Exploring Indigenous relationality to inform the relational turn in sustainability science

ABSTRACT

There is growing attention to the idea of a relational turn in sustainability science. Scholarship that names and discusses this trend briefly recognizes Indigenous knowledge traditions as relevant to relational turn conversations, but it has not yet elaborated on this deep source of insight. To begin this elaboration, we describe how Indigenous understandings offer practices and approaches that are highly relevant to sustainability science’s relational turn. We engage in this elaboration with two core goals. The first is recognitional (or epistemic) justice – that is, to recognize and credit the foundational and profound elements of relationality within Indigenous thinking, which has embodied, understood and practiced deep relationality for millennia. The second goal is to elucidate how Indigenous thinking can help to re-envision the practices of sustainability science – specifically, via the directive that research must be conducted in service of the needs of the larger, beyond-human collective. We summarize three tenets of Indigenous thinking strongly related to sustainability science’s relational turn: a centering of natural law, ethics and protocols rather than human well-being; a focus on a collective beyond humans; and relationality that involves more than ontology. We describe how Indigenous understandings can inform sustainability science on three levels: researchers’ internal processes and motivations; conceptual foundations; and research practice. We close with reflections on the role of Indigenous epistemologies in a paradigm shift in sustainability science.

EDITED BY:

• Rosemary Hill

KEYWORDS:

• Epistemic justice
• Indigenous knowledge
• Native science
• Natural Law
• paradigm shift
• recognitional justice
• research ethics
• responsibility

Introduction and motivation

There is increasing discussion of an emerging crucial trend in the highly interdisciplinary field of sustainability science: a relational turn. In probably the most influential presentation of sustainability science’s relational turn and its history, West et al. (2020) draw mostly from Western/European scholars of the relational turn in the social sciences and humanities. They briefly recognize Indigenous knowledge traditions as relevant to the conversation and offer a few examples of Indigenous scholarship and practice that embrace or embody relationality. We see a need to more consistently link discussions about sustainability science’s relational turn to research and decision-making that embraces epistemological diversification. Our two-part motivation, upon which we elaborate below, is that such a linking can contribute to both epistemic justice and to sustainability that ultimately serves human and non-human futures.

To this end, we explain and offer more substance regarding Indigenous thinking, with a focus on its relational aspects. We seek to offer a bridge between existing descriptions of the relational turn in sustainability science (e.g. West et al. 2020; Walsh et al. 2021) and deeper discussions of Indigenous (relational) epistemologies (e.g. Vásquez-Fernández 2020). We hope that this piece can inform the burgeoning conversation on the relational turn. Yet in addition, given the centrality of relational thinking to Indigenous approaches, we also hope that this piece may serve more generally as an entry point for those seeking insights into Indigenous ways of knowing and how those ways of knowing may support paradigm shifts in sustainability science and environmental management.

Indigenous epistemologies are immensely complex; descriptions of them fill many books, generations and traditions. These epistemologies are infused with and deeply informed by many important histories and values, including ancestors, traditions, sacredness and ceremonies. We offer a small slice of this much larger, multi-faceted dialog: a slice focused on relationality in Indigenous ways of knowing. We describe how Indigenous epistemologies are rooted in ways of being and thinking in which relationality has been central for thousands of years and offer concepts and references that can continue to shape the important conversation about sustainability science’s relational turn. Because Indigenous thinking practices are fluid, place-based and keenly responding to dynamic conditions, it would be inappropriate to offer a specific roadmap (Mohawk 2010; Fixico 2013). Our aim, instead, is to invite curiosity, purposefulness and reflection on the part of sustainability scholars. Indeed, a spirit of continual question-asking and mutual development resonates strongly with Indigenous epistemologies, wherein processes of engagement are more central than universal dictates.

