Subjects of intergenerational justice: indigenous philosophy, the environment and relationships

Western political philosophy and classical liberalism are irreconcilable with Indigenous philosophy in their current form. This is the argument at the core of Christine Winter’s book Subjects of Intergenerational Justice: Indigenous Philosophy, the Environment, and Relationships. For this reason, Winter proposes decolonizing Western understandings of justice, because so-called justice will perpetuate injustice toward Indigenous Peoples if it is unwilling to learn from and incorporate Indigenous worldviews. Furthermore, there are fundamental problems at the heart of Western justice theorizing that Indigenous philosophy could resolve; however, to do so would require challenging some of the entrenched assumptions sustained in Western philosophy and liberalism. Winter does just that by placing liberal approaches to justice and intergenerational environmental justice in dialogue with Māori and Aboriginal philosophy and approaches to justice.

Winter levels several trenchant and perceptive critiques against liberal conceptions of justice, which she then uses to elaborate a theory of Indigenous intergenerational environmental justice. She argues that while the Western approaches to justice claim to be neutral and universal, they are neither, because they are ‘epistemologically ignorant’ – a concept she draws from Charles Mills – to Indigenous worldviews (13). Liberal intergenerational justice privileges the individual human as the subject of justice and bearer of rights, which means it is individualistic and anthropocentric. While one might assume that intergenerational justice sustains the temporal sensitivity to grapple with environmental problems like climate change – whose consequences reverberate into the distant future – Winter emphasizes how this approach has a limited capacity to think beyond the present. Classical liberalism upholds an instrumental and mechanistic worldview that views land as a resource to own, extract, or exploit. As a corrective to the limitations inherent to liberal justice, Winter elaborates a relational ethic based on Māori and Aboriginal worldviews.

Indigenous intergenerational justice, as Winter conceives it, builds on weaknesses within human rights and the capabilities approach to justice. In the capabilities approach, dignity, which confers subjectivity and rights, is the purview of humans and sentient non-human animals. Winter offers a capacious rendering of dignity for the more-than-human world that draws upon the Māori concepts of mauri (‘life force’), tapa (‘potentiality to be’), and mana (‘authority’ or ‘respect worthiness’), which are vested in all earthly entities (p. xiii, xiv, 158). Rather than a limited, anthropocentric, and individualistic understanding of dignity, Winter calls for ‘Dignity for everything’ (p. 47). If all environmental entities have intrinsic dignity, then they are all worthy of subjectivity and rights. For this reason, Winter argues that when Aotearoa conferred personhood status to Te Urewera, the Whanganui River, and Mount Taranaki, it was a step in the right direction toward recognizing their dignity. By acknowledging the subjectivity of these environmental entities, which the Māori-iwi (people) view as ancestors, the settler government of New Zealand codified elements of Māori philosophy aimed at decentering the Western anthropocentric understanding of justice.

The Indigenous relational ethic proposed by Winter aims to overcome the instrumental and mechanistic worldview at the heart of liberalism. By emphasizing how humans are always already in relation with all elements of the more-than-human world, relationality destabilizes the hierarchy that privileges humans over other species and the environment. Rather than viewing the environment as a stockpile of resources to plunder, this ethic positions humans in a custodial relationship with the land. Where liberalism necessitates property relations, the radical intervention of relationality emphasizes the duties and obligations that humans have toward the natural world. Where dignity confers subjectivity, relationality demands human responsibility for their more-than-human kin.

In the penultimate chapter, Winter demonstrates how the mechanistic temporality perpetuated by liberalism is incompatible with Indigenous understandings of time. This incompatibility is particularly poignant in Western understandings of intergenerational justice, in which time is typically rendered as a linear procession from the past through the present to the future. However, within Māori philosophy ‘the past is always in the present, and the future is always in the past’ (154). Rather than the forward march of competitive progress, Māori temporalities are cyclical and spiraling. Embedded within the present moment are elements of the past (ancestors), the present (us), and the future (kin). Beyond conceiving of temporality in a cyclical fashion, Winter again decenters the human in the temporality implied within intergenerational justice. If human duties and obligations extend to one’s future kin, and the present owe future generations a life of dignity, then this obligation to a future life of dignity must extend to the nonhuman world as well.

A relational approach to intergenerational justice stresses that humans have duties and obligations to the nonhuman world, their ancestors, and future generations. Further, this approach emphasizes a custodial relationship to the more-than-human world. Rather than allowing extractive capitalism and global imperialism to exploit human livelihoods and damage the earth, present-day humans owe a world of dignity and integrity to future generations and their ancestors. For this to be even a remote possibility would necessitate a massive, worldwide effort to combat climate change at every level. While Winter briefly discusses climate action in Chapter 5, the theory of Indigenous intergenerational environmental justice would benefit from a sustained discussion of climate justice throughout the book. Finally, while Winter discusses her decision to exclude theories of recognition from her analysis in the book’s conclusion, Winter’s incisive critiques and grasp of Indigenous philosophy would undoubtedly refine the theory of recognition.

Provocations aside, Winter provides a brilliant vision for decolonizing liberal intergenerational environmental justice and the capabilities approach with Indigenous philosophy.