

• tuhiwaismith1999
• santos2014

Frequently asked questions

What are 'subaltern knowledges'?

They are knowledge systems and ways of understanding the world held by marginalized peoples, often suppressed or dismissed by colonial science but valued in decolonial scholarship.