Relational thinking is procedurally central to Indigenous epistemological ways: it is foundational to fulfilling collective responsibilities and engaging with principles and meanings through everyday practices. West et al. (2020) describe a shift in sustainability research toward relational ontology, which involves recognition of, for instance, the fundamental importance of processes, agency beyond humans, and the lack of a dichotomy between ecology and society. They highlight how relationality can contribute to a paradigm shift in sustainability science and how moving away from human-nature dichotomies can be a leverage point toward sustainability. Here, we demonstrate how Indigenous approaches offer specific paths forward for paradigm shifts and transformation (Mohawk 2010; Fixico 2013), including and moving beyond examples highlighted in existing publications about sustainability’s relational turn (West et al. 2020, 2021; Walsh et al. 2021). Indigenous knowledge systems offer avenues to link ontological insights to epistemology and action (Fixico 2013), including research design and practice (Tuhiwai Smith 2005; Wilson 2008; Kovach 2009; Martinez 2014). Indigenous approaches also connect to multiple leverage points for sustainability in addition to removing nature-human dichotomy (e.g. unleashing latent values of responsibility (Chan et al. 2020)). Overall, we call attention to the ways sustainability science can learn from and respect Indigenous relational epistemologies as sustainability science scholars and practitioners collectively foster the relational turn.

Two related issues motivate this piece and the broader call to move beyond surface treatment of Indigenous approaches in conversations such as that related to sustainability science’s relational turn. Attending to Indigenous ways of knowing is important because 1) doing so promotes recognitional (epistemic) justice, and 2) Indigenous thinking is uniquely suited to guide necessary paradigm shifts for a relational turn. More specifically:

1. Recognitional (or epistemic) justice relates to the need to recognize and give credit to the foundational and profound histories of relationality within Indigenous thinking, which has embodied, understood and practiced deep relationality for millennia. Recognitional injustice takes place when Indigenous peoples and Indigenous thinking are forced to work within conceptual, institutional and legal frameworks that currently fail to provide space for multiple knowledge systems (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006; Whyte 2011; Muller 2014; Watson 2018; Hoelting et al. 2022). Injustice further manifests when knowledges and practices that have been developed in Indigenous contexts get sold, promoted, truncated, bastardized, or even celebrated as new within dominant-society spaces (Todd 2016). We acknowledge that various knowledge traditions have explored relational approaches, in sometimes convergent and/or overlapping ways. Rather than debating ‘who was first’ (in acknowledging relationality), we focus on sharing insights and understandings from Indigenous traditions, which have until now received less attention in relational turn discussions (though other examples of deepening engagement with Indigenous epistemologies in sustainability science exist, both in standalone papers (Williams 2013; Vásquez-Fernández and Ahenakew pii tai poo taa 2020) and in a Sustainability Science Special Feature on ‘Weaving Indigenous and Sustainability Sciences’ (Johnson et al. 2016)).

2. Deeper engagement with Indigenous perspectives offers crucial insight for re-envisioning the practices of sustainability science; Indigenous knowledge adds important dimensions to discussions of relationality in sustainability science. As one prominent example, many Indigenous traditions make, if implicitly, an important relationality-related suggestion: if the relational turn is to help move toward sustainability, research must be conducted in service of the needs of the larger community or collective. The ‘collective’, as we use it here and as Indigenous thinkers and doers teach, extends far beyond humans to include living beings (human and other-than-human) and non-living beings (such as rocks), and beyond linear conceptualizations of time to include active presences of past and future. The collective is known and understood through processes of beauty, humor and the dimensionality of ideas.

Though our overall message and many of its constituent points find foundation in, are beholden to, and resonate with many Indigenous societies around the world, we acknowledge the enormous and non-collapsible diversity within global Indigenous ways of being. We focus our discussion and examples on North American and Hawaiian Indigenous worldviews and scholarship, due to our histories and areas of expertise: one of us (DM) is Mescalero Apache (North American Indigenous) and has an extensive body of Indigenous scholarship; two of us (KH and RG) have European (i.e. settler) heritage and have worked with Indigenous partners for many years. Though we build from these contexts, fundamental to our message is that these insights resonate, to varying degrees and with different emphases, with many Indigenous societies, and that they are also relevant far beyond Indigenous populations. We offer them here with a strong sense of responsibility, to epistemic justice and to Indigenous origins and traditions.

We organize this contribution as follows. First, we summarize how Indigenous perspectives deeply integrate relationality, and how these perspectives can inform a relational turn that most effectively contributes to sustainable futures (Section 1). We then describe how Indigenous understandings can inform sustainability science practice on three levels (internal, conceptual, action-based) (Section 2) before concluding with reflections on the relational turn and transformative change.

