Indigenous Studies Network
This network ran from 2022 to 2023.
As the world undergoes a new regime of globalisation in the face of multiple crises, there is much deliberation within Indigenous communities and academic circles about the concept of indigeneity. Our proposed Network critically engaged with the history and politics of the category of indigeneity and discussed it comparatively, to trace both its steadiness and malleability across space and time. Indigeneity covers a range of issues, including: colonial and settler colonial legacies and engagements with difference; territorial and ecological struggles; vernacular sovereignties; questions of historicization and museumization; cultural, religious and linguistic revitalization. By exploring at once the situatedness and shared quality of such struggles we aimed to develop conceptual tools to understand indigeneity and its contribution to some of the most important predicaments of our time. Defined as a form of 'rooted cosmopolitanism,' indigeneity promises to renew debates initiated by William James on the nature, scope, and value of pluralism. We sought to move beyond binaries such as colonizer and colonized; resistance and oppression through the lens of decolonial and indigenous methodologies. Doing so we intended to challenge the epistemic boundaries of Eurocentric discussions about Indigeneity through pluralistic thinking on the ground.
Contact: indigenousstudies@torch.ox.ac.uk
