Relational Ontologies & Non-Appropriation Frameworks for Giving Voice to Other-Than-Human Beings

Research Date: 2026-03-05 Researcher: Indigenous-AI Collaborative Platform — Deep Search Agent Scope: Ontology, voice, and anti-appropriation frameworks Boundary: NOT general Indigenous history/politics; NOT teaching stories. Narrowly: ontology, voice, anti-appropriation.

Relational Ontology: Core Definitions

1. Shawn Wilson — Relationality as the Fabric of Reality

"Relationships do not merely shape reality, they are reality." — Wilson, Research Is Ceremony (2008), p. 7

Wilson's definition is the most ontologically radical: reality is not composed of entities that then enter into relationships. Rather, relationships are ontologically primary. There are no pre-relational "things." An Indigenous ontology holds that being is constituted by the web of relations one participates in — with people, land, cosmos, and ideas. The shared aspect of Indigenous epistemology is likewise relational: one knows through the quality of one's relationships, not through detached observation. And the shared axiology is relational accountability — the ethical requirement that one honours and is answerable to the relationships that constitute one's inquiry.

Distinctive contribution: Wilson provides the clearest paradigmatic definition — ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology are all relational, forming a coherent Indigenous research paradigm distinct from positivist, post-positivist, and constructivist alternatives.

Source: Wilson, Shawn. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Fernwood Publishing, 2008. ISBN 978-1-55266-281-5.

2. Robin Wall Kimmerer — The Grammar of Animacy

Kimmerer (Potawatomi) locates relational ontology in language itself. In Potawatomi, 70% of words are verbs — the world is a world of happenings, not things. Beings are addressed as "you," never "it." This "grammar of animacy" is not metaphor; it is an ontological claim that plants, animals, rivers, and fungi are persons — subjects with agency, intelligence, and rights to reciprocity. Humans exist within a kinship network of other-than-human relatives, not atop a hierarchy of resources.

The relational ethic flows from what Kimmerer calls "the Original Instructions": since life is gifted to humans by the self-sacrifice and generosity of other-than-human beings (the Three Sisters, the salmon, the maple), humans carry an obligation of gratitude and reciprocity. This is not stewardship (which implies ownership) but kinship responsibility.

Distinctive contribution: Kimmerer demonstrates that relational ontology is encoded in Indigenous languages and that the shift from "it" to "who" — from object to person — is the decisive ontological move that Western science must learn.

Source: Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013. ISBN 978-1-57131-356-0.

3. Enrique Salmón — Kincentric Ecology (Iwígara)

Salmón (Rarámuri) coined the term "kincentric ecology" to describe how Indigenous peoples perceive themselves as part of an extended family that includes plants, animals, rocks, rivers, wind, and all features of the landscape. The Rarámuri concept iwígara ("shared breath") holds that all living beings share a vital force — literally breathing together. This is not animism in the Western dismissive sense; it is a sophisticated recognition that ecological relationships are familial relationships, carrying mutual obligations of care.

Kincentric ecology contrasts sharply with Western ecology's third-person stance. Where Western ecology studies "ecosystems," kincentric ecology participates in family. The practical consequence: land management becomes kin-tending, and biodiversity is maintained not through external regulation but through the daily practice of familial responsibility.

Distinctive contribution: Salmón bridges ontology and ecology directly — relational ontology produces relational ecology, and the concept of iwígara provides a biocultural vocabulary that resists translation into resource-management frameworks.

Source: Salmón, Enrique. "Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous Perceptions of the Human-Nature Relationship." Ecological Applications 10, no. 5 (2000): 1327–1332. JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2641288. See also: Salmón, Enrique. Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity, and Resilience. University of Arizona Press, 2012.

4. Zoe Todd — Fish Pluralities and Ontological Refusal

Todd (Métis/Red River) reframes relational ontology through the specific relationships of Inuvialuit communities with fish. In Paulatuuq (Arctic Canada), fish are not resources subject to state management; they are sentient beings embedded in Indigenous legal orders with specific protocols for how humans relate to them. Todd identifies "fish pluralities" — multiple, context-specific relational modes that resist reduction to a single "Indigenous perspective."

Critically, Todd diagnoses the appropriation risk within ontology itself: Western academics performing the "ontological turn" (Latour, Descola, Viveiros de Castro) adopt Indigenous relational concepts without crediting Indigenous thinkers or honouring Indigenous sovereignty. Her provocation: "'Ontology' is just another word for colonialism" when deployed by Euro-Western academics who extract Indigenous concepts while erasing Indigenous authorship.