Section 1: some tenets of Indigenous relational thinking

In this section, we suggest how understanding Indigenous ways of knowing informs and can ground sustainability science’s relational turn. We note three core elements of many Indigenous approaches: Natural Law and centering ethics and protocols rather than human well-being; a focus on a collective beyond humans; and relationality that involves much more than ontology. Indigenous thinking clarifies these elements as centrally important to sustainability science’s relational turn, rather than a sidenote relevant to only some sustainability science pursuits.

A recognition of ‘Natural Law’ as primary source of ethics, protocols and ways of being

In Indigenous understandings, lessons from and experiences of the natural world are essential to life. Those lessons guide and teach in many ways – via, for example, beauty and awe (Carbaugh 1999). Rather than a more instrumental beauty that can be common in Western discourse, this beauty is deeply relational (Vizenor 2009); it continually reminds and awakens gratitude and awe (Kermoal et al. 2016). This awe, similarly, inspires understanding of the simultaneous depth, complexity and simplicity of the natural world. These insights and guidance are known as original (Indigenous) instructions provided by Natural Law (Basso 1996, Nelson 2008; Redvers et al. 2020). Natural Law¹ refers to the checks and balances and the consequences and rewards of nature, ‘native teachings that are fundamental, primal, and essential to the maintenance of life on earth. … No matter how hard our mischievous human species tries to change them or transcend them, they are beyond our control. And yet many of us have forgotten that’ (Nelson 2008, p. 18). These instructions and their ethos (i.e. Indigenous premises and practices) have profound implications:

‘The laws are absolute. Our instructions, and I’m talking about for all human beings, our instructions are to get along. Understand what these laws are. Get along with laws, and support them and work with them. We were told a long time ago that if you do that, life is endless. It just continues on and on in great cycles of regeneration, great powerful cycles of life regenerating and regenerating and regenerating’. (Lyons 2008, p. 24)

This illustrates why Natural Law underpins human responsibilities to and respect for nature. Indigenous relational thinking teaches us that humans are, whether we acknowledge it or not, in an obligated relationship with the rest of the world; this creates an unavoidable pact, rather than an optional caring relationship. Kimmerer calls this ‘the covenant of reciprocity’ (Kimmerer 2017) because it is sacred – the ultimate duty. Cajete (2000) writes that in Native perspectives, ‘living in harmonious and sustainable relationship with the land [is] a sacred responsibility, tempered with the realization that neglect of this responsibility would bring dire results and retribution from the Earth’ (p. 212). These descriptions of covenants and sacred responsibilities respond to lessons and teachings of Natural Law. They make clear the centrality, in Indigenous epistemologies, of care that is entwined with other principles such as reciprocity and responsibility.

The interaction between care and responsibility also relates to Natural Law. Though one influential discussion of sustainability science’s relational turn (West et al. 2020) discusses the role of care with reference to Indigenous practice, it stops short of addressing multiple care-adjacent concepts that are foundational to Indigenous approaches. All of West et al.’s (2020) substantive citing of Indigenous sources relate to this idea of care as a ‘central, animating force in stewardship, differentiating notions of stewardship in sustainability science from conventional approaches to management and governance’ (p. 315). West et al. (2020) also note that the more relational form of care ‘involves practical work’ and ‘active political engagement’ (West et al. 2020, p. 314). This presentation of care aligns with responsibility but does not explicitly address the non-optionality of care inherent in Natural Law. That is, the problem with the ‘care’ concept that is increasingly common in sustainability and conservation literature more generally is that it can, in some contexts, have an air of optionality. This understanding of care omits the element of necessity: of an obligation to engage with the perpetuation of life.

Though it is increasingly recognized that Indigenous peoples are effective caretakers of sustainable social-ecological systems (CBD 2010; Garnett et al. 2018; Ogar et al. 2020), it is perhaps less well understood that the success of Indigenous approaches often rests on their recognition and pursuit of traditional responsibilities to the collective. We consciousness, which we define in the next section, ‘teaches us our responsibilities and obligations of humility, generosity, respect and reciprocity’ (Martinez 2016, p. 226). This consciousness arises from a deep understanding of Natural Law and is a core underpinning of Indigenous knowledge systems. It is also a foundation from which Indigenous understandings of relationality arise. To properly acknowledge Indigenous epistemologies, we must understand the importance of Natural Law and the responsibilities that arise from it.

