Table Of ContentSPRINGER BRIEFS IN GEOGRAPHY
Miguel Sioui
Indigenous
Geographies in
the Yucatan
Learning From
the Responsibility-Based
Maya Environmental
Ethos
123
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Miguel Sioui
Indigenous Geographies in
the Yucatan
Learning From the Responsibility-Based
Maya Environmental Ethos
Miguel Sioui
Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo, ON, Canada
ISSN 2211-4165 ISSN 2211-4173 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Geography
ISBN 978-3-030-60398-4 ISBN 978-3-030-60399-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60399-1
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Foreword
Indigenous peoples the world over have repeatedly articulated a sustainable future
based on highly developed philosophical and practical concepts of living recipro-
cally with Mother Earth. While Indigenous societies are highly diverse, they share
certain common philosophical foundations as expressed through various Indigenous
knowledge systems (IKS). One such foundation is the responsibility to maintain and
enhance relationships with Mother Earth as a living entity. The importance of this
and other key Indigenous philosophies is recognized by numerous international
Indigenous declarations pertaining to human relationships with the environment.
One of the most noteworthy of these is the Universal Declaration on the Rights of
Mother Earth, developed at the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change in
Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2010. Article 1 of the Declaration states that “Mother
Earth is a living being”. Article 3 further denotes that “Every human being is respon-
sible for respecting and living in harmony with Mother Earth”. Through a wide
variety of such fora, Indigenous peoples have been calling for the recognition of
IKS in the decision-making processes that impact their lives, lands, and waters.
Such a call is intended to promote a dramatic and much-needed shift in ethos regard-
ing human-Earth relations.
The notion of responsibility-based governance and management, while having
been integral to Indigenous philosophy and governance for millennia, is only now
beginning to gain currency in non-Indigenous society and still remains largely
absent from broader international sustainable development discourse. Yet the devel-
opment of a responsibility-based land ethos to ensure sustainable environmental
stewardship and support for Indigenous self-determination is what Huron-Wendat
scholar Miguel Sioui has devoted the last decade of his life to advancing.
This book, based on Dr. Sioui’s doctoral studies during which he lived and
worked with the Yucatec Mayan people of Xuilub, Mexico, brings to life profound
and rich understandings of Indigenous lifeways. As an Indigenous geographer,
Miguel exemplifies a personal and professional commitment to bridging the episte-
mological worlds of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. In this book, Dr. Sioui
takes a deep look at how the Mayan people of Xuilub are navigating and negotiating
a complex colonial history that disrupted but did not destroy the foundational
v
vi Foreword
philosophical principles based on human responsibilities to the Earth. The Yucatec
Mayan, like other Indigenous peoples, live in a world where they are managing or
influencing their share of 80% of the remaining 25% of the world’s biodiversity and
are willing to share their knowledge of a lifeway that can contribute to a vital trans-
formation of the currently unsustainable world order. Grounded in the lifeways of
the Yucatec Mayan, the insights gained through Dr. Sioui’s research thus inform
broad global aspirations.
In recent years, numerous high-level and high-profile United Nations reports
have clearly demonstrated the seriousness of impending ecological catastrophe
should we fail to dramatically move away from our current unsustainable relation-
ship with Mother Earth. In 2018, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) noted that collectively, humanity’s actions have brought us to a tip-
ping point of irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate
system. The IPCC 1.5 report called for rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented
changes in all aspects of society to alter the current trajectory of irreversible dam-
age. Another UN report, by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), carried out an assessment of the
status of the natural world and its implications for people, finding that, “Nature and
its vital contributions to people, which together embody biodiversity and ecosystem
functions and services, are deteriorating worldwide”. The IPBES added that eco-
logical sustainability cannot be met by current sustainability targets. Transformative
change, the IPBES experts stated, is required across all sectors of society.
The UN’s World Water Development Reports also reveal serious challenges
ahead in ensuring water security for humanity, especially for the most vulnerable
and marginalized. These indicators point to a planetary crisis, the resolution of
which requires a full-on transformation of the human-Earth relationship; simple
tweaking of the “business as usual” scenarios continues to fail the planet’s biodiver-
sity, including all of humanity. Miguel Sioui’s book provides important guidance
around the kind of transformation world experts are explaining is absolutely
necessary.
Anishinaabe activist and scholar Winona Laduke stated decades ago that, “There
is no way to quantify a way of life, only a way to live it”. IKS then involves not only
acquiring knowledge, but taking responsibility for that knowledge and actually liv-
ing it, as the Mayan people do in the Xuilub community. Dr. Sioui’s work thus
centres responsibility as the primary mode of “being in relation”.
Dr. Sioui further illustrates the critical importance of “being part of the land”,
still practiced by many Indigenous communities but largely forgotten by the remain-
der of society, in offering the profound lens through which such responsibility and
sustainable approaches to ecological challenges may be viewed. Article 25 in the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples reinforces this
view and states:
Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual rela-
tionship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories,
waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future
generations in this regard.
Foreword vii
Dr. Sioui’s important work will serve to inform the emerging scholarship on Earth-
based law and ethics focusing on humanity’s duties and obligations to the natural
world. This book represents Dr. Sioui’s commitment to reconciling divergent intel-
lectual traditions by recognizing the value of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous
world views in addressing shared ecological challenges. Whatever one’s viewpoint,
Indigenous peoples’ continued assertions of our collective responsibility to the
Earth can no longer be seen as simply philosophical reflections or ancient history.
