Ethics of response-ability

You have encountered a “Great White Beast”, a fleeting, shapeshifting figure that performs the world as indeterminate. The possibilities of encountering a Great White Beast is a reminder that there are no right decisions to be made, but that we are nevertheless to hold ourselves accountable to our own choices.

In this case such trouble refers to the controversy around western scholarship, when it takes up ideas like intra-dependency and relational worldviews while either ignoring Indigenous literature, or appropriating them, without proper acknowledgement. There is, no ‘easy’ way out of these kinds of tensions for non-indigenous scholars. The ethics involved with drawing from such ontologies in academic work cannot be resolved through ‘right’ ways of doing things. Non-Indigenous researchers engaging any form of generative ontologies need to take responsibility for whichever option they choose: 1. engaging Indigenous scholarship, or 2. not engaging Indigenous scholarship - While neither option is “innocent” .

In dealing with this Great White Beast, I have chosen to rely on a very selective body of western scholarship to formulate ways of thinking outside of the classic western subject/object divide and not appropriate Indigenous scholarship in formulating my own understanding of ontologically generative paradigms. Where appropriate and part of my process I have placed my journey in dialogue with Indigenous sources. This in turn allows you the possibility to do the same.

Cut 3: Wayfaring the BW project Point of Beginning