Reply To: Mon 14 Apr: The Perception of the Environment

Reply to Morag Ramsey

I agree, that while he sets out to challenge the hegemonic categorization of indigenous, he also (to some extent) provides a re-interpretation of who or what is ‘indigenous’. I, personally, consider this a by-product, as his main goal is to critique. But I do not think that he considers keeping the divide between indigenous and non-indigenous (although in the paper he does not go against this divide). As you said, this division is too simplistic.

Ingold connects the indigenous people of Manitoba and Australia, not because all indigenous people perceive the world in the same way, but because they perceive the world differently from how the universal hegemonic UN categorisation says they do. They helped to bring his point across that the genealogical model, a model which perceives time as a horizontal and vertical lines disassociated with each other, does not accurately represent how indigenous people ‘dwell’ in the world.

What Ingold is proposing in his paper, is not another universal characterisation of what or who is indigenous. But a genealogical model converted through the lens of phenomenology into a rhizomic one.