This relates to the fundamental premise that in Indigenous perspectives, relationality involves practicing principles. Relationality is how primary principles are practiced. These principles are central pillars of tradition and of existing; human well-being aids our ability to fulfill these principles. Various authors have described principles as central to Indigenous ways of being. Common principles mentioned are respect, humility, generosity and reciprocity (Ambler 1997; Wilson 2008; Kovach 2009; Brayboy et al. 2012; Martinez 2014, 2016, 2021). Practicing this suite of principles, including in the context of research, is ‘ceremony’ (Wilson 2008) and supports responsible engagement with all relations.

A collective that extends beyond humans and Western paradigms

West et al. (2020) begin by describing the need to shift away from models that separate humans and nature. This – decolonizing the binary – is a foundational shift for a relational turn (Vizenor 2009). However, the ensuing discussion about the relational turn (West et al. 2020, 2021; Raymond et al. 2021) remains quite beholden to classic dichotomies of a Eurocentric worldview, particularly in its often-implicit centering of human needs and human experience. (Also notable is that Eurocentric worldviews, especially until recently, further centered a small subset of humankind’s (white, male, upper-class) needs and experiences.) West et al.’s (2020) conclusion points to this human-centeredness: ‘relational approaches have helped sustainability researchers to develop non-dualistic accounts of human-nature connectedness that better reflect the complexity of human experience’ (p. 319).

This is a clear example of how, even when scholars recognize relational ontology, there is still a danger of focusing on relationships from humans’ perspectives – perhaps because Western thought subtly but powerfully guides humans to describe relations through human (i.e. ‘white human’) lenses. Indigenous relational thinking teaches us that focusing on human experience solely for humans’ sake is harmful: the centering of human needs/wants is out of alignment with Natural Law and thus will undermine sustainability goals and harm the collective. In Indigenous thinking, principles often support the inclusive well-being of the collective. Martinez (2014) offers a concise conceptualization of this inclusive Indigenous consciousness: she describes a ‘we consciousness’ that ‘is fundamental to how Natives talk and express their lives. We includes the nonphysical as well as the interrelated relationships with nature and all our [human and other-than-human] relatives’ (p. 6, italics added). Indigenous thinking has highlighted these meaning-rich relationships for thousands of years. Recognition of all our relations, as common in Indigenous epistemological and traditional practices, acknowledges implicit connections between humans and non-humans. It acknowledges a rich web of meaningful, relationship-dependent knowing, beauty and lessons (Whyte et al. 2016; Zanotti and Palomino-Schalscha 2016).

The ideas of we consciousness and all our relations provide examples of how Indigenous thinking can inform sustainability science’s relational turn. Perhaps the most fundamental way is by offering a powerful reminder to center a holistic understanding of who and what matters. A more subtle contribution of we consciousness is that it can guide how non-human relationality, and/or posthuman concepts such as multispecies relationality are operationalized. Sustainability science researchers have used assemblage theory (Deleuze and Guattari 1978; DeLanda 2016) and Actor-Network Theory (Latour 2005; Law 2009) to identify other-than-humans (nature, technology, infrastructures, etc.) as entities with agency with whom humans have relationships. Examples include pests, climate cycles, spices, documents, ships and water pumps (Dwiartama and Rosin 2014; Contesse et al. 2021). These agents’ material characteristics and symbolic meanings are conceptualized to constrain or enable human agency, including in ways that impact sustainability (Contesse et al. 2021). In these applications of relational theories to sustainability topics, however, the epistemological and ethical importance of meaningful, principle-infused relationships between humans and non-human actors – which could also be called ethically beholden multi-species assemblages – has been little discussed. Indigenous relationality aligns more with strands of Western relational thinking that highlight ethics in relations (which is not random coincidence; many of these strands draw on Indigenous knowledge). Examples include multispecies studies (van Dooren et al. 2016), material feminisms (Alaimo et al. 2008) (or feminist new materialism (Truman 2020)), vital materialism (Bennett 2010), agential realism (Barad 2007), practice theory (Bourdieu 1977) and affect theory (Gregg et al., 2010).

