Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land

Brian Burkhart is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma where he mentors PhD students studying Native American and Indigenous philosophy. He was an Associate Professor and Director of American Indian studies at California State University, Northridge, from 2010 to 2018. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma but was born and raised in the Navajo Nation of Arizona. Burkhart was one of the early members of the American Philosophical Association’s Native American and Indigenous Philosophy committee and was chair of that committee from 2011 to 2015. He is a Southern powwow singer and Cherokee hymn singer.

• PrefaceIntroductionPART 1. The Coloniality of Western Philosophy and Indigenous Resistance through the LandChapter 1. Philosophical Colonizing of People and LandChapter 2. Indigenizing Native Studies: Beyond the Delocality of Academic DiscourseChapter 3. Refragmenting Philosophy through the Land: What Black Elk and Iktomi Can Teach Us about LocalityPART 2. Indigenizing Morality through the Land: Decolonizing Environmental Thought and Indigenous FuturesInterludeChapter 4. Everything Is Sacred: Iktomi Lessons in Ethics without Value and Value without AnthropocentrismChapter 5. The Metaphysics of Morality in Locality: The Always Already Being in Motion of KinshipChapter 6. The Naturalness of Morality in Locality: Relationships, Reciprocity, and RespectBibliographyIndex

“'This guy knows stuff.'”—Iktomi (probably). In Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land, Brian Burkhart lets us know that locality is perhaps our one true universality and thus our redemptive future, reminds us that Iktomi is both inadvertent and purposive creator and destroyer, and shows us that Western philosophy isn’t the cogito it thinks it is. This work is a vital addition to understanding the oncoming Indigenous millennium. Highly recommended."—Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., Associate Professor and Director, Indigenous Nations Studies, Portland State University "Brian Burkhart offers us a decolonial Indigenous philosophy that brings thought, language, meaning, being, knowing, value, and ethics back to the land. With the help of Iktomi, the playful Lakota Spider Trickster, he shows how the principal puzzles persistently hobbling Western philosophical debates are actually trickster entanglements generated by overly abstract, delocalized thinking. The creative outcome of Burkhart’s efforts—Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land—is a stunning achievement that will have a profound and lasting impact upon contemporary academic philosophy, environmental ethics, decolonial studies, and Indigenous studies."—James Maffie, Senior Lecturer, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland"This book is an exciting and timely interjection into the current trend within academia regarding projects that describe or prescribe methods and practices of decolonization and Indigenization. The most innovative aspect of this project is his articulation and development of the “trickster methodology.” This framework not only aids in the development of Native epistemology within the fields of Native Philosophy and Native Studies, it also introduces to the broader field of epistemology a frame through which to better understand the lived and living narrative epistemologies of Native and Indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups."—Shay Welch, Associate Professor, Religious Studies & Philosophy, Spelman College