Finding the Taste of Knowledge: The Orphan in Indigenous Epistemologies

Abstract

Following the suggestions of my indigenous consultants, that to better understand their theories of knowledge one has to start from myth, I take here their myth, “The origin of education” as the starting point for analyzing the alchemical processes of embodiment in indigenous epistemologies, and I do so in dialogue with information produced through an ethnography of learning, and with other, Western, theories of cognition. The myth relates the story of the “Orphan”, a central character in the People of the Center’s moral and mythical narratives. The Orphan searches for the “taste of knowledge” through a demanding personal quest that is simultaneously a process of self-discovering and self-shaping. The quest involves experimenting with different plants and technical procedures, which are evaluated by the effects produced on the Orphan’s “physical-spiritual body”. Shunning the Cartesian distinction between the physical and the spiritual, the People of the Center’s epistemologies emphasize the poietic processes that link knowledge to the ongoing fabrication, and maintenance, of personal and collective selves, and of the world in which they live. The People of the Center make the relationship between knowledge and well-being explicit: true knowledge shows in the ideal state of generalized well-being, an issue that acquires critical significance in indigenous debates concerning the recreation of authoritative knowledge, and of authority more generally.