THE CLICHÉ OF SUSTAINABILITY: GOVERNING INDIGENEITY AND THE ANTHROPOCENEENTANGLEMENT

Abstract

This paper explores indigenous more-than human hybrid onto-epistemology within the ambit of sustainability paradigm that better capture the Anthropocene epoch. Indigenous more-than human hybrid onto-epistemology profoundly shapes how the indigenous people understand and relate to their environment. Their more-than human hybrid ontoepistemology includes among other things beliefs, knowledge, and Ancestral practices that reflect a relational approach to life and the cosmos. The analysis presented here is based on an understanding of the concept of Anthropocene as rejecting modernist assumptions and framings about a split between human and nature. It discusses respectively, the ways in which the dominant forms of decolonial critique and plurality of environmental imaginaries problematize the Eurocentric framing and the epistemic foundations that separate humans from nature in the Anthropocene as a universalizing concept. In fine, it is argued that the modernist assumptions of separation marginalize sustainability in a multiplicity of ways in the Anthropocene. It is further argued that indigenous more-than human hybrid ontoepistemology is a necessity if humanity is to survive many worlds on one planet and cope with the unprecedented catastrophic ecological destruction largely driven by modernist, anthropocentric, and capitalist land relations.