More than Stories, More than Myths: Animal/Human/Nature(s) in Traditional Ecological Worldviews

Abstract

Reason and rationality, upon which modern, westernized, societies have been founded, have powerfully characterized the nature of human relations with other species and with the natural world. However, countless indigenous and traditional worldviews tell of a very different reality in which humans, conceived of as instinctual and intuitive, are a part of a complex web of ecological relationships. Other species, elements of the natural world, and people are active participants in relations overflowing with communications, interactions sometimes recorded in ethnographies, or as ‘myths’ and ‘stories’. The present article draws upon a range of traditions to explore the biases which shape how indigenous and traditional life-ways are represented in westernized contexts; the phenomenon of receiving direct insight or intuitive knowing from more-than-human worlds; and the numerous valuable understandings regarding the nature of the human being, other species, and how to live well, that are offered by a deeper comprehension of different worldviews. I also argue that the various capacities for instinctual and intuitive knowledge which accompanies these life-ways are endemic to the human species yet overlooked, the correction of which might work to usefully recalibrate our ethical relations with each other, and with other life on earth.

Keywords

• earth
• worldviews
• indigenous wisdom traditions
• relationality
• ecology
• language
• human-animal studies
• more-than-human geography
• multispecies ethnography
• ecopsychology
• anthropology
• environmental philosophy
• decolonization
• intuition
• instinct
• myth
• non-verbal communication
• IK
• TEK