Indigenous Semiotics in “The Transistor” by Shahnaz Bashir: Application of Roland Barthes’ Codes to Kashmiri Narrative

The research focuses on the indigenous critical perspective when applied through semiotics of Barthes’ codes to the Kashmiri narratives. The study briefly reviews indigenous perspective as explained by Professor Jody Byrd and Aileen Moreton-Robinson after giving reference to Heather Harris about indigenous epistemology. This follows linking it to semiotics through Barthes’ codes with their review and association to cultural indigenousness. The research also reviews the Kashmiri narrative tradition and analyses the short story “The Transistor” in the light of this theoretical perspective to show that Kashmiri indigenousness as presented through signs and symbols when interpreted as indigenous semiotics show the specific Kashmiri resistance, conflictual cultural practices, and indigenous sovereignty under paracolonialism. The research, however, falls short of proving how the Kashmiri cultural paradigm shifts under paracolonial presence which requires separate inquiry from another angle.

Ọmọ Tí A Kò Kọ́: Globalization and Cultural Education among New Generation Nigerian Yorùbá

This essay critically explores the semantic, phonological and philosophical implications of the sound “kọ” (build) in the Yorùbá proverb ́ Ọmọ tí a kò kọ́ ni yóò gbé ilé tí a kọ́ tà (the child that is not taught will eventually sell the house that is built). I will read the concept behind the sound as a multi-layered, multi-semantic meta-philosophical building block which not only showcases a serious aspect of indigenous epistemology and serving as a note of caution on Yorùbá education and its sociology of filial responsibilities, but could also be deployed to interrogate the emerging youth culture of the new generation Nigerian Yorùbá in the age of globalization. The essay draws on the semantic and philosophical content of kọ́ to articulate the argument that investments on material possession are counterproductive and antithetic to investment on human capital, the epitome of which is investing on one’s child/ ren. The essay concludes that the spirituality and permanency of the kọ of the ́ child’s mind is diagonally opposed to the superficiality and transience of the kọ́ of the building, a mere structure with limited value.

Gambling with the Windigo: Theorizing Indigenous Casinos and Gambling in Canada

The legacy of colonialism in Canada manifests through land dispossession, structural violence and assimilative policies. Casinos are an anomaly emerging in Canada, becoming major economic engines, generating capital for housing, education, health, and language and cultural rejuvenation programs. On the other hand, the literature on Indigenous casinos raises crucial questions about compromised sovereignty, addiction, and neocolonial economic and political entrapment. This article theorises Indigenous casinos as a modern expression of the windigo. In Algonquian oral history, the windigo is a mythic giant cannibal. The underlying meaning of the windigo is the consumption of Indigenous peoples leading to illness and death. One can become a windigo and consume others, and one must always be cautious of this possibility. I propose casinos and Indigenous-provincial gambling revenue agreements are modern-day windigook (plural form of windigo). This framework provides an urgently needed new theorisation of casinos, grounded in Indigenous epistemology and ontology.

Developing a researcher identity of relevance for remote Indigenous language education

PurposeThe study is an elaboration on how a graduate student discursively navigates a research identity through lived experiences as an Indigenous Sámi and writings on Indigenous, as well as other suitable research paradigms informing research on digital technologies in education. The guiding question is how a strategy of inquiry to be used in a PhD study on remote 1–9 Sámi language education can be informed by an Indigenous research paradigm. What philosophical guidelines are needed in navigating a sensitive field of investigation shaped by historical atrocities, discrimination and racist assumptions towards the Sámi people and other Indigenous, marginalised groups?Design/methodology/approachA dialogical approach has been used between readings of mainly Indigenous scholars' writings on the topic and anecdotes illustrating personal experiences from a lived life as Sámi.FindingsThrough this process, a researcher identity has developed, informed by the views from an Indigenous research paradigm that humans are ontologically equal to other entities, and epistemologically knowledge constitutes of relationships between different entities. This makes relationality a central feature of an Indigenous epistemology –not only between people but also including, for example, ideas, history, ancestors, future, artefacts and spirituality – which links epistemology to ontology. The axiological issue of accountability works holistically as “glue”.Originality/valueElucidating underlying arguments and motives behind both an Indigenous research paradigm and the development of researcher identity when designing and planning research is rarely done, which provides the originality of the present contribution.

Reply to Doing Indigenous Epistemology: Internal Debates About Inside Knowledge in Māori Society’, by Toon Van Meilj

Van Meijl is right to insist that epistemology must be about active, socially contested ‘ways of knowing’ and that understanding the relationship between such ways and their products is as much an ethnographic problem as it is a philosophical one. Ways of knowing, as social practices, are also, more generally, ways of being or becoming and so are not, in my view, radically distinct from the ontologies they produce and reproduce. Phillipe Descola argues strongly that his four ‘ontologies’ are also schemas of practice, fundamental ways that people know, experience and inhabit the world. I think Van Meijl is mistaken, therefore, when he characterises the ontological turn in anthropology as being about different relations between mind and matter. For me, it is most significantly about the different ways that personhood or subjectivity can be understood and embodied.<br>

Reply to Doing Indigenous Epistemology: Internal Debates About Inside Knowledge in Māori Society’, by Toon Van Meilj

Van Meijl is right to insist that epistemology must be about active, socially contested ‘ways of knowing’ and that understanding the relationship between such ways and their products is as much an ethnographic problem as it is a philosophical one. Ways of knowing, as social practices, are also, more generally, ways of being or becoming and so are not, in my view, radically distinct from the ontologies they produce and reproduce. Phillipe Descola argues strongly that his four ‘ontologies’ are also schemas of practice, fundamental ways that people know, experience and inhabit the world. I think Van Meijl is mistaken, therefore, when he characterises the ontological turn in anthropology as being about different relations between mind and matter. For me, it is most significantly about the different ways that personhood or subjectivity can be understood and embodied.<br>

The Research Process and Indigenous Epistemologies

This chapter discusses the research process and indigenous epistemologies, specifically, what is involved in conducting research using indigenous epistemology. The dictionary definition of epistemology is that it is a philosophical theory of knowledge that studies the nature and what constitutes knowledge. In this chapter, indigenous epistemology is contrasted with other epistemologies, as an epistemology that seeks to advance the voices of “indigenous” people, or the marginalized. The contention is that dominant epistemologies have downplayed the role and importance of indigenous knowledge in research. Such epistemologies have not given voice to the researched communities yet purport to have an understanding of their social worlds. This chapter therefore places indigenous epistemology at the fore for carrying out research with rather than on communities and using indigenous knowledge to theorize research and inform the theories and constructs used in the conduct of research.