Distinctive contribution: Todd is essential for this project because she names the mechanism by which even the academic study of relational ontology can become appropriative. She provides the critical lens for self-reflexive practice.

Source: Todd, Zoe. "An Indigenous Feminist's Take on the Ontological Turn: 'Ontology' Is Just Another Word for Colonialism." Journal of Historical Sociology 29, no. 1 (2016): 4–22. Also: Todd, Zoe. "Fish pluralities: Human-animal relations and sites of engagement in Paulatuuq, Arctic Canada." Études/Inuit/Studies 38, no. 1–2 (2014): 217–238.

Synthesis: How the Four Definitions Differ

What Appropriation Looks Like: Negative Examples

1. The Academic Ontological Turn — Extracting Without Crediting

What happened: Beginning in the 2000s, European anthropologists (Bruno Latour, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Philippe Descola) developed the "ontological turn" — arguing that non-Western peoples hold genuinely different ontologies, not merely different "beliefs about" a single shared reality. While potentially respectful, in practice many of these scholars built their careers on Indigenous relational concepts without citational practice that centres Indigenous thinkers. Métis scholars like Zoe Todd, Vanessa Watts, and Kim TallBear have documented how their own published work on relational ontology was ignored while Euro-Western scholars received credit for "discovering" the same ideas.

What went wrong:

• Indigenous scholars' prior published work was not cited
• Indigenous peoples were treated as "informants" for Euro-Western theory rather than as theorists
• The relational ontologies were abstracted away from the specific land-based, language-based, governance-based contexts that give them meaning
• No benefit flowed back to communities

Teaching: Appropriation can occur at the conceptual level — extracting ideas is as colonial as extracting resources. Citational justice is a minimal ethical requirement.

Source: Todd, Zoe. "An Indigenous Feminist's Take on the Ontological Turn." Journal of Historical Sociology 29, no. 1 (2016): 4–22. See also: TallBear, Kim. "An Indigenous Reflection on Working Beyond the Human/Not Human." GLQ 21, no. 2–3 (2015): 230–235.

2. The Sedona Sweat Lodge Deaths (2009)

What happened: Self-help guru James Arthur Ray charged $9,695 per participant for a "Spiritual Warrior" retreat in Sedona, Arizona, which included a pseudo-sweat-lodge ceremony. Ray, who had no Indigenous training or authorization, packed over 50 people into an improperly constructed lodge. Three participants — James Shore, Kirby Brown, and Liz Neuman — died of heat exposure. Eighteen others were hospitalized. Ray was convicted of three counts of negligent homicide.

What went wrong:

• A sacred ceremony was extracted from its relational context and sold as a commodity
• No Indigenous knowledge keepers were consulted or involved
• The ceremony's protocols (which exist to ensure physical and spiritual safety) were ignored
• Participants were told to "push through" distress — the opposite of the relational ethic of care
• Death resulted from treating ceremony as a product rather than a relationship

Teaching: When ceremony is severed from the web of relationships that gives it meaning — from Elders, from community, from accountability — it becomes dangerous. The commercialization of sacred practices is not merely disrespectful; it can kill.

Source: CNN reporting, 2009–2011; Lakota declaration against appropriation of sweat lodge ceremonies. See also: Cultural Survival, "Cultural Appropriation: Another Form of Extractivism of Indigenous Communities" (2023), https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/cultural-appropriation-another-form-extractivism-indigenous-communities.

3. "New Age" Commercialization of Smudging, Vision Quests, and Dreamcatchers

What happened: Throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries, non-Indigenous practitioners and wellness entrepreneurs repackaged Indigenous ceremonial practices (smudging with white sage, "vision quests," dreamcatchers, ayahuasca ceremonies) into consumer products and paid retreats. This occurred simultaneously with government policies that criminalized the same practices when performed by Indigenous peoples — the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was not passed until 1978, and enforcement remained weak.

What went wrong:

• Practices were severed from their specific Nation, clan, and lineage protocols
• Financial benefit flowed to non-Indigenous practitioners while Indigenous communities remained impoverished
• Overharvesting of white sage endangered the plant and disrupted Indigenous ceremonial supply
• The spiritual meaning was replaced with individualistic "wellness" framing
• The asymmetry was stark: Indigenous peoples were punished for the same practices that white entrepreneurs profited from

Teaching: Appropriation follows a pattern: (1) suppress the practice in its original context, (2) extract it from that context, (3) commodify it for a different audience, (4) profit while the original community receives nothing. This pattern must be named and interrupted at each stage.

