Philosophy lived in community · Living traditions
Indigenous philosophies
Overview
Many distinct traditions that treat land, waters and future generations as relatives, and judge decisions by what they hand down.
Indigenous philosophies are many, not one. Hundreds of nations across the Americas, and peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Africa, Asia and the Arctic, each have their own languages, laws, stories and ways of reasoning, often carried in oral tradition and practice rather than written treatises. This page gathers a few widely taught strands as an invitation to learn from those traditions, not a summary of them.
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Two themes recur. The first is kinship with the land: in Māori thought, whakapapa ties people to ancestors, mountains and rivers, and kaitiakitanga names the duty of guardianship that follows; the Lakota prayer phrase mitákuye oyás’iŋ is often rendered “all my relatives.” The second is responsibility across time: a principle linked to the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace asks leaders to weigh decisions by their effect on the seventh generation to come. In 2017 New Zealand recognized the Whanganui River as a legal person, with guardians to speak for it.
Writers caution against flattening distinct traditions into one, and against outsiders claiming them. The habit worth keeping is to treat land and future people as relatives you answer to, and to ask what a decision hands down.
Where it answers
How should we act?
Act as a relative of the land and living things, with the seventh generation in mind.
Key terms
- Seventh generation
- The Haudenosaunee teaching to weigh decisions by their effect seven generations ahead.
- Great Law of Peace
- The founding constitution of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
- Whakapapa
- Māori genealogy, linking people to ancestors, land and all living things.
- Kaitiakitanga
- Māori guardianship of land, water and living things for future generations.
- All my relatives
- A Lakota phrase, Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ, affirming kinship with all beings.
Further reading
- Great Law of Peace (oral constitution) · the Haudenosaunee Confederacy
- Te Awa Tupua Act 2017 · New Zealand Parliament
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A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “Indigenous philosophies.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/ideas/indigenous. Accessed 13 November 2026.