An Indigenous Relational Approach to Systemic Thinking and Being: Focus on Participatory Onto-Epistemology

Abstract

This article is structured around my locating a lacuna in the (mainstream) literature describing the history of the field of “systems thinking”. I investigate how dominant accounts of this history do not include an account of the contributions of Indigenous sages and scholars’ systemic thinking. Such thinking (and being) is grounded in a relational onto-epistemology and attendant axiology – where knowing is consciously tied to (re)generating reciprocal relations with others – human and more-than-human – as we enact worlds-in-the making. The argument is that at the moment of “knowing/inquiring” we co-constitute with other agents (and not only human ones) the worlds that are brought forth. Otherwise expressed, there are never spectators, only participants in ongoing world-construction. I explore the way of explaining this as proffered by authors from a variety of geographical contexts as a backdrop to indicating how Indigenous critical systemic thinking has not been catered for by those writing the history of the so-called “systems community”. This is despite many Indigenous scholars self-naming their understandings as being systemic. I indicate that exploring global superwicked problems from the standpoint of an Indigenous onto-epistemology includes pointing to, and experimenting further with, radically different options for thinking-and-being than those that thus far have been storied by those writing the history of systems thinking. I indicate why it is important to take seriously this approach, rather than drowning its contribution.