The Yucatec Mayan of Xuilub demonstrate how co-existing with the Earth is pos-
sible in contemporary times. While their community remains fraught with historical
and ongoing colonial legacies, the people continue to be committed to a
responsibility-b ased ethos of environmental stewardship. Miguel’s storytelling
leaves the reader with invaluable insights generously shared by the Yucatec Mayan,
who offer through their lived experience a vision of hope and sustainability for all.
Associate Professor & Canada Deborah McGregor
Research Chair in Indigenous
Environmental Justice York University,
Toronto, ON, Canada
May 31, 2020
Preface: Positionality and Guiding Research
Philosophy
Hailing from a family with a strong Indigenous academic/intellectual lineage, ever
since I can remember I have known about the importance of ‘responsibility’ in
many Indigenous cultures around the world. From my early childhood days, my
father (who is a retired Huron-Wendat academic historian) and I have had regular
discussions about the role of Indigenous people as stewards of the Americas, and
our responsibilities to the land, our peoples, and the rest of humanity. The notion
that Indigenous peoples are not merely victims of colonialism but belong to cultures
and knowledge systems that contain underexplored but profoundly valuable ways of
knowing has since birth been ingrained in my psyche. I was always taught that
despite the atrocities and injustices that happened (and continue to happen) to us,
we, as Indigenous peoples, have a responsibility to share our land-based cultural
values with the rest of humanity. Throughout my life, I have been privileged to sit in
on conversations between my father and hundreds of Indigenous scholars, Elders,
and others who carry out their land-based traditions and practices, from a multitude
of Indigenous peoples from around the world. I was always able to discern a com-
mon way of thinking among all these people, whether they were Mohawk, Aymara,
Dene, Navajo, or Kogi. Therefore, even prior to this academic journey (and this
research with the Maya) I understood that most Indigenous cultures shared a simi-
lar—responsibility-based—way of understanding and making sense of the world,
particularly in terms of their relationships with the land.
I want to make clear that I am by no means the first scholar (Indigenous or oth-
erwise) to put forth the notion that Indigenous cultures are guided by a responsibility-
based value system and way of knowing.1 In fact, my personal understanding of
responsibility-based Indigenous thinking was only reinforced when, during my
master’s studies, I began to truly engage with the scholarly literature on Indigenous
knowledges (IKs), written by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors. For
1 I am, however, unaware of other scholars who may have used the exact term that I present in this
book. I believe the term “responsibility-based thinking” is useful in helping scholars to understand
and convey in their writings about what is, to me, the most essential characteristic of this cultural
philosophy.
ix
x Preface: Positionality and Guiding Research Philosophy
example, although they use slightly different terms, authors like Deloria (1992),
Cajete (2000), and Pierotti and Wildcat (2000) have been very influential in allow-
ing me to better conceptualize the responsibility-based philosophy that is common
to many Indigenous cultures. More recently, I have been exposed to a number of
insightful and well-articulated accounts of the meaning of responsibility in
Indigenous cultures, and especially with regard to their relationships with the land.
For instance, authors like McGregor et al. (2010) have detailed their belief in the
“responsibility to keep the land alive inherent in Indigenous research” (p. 103). In
the context of water justice, McGregor (2013) also argues that long-term responsi-
bility to the land and all creatures on it is the notion that is essential in Indigenous
environmental thought:
In some respects, the waters we interact with in the present are the same waters our ances-
tors experienced, and the same ones that may be experienced by future generations, should
we take care of the waters sufficiently to ensure their (and our) future viability. This under-
standing holds us, as the current generation, highly accountable, and obliges us to ensure
that our grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on, can engage with the waters as we
have (p. 72).
The idea of intergenerational responsibility is one I share with McGregor (and other
Indigenous thinkers). Contained in the above excerpt is the idea that it is the duty of
the current generation to not only live by the example of past generations, but to act
as a model for future generations. Although Indigenous cultures may evolve and
change over time, we believe that it is our duty to at the very least carry on the
essence of our responsibility-based way of thinking because we have a deep love for
the land, and for all creatures who have, currently do, and will exist on it. McGregor
refers to this notion as “loving responsibility” (p. 73). This philosophical tradition
provides an alternative (and thus a response) to modernity’s problem of spatial
alienation. Instead of fleeing from the dangers and challenges presented by the
world, this philosophical tradition facilitates an understanding of it that promotes
and celebrates harmonious relations between the individual, their human society,
and the land. The land is not viewed as something from which to escape in the pur-
suit of a higher realm (such as Paradise or Heaven)—it is the highest realm, and
learning to live on belong to it comes with certain inexorable responsibilities (for
humans and all other creatures). This consideration was inextricable from the
decision-m aking process that was followed by my own people, the Huron-Wendat
(Huron was the name given to us by the French; therefore, I henceforth use Wendat),
before the imposition of non-Indigenous political systems on our homeland (known
as “Wendake”, located near Georgian Bay in Ontario). Wendat scholar Georges
Sioui elaborates on this notion:
Wendats, like many other North American [Indigenous cultures], not only saw humans
as part of the animal world but also saw animals as being among the God-creators. As
with their government, in which all individuals were equal [including women, children,
past and future generations] and represented, the Wendats had a council of animal-deities
who decided and executed everything in the most purely democratic fashion (Sioui
1999, p. 22).
