Indigenous Epistemology

As a young man in my college years I became interested in the question of what man can know and how does he know it. The philosophical term applied to this question is 'epistemology'.

Okay - why would I go on about some six-syllable word that nobody cares about? For me personally, the word 'epistemology' represents a mindset, a worldview, and that there is an aboriginal, indigenous worldview with it's epistemological ways of knowing the world that are the basis of the American Indian way of being in the world. It is my hope that all who read these words will truly "know" on the most basic level what the indigenous way of knowing the world is. To my understanding, we will not move to the next level of being without this knowledge.


There is an indigenous or aboriginal epistemology that is characterized by some basic themes. Four of these themes are:

walking in balance or being in right relationship with yourself and your community, and being in harmony with everything in the circle of ife;

the knowledge of the presence of other dimensions of being such as the realms of the ancestors or the spirits, dimensions that mirror the life on earth such as in the expression "as above, so below";

the knowledge that all things are interconnected and alive and that all have consciousness - it is a lived experience that is felt when one walks in beauty, feels the aliveness of the earth, and is aware of the consciousness of the non-human world;

the concept of a Spirit or the spirits that can and do interact in the realm of the two-leggeds in ways that are supportive, but can also be mischievous or even malevolent.

These are indigenous ways of knowing in the world of the People. Walking in balance with all my relations, experiencing the multidimensional and mirrored as above/so below nature of reality, knowing the earth is alive and conscious, and allowing for contact with spirits/Spirit are epistemological features that are at the heart of indigenous and aboriginal ways of knowing.