Source: Harvard Divinity School, "Indigenous Spiritualities: Cultural Appropriation or Last Salvation" (2023). Association on American Indian Affairs, "Safeguarding Indigenous Culture from Appropriation" (2024). Cultural Survival (2023).

4. Academic Extraction Without Consent — The Ongoing Pattern

What happened: Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Porou) documents the long history of Western researchers entering Indigenous communities, extracting knowledge, and publishing it without consent, benefit-sharing, or community control. Examples include: anthropologists publishing sacred narratives that communities had shared in confidence; geneticists collecting Indigenous DNA without informed consent for the Human Genome Diversity Project; ethnobotanists patenting plant medicines derived from Indigenous knowledge (biopiracy).

What went wrong:

• Research was done on Indigenous peoples, not with them
• Published knowledge was stripped of its relational and ceremonial context
• Communities lost control over their own narratives and knowledge
• Patents and publications generated wealth and prestige for researchers while communities gained nothing
• The word "research" itself became, in Smith's words, "one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world's vocabulary"

Teaching: The extractive research model mirrors the extractive economic model — both treat Indigenous peoples as raw material. Decolonizing research requires fundamentally restructuring who sets the agenda, who benefits, and who controls the knowledge.

Source: Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books / Bloomsbury, 1999/2012/2021. Third edition: ISBN 978-1-78699-812-5.

Non-Appropriation Frameworks & Accountability

Framework 1: Wilson's Relational Accountability

Core Principle: If reality is constituted by relationships, then the primary ethical obligation is accountability to those relationships. This means:

• Topic selection: "How We Choose What to Study" — the research question must emerge from relationship with community, not from the researcher's career interests
• Methods: "How We Gather Information" — methods must build relationships, not extract data
• Analysis: "How We Interpret Information" — interpretation must be accountable to the community whose relationships are being described
• Presentation: "How We Transfer Knowledge" — knowledge must be returned in forms that serve the community

Anti-appropriation mechanism: Research that cannot demonstrate relational accountability at every stage is, by definition, extractive. The test is simple: Can you name the relationships this research serves, and are those people confirming that it serves them?

Source: Wilson, Research Is Ceremony (2008), Chapter 6: "Relational Accountability."

Framework 2: Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies & Kaupapa Māori Research

Core Principle: Ethical research with Indigenous peoples must be governed by Indigenous peoples. Smith articulates seven key practices:

1. Aroha ki te tangata (respect for people) — face-to-face engagement, not detached study
2. Kanohi kitea (the seen face) — be present in community, not remote
3. Titiro, whakarongo… kōrero (look, listen… then speak) — defer to community knowledge before asserting your own
4. Manaaki ki te tangata (share and host, be generous) — reciprocity is material, not just intellectual
5. Kia tūpato (be cautious) — researchers are politically situated; caution prevents harm
6. Kaua e takahia te mana o te tangata (do not trample on the mana of people) — never diminish dignity
7. Kaua e māhaki (don't flaunt your knowledge) — humility is a research protocol

Anti-appropriation mechanism: By centring Kaupapa Māori (Māori philosophy and principles) as the governing framework rather than a "perspective to include," Smith structurally prevents the reduction of Indigenous knowledge to data. The community is sovereign over its own knowledge.

Source: Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies, 3rd ed. (2021).

Framework 3: OCAP® Principles (First Nations Governance)

Core Principle: The First Nations Information Governance Centre developed OCAP® — Ownership, Control, Access, Possession — as a standard for research involving First Nations data in Canada:

• Ownership: The community collectively owns all information about itself
• Control: The community controls how information is collected, used, and disclosed
• Access: The community must have access to information about itself regardless of who holds it
• Possession: The community must physically possess its own data

Anti-appropriation mechanism: OCAP® moves beyond ethics review boards (which are institutional gatekeepers) to community sovereignty over data. A researcher cannot "own" findings derived from community knowledge. This is directly analogous to land sovereignty: just as Indigenous sovereignty over land persists despite colonial dispossession, sovereignty over knowledge persists despite academic extraction.

Source: First Nations Information Governance Centre. "The First Nations Principles of OCAP®." https://fnigc.ca/ocap-training/. See also: CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics), Global Indigenous Data Alliance (2019).

