Perspectives of "The Land": The Making of Cultural Topographies

• Autor(a) principal: Machado, Ana Paula
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34632/gaudiumsciendi.2012.2130

At the beginning of this new era, world perspectives and outlooks are necessarily shifting and turning, becoming an inescapable process in the creation of new intellectual topographies. It may sometimes involve rethinking the whole intellectual construct of the universe, the maps of reality or the topographies of the self and its surroundings.It may even involve stopping on our tracks, surveying our errors of judgment, listening to the voices around us; be it the voices of other peoples we - the heirs of Europe’s empires - have subdued, conquered, and colonized, be it the voice of the Earth, itself. Although this is not usually part of the West’s academic discourse, tainted as it is by the very ideas and ideals that we are here calling into question, it is our intention to focus our attention on the ontologies and epistemologies of the Indigenous Peoples of America, and on the conflicts ensuing from their encounter with the West’s hegemonic mindset. We argue that at the root of the conflicts between the Indigenous cultures of America and the European settler cultures lies their divergent perspective of the Land. If, for the European settlers, the Earth and its creatures were to be subdued, conquered, mastered by Mankind, for the Indigenous peoples of America, they were essentially teachers, guides, or fellow beings in Creation, with specific powers and knowledge; the Land inspired their languages, and instilled its knowledge into the people. It may now be the right time to listen again to those forgotten or silenced voices, so as to outline a new topography of existence.