Western vs. Native American Values

1990

Sustainability Science, 2019

The ideas of relational values and social values are gaining prominence in sustainability science. Here, we ask: how well do these value conceptions resonate with one Indigenous worldview? The relational values concept broadens conceptions of values beyond instrumental and intrinsic values to encompass preferences and principles about human relationships that involve more-than-humans. The social values concept, an umbrella idea, captures a plurality of values related to society and the common good. After a general description of these two concepts as expressed in the Western peer-reviewed literature, we adopt the lens of relational values to engage with decades of scholarly work and millennia of wisdom based on Indigenous Hawaiian worldviews. We describe five long-standing Hawaiian values that embody notions of appropriate relationships, including human–ecosystem relationships: pono (~ righteousness, balance); hoʻomana (~ creating spirituality); mālama (~ care); kuleana (~ right, responsibility); aloha (~ love, connection). We find that all five resonate deeply with, and help to enrich, relational value concepts. We then draw on these Hawaiian values to discuss differences between relational values and social values frameworks; though both concepts add useful elements to the discourse about values, the relational values concept may be particularly well positioned to represent elements often important to indigenous worldviews—elements such as reciprocity, balance, and extension of “society” beyond human beings. As global processes (e.g., IPBES) commit to better reflecting Indigenous and local knowledge and embrace diverse value concepts as (purported) avenues toward representing values held by diverse communities, our findings suggest that relational values offer special promise and a crucial contribution.

Journal of American Indian Education, 2020

Alaska Natives all hold certain values to be paramount to their cultures. Our cultural values help define our heritages and have been lived for generations. Our cultural values have been passed down for thousands of years. Many Elders in their respective villages identified cultural values in the early 1980s in hopes to help communities heal from the problem of suicides and drug and alcohol abuse introduced by Outsiders. Many villages formalized their cultural values to ensure future generations retain, teach, and live their ways of life. This case study unites two research projects utilizing Indigenous methodologies to advance an understanding of respective cultural values, and implementing the values with the children, families, communities, and the school. The combined research evolves from a metaphysical and philosophical means to actualizing cultural values in a kindergarten classroom in a remote village in Alaska.

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia

Philosophica, 1979

1998

If the Lakota describe the atmosphere of a sweat lodge, the sacred steam, as "wakanda" and if the Ojibwa characterize it as "manitu", are we entitled to conclude that these terms mean roughly the same thing? Certainly some anthropologists have drawn just such a conclusion. The Tedlocks, for example, in their classic study, Teachings from the American earth: Indian religion and philosophy (1978), seem quite comfortable in equating these terms with the Western concepts of sacredness and holiness. They assert: "The Sioux call this holiness wakan, the Ojibwa and other Algonkian peoples call it manitu, and [they add for good measure] the Iroquois call it orenda" (Tedlock and Tedlock 1978:xviii). But care needs to be taken here. Comparing Lakota and Ojibwa world views is just as much a cross-cultural study as comparing either with various Western world views. Actually a comparison of Lakota and Ojibwa world views would be doubly cross-cultural, as it were, si...

Futures, 2003

The American Indian Quarterly, 2005

Academia Letters, 2021

Values are empowering tools that help a society to face the challenges of the contemporary world such as religious extremism, ethnic conflicts, inequality, threats of globalization, and corruption. Core values that inform people’s moral behavior are largely considered to be universal. However, these core values are usually colored by social, cultural, religious, political and personal contexts. This is because socio-cultural milieu differs from one community to community. If people would live together harmoniously, there is the need to inculcate values that would enable them develop a sense of humanity, tolerance and understanding. The question of how we should behave and how members of a society should relate with one another is a moral issue. As human beings continuously relate with other human beings, people cannot do without valuing in their day-to-day activities. As such, the value system upheld by members of a society, inform they behave and how they organize and manage their society