Framework 4: Moreton-Robinson's Critique of White Possessive Logic

Core Principle: Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Goenpul, Quandamooka) argues that settler colonial states operate through a "white possessive logic" — the assumption that land, knowledge, and sovereignty are possessable by white subjects. This logic operates not only in law and property but in knowledge production: whiteness is centred as the knowing subject, while Indigenous peoples are objects of study.

Anti-appropriation mechanism: Moreton-Robinson's framework shifts the question from "how do we include Indigenous knowledge?" to "how does whiteness structure what counts as knowledge?" This is a structural critique: appropriation is not merely individual bad behaviour but a systemic logic of possession. Ethical engagement requires white researchers to interrogate their own possessive relationship to knowledge before engaging with Indigenous communities.

Source: Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-8166-9216-3.

Supplementary Framework: Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools"

While Lorde (1934–1992) is not an Indigenous scholar, her principle — "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" — is widely cited in Indigenous decolonial work. It provides a critical warning for this project: if we build an Indigenous-AI platform using the same extractive, individualistic, possession-oriented logic of Western tech, we will reproduce colonialism regardless of our intentions. The tools themselves must be relational.

Source: Lorde, Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 1984.

The "Who Speaks For Whom" Problem

This is the central ethical question for any project that aims to "give voice" to other-than-human beings. Every scholar surveyed addresses it, but from different angles:

Todd: Nobody Speaks For Whom — Resist the Impulse to Universalize

Todd argues that the question itself can be colonial if it assumes a single answer. Different communities have different protocols for who can speak, about what, in which contexts. The Paulatuuqmiut have specific, dynamic legal and ethical orders for relating to fish — these cannot be generalized into a universal "Indigenous voice." The correct response is not to find a framework for "speaking for" other-than-human beings, but to ask each community how they understand voice, representation, and responsibility in their specific relational context.

Implication for IAIP: The platform must not claim to "speak for" the salmon or the cedar. It must provide infrastructure for communities to articulate their own relationships with other-than-human beings, in their own terms.

Kimmerer: Listen Before You Speak — The Grammar of Animacy as Practice

Kimmerer suggests that the first step is not speaking for other-than-human beings but listening to them. The "grammar of animacy" — learning to perceive the world as populated by "who" rather than "what" — is a practice of attention, not representation. Before the question "who speaks for the river?" we must ask: "can I hear the river?" This requires a shift in perception, not a claim of authority.

Implication for IAIP: AI systems should be designed to amplify listening — to help humans attend to ecological signals, seasonal patterns, and more-than-human communications — rather than to generate speech on behalf of non-human beings.

Simpson: Land Speaks for Itself — Land as Pedagogy

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) argues that land is not silent and does not need human ventriloquism. Land is the first teacher; it speaks through seasons, through the behaviour of animals, through the relationships that sustain life. "Land as pedagogy" means that knowledge is generated by the land for those who are in proper relationship with it. The question is not "who speaks for the land?" but "are we in a relationship where the land can teach us?"

Implication for IAIP: The platform should facilitate land-based learning protocols rather than representation. The AI's role is not to speak for the land but to support the conditions under which humans can re-enter relationship with it.

Source: Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Dancing on Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence. ARP Books, 2011. Also: "Land as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg Intelligence and Rebellious Transformation." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 3, no. 3 (2014): 1–25.

Moreton-Robinson: Ask Who Is Claiming the Right to Speak

Moreton-Robinson's white possessive logic framework asks: when a non-Indigenous institution claims to "give voice" to rivers or forests, whose interests does this serve? If the answer is "the institution's own legitimacy," then the act of "giving voice" is itself an act of possession — claiming the authority to bestow what was never one's to give. Indigenous sovereignty means that communities already have voice; the colonial problem is that this voice is systematically silenced, not that it needs to be "created."

Implication for IAIP: The platform must never position itself as granting voice to other-than-human beings. It must position itself as removing barriers to hearing voices that already exist — including the voices of Indigenous communities who already maintain these relationships.

Abram: Perception, Not Representation

David Abram offers a phenomenological complement (not an Indigenous one — he is a non-Indigenous philosopher, and this positionality matters). Abram argues that the Western alphabetic tradition has narrowed human perception, making us deaf to the communicative life of the more-than-human world. The task is not to "represent" non-human beings in human language but to recover the perceptual capacities that allow direct participatory engagement. Oral cultures, he argues, maintained this capacity through stories that kept humans "in conversation with" wind, water, animals, and stones.