Relationality must include epistemology

Indigenous thinking provides guidance on how to integrate a focus on the collective, i.e. a focus beyond humans, in processes of knowledge production and ensuing responsibilities. This guidance involves moving beyond acknowledging and describing webs of relationships between human and other-than-human actors, as discussed above (relational ontology), to acknowledging and acting in accordance with relational epistemology.

A shift toward relational ontology, which understands the world as comprised of processes of unfolding relations rather than discrete entities, is a crucial part of a relational turn for sustainability science, but that ontological shift alone may not lead to the transformative change. Though West et al. (2020) focus mostly on ontology – on describing a relational reality – they ultimately recognize that elaboration of relational ontologies can only take us so far; we also need relational epistemologies. Indigenous perspectives underscore this: accurately describing reality (i.e. getting the ontology and the methods right) will rarely, on its own, lead us to sustainability. We need an entire approach to knowledge (i.e. epistemology) that offers tools for living well and sustainably within a web of relations, rather than tools that reduce and categorize to understand, control and manage objects. Indigenous relationality offers necessary (epistemological) values and beliefs coupled with practices that enable a fuller comprehension of relational ontologies (i.e. realities of interconnectedness and mutual dependence). These intertwined values and practices suggest methods to gain such knowledge in support of sustaining the collective.

Indigenous relational epistemologies elucidate the disconnect between recognizing the inseparability between humans and non-humans, as do West at al., but continuing to only (or hugely preferentially) consider the experience and well-being of humans. This is a critical omission in current discussions of sustainability science’s relational turn that cuts to the heart of sustainability failures: by negating or resisting a holistic understanding of well-being, we continue to center human needs and interests. This might achieve short-term human well-being, but it will consistently threaten the long-term well-being of all. A holistic understanding of well-being can be considered a relational axiology (i.e. a relational approach to what is valuable and desired).

Attending only partially to relational thinking (i.e. failing to consider the interconnected elements of axiology and epistemology alongside ontology) has multiple intertwined potential repercussions. First, we may harm knowledge systems, especially Indigenous knowledge systems, that have been misrepresented, exploited and inadequately understood. Second, and partly because this first repercussion is associated with harm to the more-than-human world, we are less likely to achieve sustainability.

Section 2: how Indigenous relational thinking can contribute to a paradigm shift in sustainability science

West et al.’s (2020) suggest that a relational turn could contribute to a ‘paradigm shift in sustainability science’ (p. 304). Indigenous approaches can be crucial to such a shift. Cajete (2000), in his work on Native Science, describes how the values of responsibility and reciprocity intertwine with research. He writes that Native Science’s ‘ultimate aim is not explaining an objectified universe, but rather learning about and understanding responsibilities and relationships and celebrating those that humans establish with the world. Native science is also about mutual reciprocity, which … presupposed a responsibility to care for, sustain and respect the rights of other living things, plants, animals, and the place in which one lives’ (p. 79). Indigenous and indigenist scholarship offer many responses to the question (e.g. as raised by Raymond et al. (2021) and further discussed by West et al. (2021)) of how relational thinking can manifest in environmental research.

These general principles can be integrated in research practice in several ways. First, via internal processes and motivations: why and for whom are we doing this research? Second, via conceptual foundations: what ideas are involved and how? Third, via research design and action: what are we doing; who is involved in the research, and how? Below we elaborate on these three arenas.

Researchers’ internal motivations and reflections: why do the work?

Indigenous relational thinking can inform how researchers consider their motivations for conducting research and reflect upon their research practice and outcomes. On a personal, internal level, Indigenous relational thinking requires that researchers spend time clarifying what motivates or initiates their research – a version of reflexivity that foregrounds reflection on how the work impacts the beyond-human collective. Core questions include: ‘why are we doing this?’; ‘why do we care?’; ‘what does it matter?’ (Martinez 2014, p. 10). Indigenous intellectual traditions demand that research must serve all relations. Martinez (2014, 2016, 2021) offers additional questions that suggest the need to consider this responsibility: ‘what truth do you want to hear?’ and ‘what reality will you create?’ Whereas Western scientific practice often overlooks these responsibilities or views them as secondary, reflecting on these kinds of questions is requisite preparation for research aligned with Indigenous epistemologies (Kovach 2009).

