Indigenous Sociology, Indigenous Lifeworlds

Sociology, like all Western academic disciplines, has its blind spots. While the discipline seeks to empirically and theoretically explain how societies work, it largely fails to examine colonisation and Indigenous dispossession as foundational to the nation state and its structure and function. Sociological scholarship relating to Indigenous peoples also reflects a somewhat paternalistic approach, locating Indigenous peoples as the subject of the non-­Indigenous sociological gaze. By contrast, Indigenous sociology makes visible what is meaningful in the Indigenous social world. Its central axis is Indigenous knowledges, worldviews, values, and lived experience.

In this regular session we invite Indigenous scholars to re-imagine how Sociology understands, recognises and represents Indigenous Peoples in colonial settler states. We are particularly interested in explorations of the Indigenous Lifeworld built around the dual intersubjectivities of being peoples/nations with our own culture, knowledge systems, beliefs, practices and identity; and also being colonized, marginalized peoples whose everyday life is impacted by our historical and ongoing relationship with the colonial settler state.

A key purpose of this session is to provide greater visibility for Indigenous sociologists and to build a more coherent foundation to support the flourishing of Indigenous sociology. We assert the Indigenous sociological voice as the authority on who we are as Indigenous peoples. This session will include up to five presenters, with no discussant.