Critical note: Abram's work is valuable but must be held with care. As Todd's critique implies, non-Indigenous scholars who write about "more-than-human voices" risk performing the same extraction they describe — claiming insight into Indigenous perceptual modes without being in relationship with Indigenous communities. Abram is best used as a bridge text for Western audiences, not as a source of Indigenous knowledge.

Source: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Vintage, 1996. ISBN 978-0-679-77639-0.

Haraway: Sympoiesis — Making-With, Not Speaking-For

Donna Haraway's concept of sympoiesis ("making-with") offers a non-representational alternative. Rather than one entity speaking for another, sympoiesis describes the ongoing co-creation of worlds by entangled beings. "Making kin" — actively building relationships across species boundaries — replaces "making claims." The Chthulucene (Haraway's alternative to the Anthropocene) names an epoch of tentacular, multispecies becoming where no single species has the authority to speak for the whole.

Critical note: Like Abram, Haraway is not Indigenous and must be read alongside Indigenous scholars, not in place of them. Todd has specifically critiqued Haraway for insufficient citation of Indigenous thinkers whose relational concepts predate and exceed Western multispecies theory.

Implication for IAIP: The platform's architecture should be sympoietic — designed to support co-creation between humans, communities, and other-than-human beings, rather than to represent any party on behalf of another.

Source: Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8223-6224-1.

Paul Chaat Smith: Question Every Comfortable Narrative

Smith (Comanche), writing in Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong (2009), provides a sharp corrective to well-meaning but naive engagement. He argues that mainstream representations of Indigenous peoples — even sympathetic ones — almost always serve non-Indigenous needs for redemption, authenticity, or moral authority. The "noble ecological Indian" trope is as appropriative as the "savage" trope: both replace actual Indigenous people with projections.

Implication for IAIP: Every design decision should be tested against Smith's question: Is this serving Indigenous communities, or is it serving our need to feel good about working with Indigenous knowledge? Discomfort is a feature, not a bug.

Source: Smith, Paul Chaat. Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong. University of Minnesota Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8166-5610-3.

Summary Table: Anti-Appropriation Design Principles for IAIP

Full Source Bibliography

1. Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Vintage, 1996.
2. Cultural Survival. "Cultural Appropriation: Another Form of Extractivism of Indigenous Communities." 2023. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/cultural-appropriation-another-form-extractivism-indigenous-communities
3. First Nations Information Governance Centre. "The First Nations Principles of OCAP®." https://fnigc.ca/ocap-training/
4. Global Indigenous Data Alliance. "CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance." 2019. https://www.gida-global.org/care
5. Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
6. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013.
7. Lorde, Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 1984.
8. McGregor, Deborah. "Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Environmental Governance in Canada." KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 5, no. 1 (2021). https://kula.uvic.ca/index.php/kula/article/view/148
9. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
10. Salmón, Enrique. "Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous Perceptions of the Human-Nature Relationship." Ecological Applications 10, no. 5 (2000): 1327–1332. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2641288
11. Salmón, Enrique. Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity, and Resilience. University of Arizona Press, 2012.
12. Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Dancing on Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence. ARP Books, 2011.
13. Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. "Land as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg Intelligence and Rebellious Transformation." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 3, no. 3 (2014): 1–25.
14. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. 3rd ed. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
15. Smith, Paul Chaat. Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong. University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
16. TallBear, Kim. "An Indigenous Reflection on Working Beyond the Human/Not Human." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2015): 230–235.
17. Todd, Zoe. "An Indigenous Feminist's Take on the Ontological Turn: 'Ontology' Is Just Another Word for Colonialism." Journal of Historical Sociology 29, no. 1 (2016): 4–22.
18. Todd, Zoe. "Fish pluralities: Human-animal relations and sites of engagement in Paulatuuq, Arctic Canada." Études/Inuit/Studies 38, no. 1–2 (2014): 217–238.
19. Todd, Zoe. "Refracting the State Through Human-Fish Relations." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 7, no. 1 (2018): 60–75.
20. Wilson, Shawn. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Fernwood Publishing, 2008.

This research document is a source for the Indigenous-AI Collaborative Platform's Ceremonial Technology development. It is not itself an Indigenous text — it is a synthesis prepared by an AI agent working under the direction of William (Guillaume) and subject to review by Indigenous knowledge keepers. Its value is as a reference map, not as a substitute for relationship.