Indigenous scholarship consistently recognizes the centrality of these reflective internal practices and offers diverse suggestions of protocols and practices that can help guide researchers in these reflections, as these protocols and practices are mechanisms to meet obligations and fulfill responsibilities (Tuhiwai Smith 2005; Wilson 2008; Martinez 2014). These internal processes are reinforced through collective traditions and actions that are practiced and witnessed in language, original instructions, ceremonies, teasing and everyday expectations. It is here that attention to what is appropriate is crucial: appropriateness of research practices will vary between Indigenous researchers, members of particular communities, those who have spent long periods of time invested in particular communities, and newcomers.

Conceptual foundations: relational and ethical

To respect Indigenous thinking, we must question which epistemological options are possible, and which are used. Research conducted in accordance with Indigenous epistemologies must manifest through methodologies that are both relational and ethical (Wilson 2008). Closely related to epistemological options are questions of language: what terms are we using; how do these terms guide (and limit) our approaches (e.g. is language colonized)? Many terms, and concomitant understandings, cannot be fully translated into English. Seeking to understand these terms, however incomplete that understanding may be, can help to recognize how particular terms may be limiting the options we consider (often implicitly) as we think about sustainability science and practice (Kimmerer 2017).

The premise of responsibility manifests in research practice through relational accountability: ‘being accountable to your relations’ (Wilson 2008, p. 77). This means that ‘researchers fulfill their roles and responsibilities’ (Latulippe 2015, p. 5) through their methods, their methodologies, and how they summarize and share findings. These Indigenous research practices can be considered “the building of more relations’ or constructing more ‘knots’ in the web of relationships that produce knowledge” (Wilson 2008, p. 79). Relational accountability ‘means that the methodology needs to be based in a community context (be relational) and has to demonstrate respect, reciprocity and responsibility (be accountable as it is put into action)’ (Wilson 2008, p. 99). Relational accountability thus starts as a concept, but it is intricately connected to action, i.e. the practice of research.

Research practice: uncovering beauty and awe – respectfully

There is a recognized connection between Indigenous ways of knowing and relational research practice (Wilson 2008; Liboiron 2021). Indeed, West et al. most heavily cite Indigenous contexts when they discuss suggested ways of moving forward with relationality in mind (Christie 2013; Brattland et al. 2018). Indigenous ways of exploring and understanding the world (i.e. conducting research) are built and sustained through being ‘in relation’. They thus provide crucial models for relational research.

Indigenous research approaches attend closely to the need for relational research process. Classic work in this space includes Tuhiwai-Smith’s detailed treatise on how to decolonize research, which emphasizes that research should address needs in Indigenous communities (Tuhiwai Smith 2005). Other scholars cited throughout the present paper repeat and develop these sentiments; still other work explores the extent and implications of Indigenous community engagement in sustainability-related research (David-Chavez and Gavin 2018). The core importance of relational research processes also aligns closely, and sometimes overlaps, with much work in the environmental justice space, which emphasizes the importance of participatory approaches and community-based research that move beyond tokenism and extractive practices (Walter 2009; Bell 2015).

If research is conducted in a relational way, which deviates from mainstream academic research practices that favor disciplinary focus and singular expertise, multiple outcomes emerge. Beauty and awe are experienced and shared, and the needs or wants of the collective, including our ancestors and futures, are more likely to be met. Martinez (2021) writes that Indigenous research methodologies require ‘relational practices and engagements that demand interventions with and against Western knowledge production. It is these relational expectations to humans, more-than-humans and other-than-humans (those that breathe and some that do not) that definitively shapes Indigenous epistemologies’ (p. 10–11). Indigenous scholars, as noted above, clearly identify the importance of conducting research in alignment with a set of core values (Ambler 1997; Wilson 2008; Kovach 2009; Martinez 2014, 2016, 2021). These values – which are known through and built upon Natural Law – are foundational building blocks for sustainability science’s relational turn.

Conclusion

We suggest that to achieve recognitional justice and sustainability, a relational turn in sustainability science must include deeper understanding of Indigenous relational thinking and what it means for research processes and desired outcomes. We echo the question that West et al. (2020) pose: what will a relational turn in sustainability science actually look like? Like West et al., we offer curiosity rather than definitive answers, and suggest that Indigenous approaches offer guidance to help bring relationality into practice. We hope that this paper can help to better integrate these approaches into the conversation about a relational turn.

