An important academic goal is to understand ongoing contestations in knowledge in the search to
engage everyday social practice and experiences as well as the social barriers and approaches
to peaceful human coexistence. This reader pulls together ideas concerning Indigenous
epistemologies (e.g. worldviews paradigms standpoints and philosophies) as they manifest
themselves in the mental lives of persons both from and outside the orbit of the usual
Euro-American culture. The book engages Indigenous knowledges as far more than a contest of the
marginals thereby challenging the way oppositional knowledges are positioned particularly in
the Western academy. Subsequently this book is a call to recognize and acknowledge Indigenous
knowledges as legitimate knowings in their own right and not necessarily in competition with
other sources or forms of knowledge. The project offers an opportunity for the critical thinker
to continue on a de-colonial anti-colonial intellectual journey in ways informed by Indigenous
theorizing.
