Finding our place at the table: A more‐than‐human family reunion

Abstract

Indigenous worlds are and always have been sites of more‐than‐human (MTH) agency and relationship, despite their largely marginalised status within geographic scholarship to date. The return to cosmologically‐informed earth‐oriented Indigenous Lifeworlds holds transformative power for mobilising collective action toward life‐affirming MTH futures for all. In this commentary, we, as two Indigenous PhD students (Alice, Naxi Chinese and Georgia, Te Whakatōhea Māori), draw on our respective ancestral instructions of kinship to suggest that engaging in MTH geographies is less a ‘discovery’ of new epistemologies and more akin to a praxis of ‘recovery’, similar to showing up to a family reunion. Thinking‐with the metaphor of a reunion, we contend that planetary futurity is contingent on Indigenous futurity, and that epistemic freedom is contingent on epistemic justice.

Antipodean more‐than‐human geographies: From the edges

“…The MTH knowledge infrastructure-the thinking, doing and its assemblagethus holds promise for Indigenous researchers seeking to 'radically rethink how we understand the world, what we privilege within it, how we relate to place and time, and how we do geography' (Barker & Pickerill, 2020, p. 655). This is explored further in McSherry and McLellan's (2023) commentary included in this issue.…”

“…Having said this, MTH geographies do provide fruitful opportunities for scholars to engage with decolonisation at multiple scales, as both Indigenous and Indigenousallied researchers (McSherry & McLellan, 2023;Sundberg, 2014;Thomas, 2015). We therefore see MTH geographies as potential spaces for the decolonial project, if careful attention is paid to the structural realities implicit within the academy.…”

“…The first explores the intersection of MTH geographies and decolonial research. McSherry and McLellan (2023) draw on Indigenous kinship to suggest that doing MTH geographical research-as emergent Indigenous researchers (Alice, Naxi-Indigenous Chinese/ P akeh a and Georgia, M aori-Te Whakat ohea) is akin to attending a family reunion with long-lost kin. In doing so, they posit that re-engaging in Indigenous and decolonial MTH geographies is to explicitly frame MTH scholarship as a mutual process of recovery and remembrance (as opposed to the 'discovery' of new onto-epistemologies).…”

Coloniality and Indigenous ways of knowing at the edges: Emplacing Earth kin in conservation communities

“…However, their Indigenous and colonial histories are quite different. Accounts from Aotearoa are considered, including by Indigenous scholars, in this journal (Yates, 2021), in this special issue (McSherry & McLellan, 2023), and in Aotearoa's literature (e.g., Jones & Hoskins, 2016; O'Malley & Kidman, 2017). Here, we will speak of Norway and Sápmi, the Sàmi homelands.…”