Natural Law, which undergirds Indigenous epistemologies, is a recognition of deep coexistence and resulting responsibilities and obligations. It provides critical perspectives to see the transformational potential of a relational turn. Indigenous approaches offer almost limitless starting points for a paradigm shift in sustainability science. They spark awareness and internationalization that sustainability requires more than good (Western) science: it requires that the purpose of our research – and our engagements with the world through environmental management and stewardship more broadly – align with a foundational understanding of this relationality. A vital broader implication of relational thinking is that it opens the door for wider conversations about values (e.g. responsibility and respect), and our society needs those conversations (Sandel 2020). In some of the diverse approaches to relationality in the Western paradigm (e.g. complexity theory), relationality is presented as a value-free way of describing the world, while in other relational approaches, the existence of value-free knowledge is seen as impossible (Haraway 1988). Indigenous perspectives align more with the latter, and suggest that relationality is the door to analysis of and conversations about values, which are intertwined with relational ontology.

A central conundrum for many sustainability researchers is the ‘work-within-the-system’ vs. ‘change-the-system’ question. West et al. (2020) offer a sophisticated discussion of this conundrum, its nuances, and how researchers confront it. We agree with their general message that relational thinking is still very ‘edgy’, and that it likely makes sense to make concessions (e.g. use recognizable terms such as social-ecological feedbacks), at least for now. This allows the work to be more intelligible and compelling, to speak in ‘a language that power understands’ (Handler (1991), cited in Castree (2003)). Yet we agree with West et al. that even as we continue to work within existing systems, we must develop different approaches to understanding. We suggest that Indigenous approaches are crucial to this effort. Many Indigenous knowledge systems, unlike Eurocentric academic systems, have a foundational focus on sustaining life (Lyons CO 2008; Simpson 2017). Principles of balance and restraint are inextricable from them. We need understandings and tools that help us to be humble while meeting our obligations; said another way, we need epistemologies that encourage reciprocity and living in balance. Because we really do not have the option of acting in other ways, in any long term. This is what Indigenous approaches to relationality offer: a set of protocols and principles to remind us of our responsibilities in accordance with Natural Law and the flourishing of all our relations. These protocols and principles cannot be detailed in a short article such as this. To attempt this would risk presenting such practices as ‘ready-to-wear’, i.e. possible to implement without additional work and reflection. This could be damaging. Instead, we suggest that researchers who seek to engage with Indigenous relationality explore the resources we cite here. These resources provide more detailed accounts of how researchers might build from a starting point of shared understanding to put into practice the ideas we share here.

We recognize an important danger: that Indigenous approaches could be appropriated, incompletely understood and used inappropriately. We suggest that it is profoundly important that researchers resist trying, or claiming, to ‘do Indigenous research’ without a deep, sustained engagement with Indigenous epistemologies, methodologies, scholars and practitioners. Yet there is immense space between doing research in fully Indigenous ways and incorporating lessons from Indigenous epistemologies that are broadly relevant. Many of the messages of Indigenous approaches are, we suggest, applicable to all research, right away – and these messages are integral to achieving a just sustainability (Agyeman et al. 2003). We have focused this paper on these widely relevant messages. We encourage scholars to reflect on how to include some of these lessons, and on which aspects of these teachings are implementable by non-Indigenous scholars (Liboiron 2021). And perhaps more importantly, we encourage curiosity to continue learning from many sources, including written works we have cited, other Indigenous scholars, and Indigenous practitioners.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank one anonymous reviewer and Simon West, whose detailed and insightful peer review greatly improved and clarified this paper. We also thank Adrian Ivakhiv; consulting with him about foundational relational-thinking works in the “Western” literature was extremely helpful to our thinking and writing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

No specific funding supported this work.

Notes

1. We refer to ‘Natural Law’ as it is used in Indigenous writings, not in the formal legal sense that is used in Western philosophy (Finnis 2020). Indigenous writers refer to this concept as Natural Law and original instructions, among other terms (citations in main text). The concept of natural reason (Vizenor 2009) is also closely connected to Natural Law, and has been described as the way we come to understand Natural Law.