Reading Deborah McGregor, Jean-Paul Restoule and Rochelle Johnston’s edited book on Indigenous research, I came across this amazing quote about the nature of knowledge:

“Knowledge is bigger than we are, something we can uncover only a part of. It was here before we were: ‘Knowledge is received or gifted from all living things and from the spirit world’ (Wilson & Restoule, 2010, p. 33).”

Johnston, Restoule & McGregor, 2018, p. 7

The authors write that knowledge has its own being; it is its own entity. Knowledge exists independently of humans and can be accessed by humans through deep relationships with place – with particular places on the Earth, including all of the living things within them.

Thinking deeply about Indigenous epistemologies – Indigenous understandings of what knowledge is and where it comes from – is an important part of engaging with Indigenous knowledges, and I am grateful for this book.