Foundations of Indigenous Knowledge: Epistemology

FOUNDATIONS OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS: Epistemology, Ontology, and the Philosophy of Knowing - Volume Two IKS Global Textbook Series, Book One

What was done to indigenous knowledge - and what can be done to restore it?

Volume Two takes the philosophical foundations built in Volume One and tests them against the hardest questions in the field. Part Three confronts colonialism as an epistemological project: the mechanisms of epistemicide, the contested relationship between Western science and indigenous ways of knowing, and the limits of international law as protection - from UNDRIP and the 2024 WIPO Treaty to South Africas Indigenous Knowledge Systems Act.

Part Four turns toward reconstruction: the decolonisation of education and research, the paradoxes of documentation and preservation, the indigenous research methodologies that engage with IKS on its own terms, and the affirmative case - supported by evidence from climate science, health, governance, and education - that indigenous knowledge is an indispensable dimension of the cognitive range humanity needs to survive this century.

The volume closes with a Conclusion synthesising the full two-volume argument, an Afterword on the obligations that genuine engagement creates, and the consolidated Glossary and Bibliography for the complete work.

The world built on Western knowledge alone is the world in crisis. Volume Two asks what it would take to think differently - and what stands in the way.

Part of the ten-volume IKS Global Textbook Series - Continues from Volume One