Eclipsing the Renaissance | Notes from the Ancestral-Future
“Learn to see from one eye with the best in the Indigenous ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the best in the Western (or mainstream) ways of knowing … and, moreover, that we learn to use both these eyes together, for the benefit of all.” - Elder Albert Marshall, Mi’kmaw Nation
Context: The Renaissance Rebirth as Ancestral Return
It’s questionable whether Western Civilization would have ever entered the modern age and enacted the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries if it were not for the Renaissance Humanism of the 15th through 16th centuries.
The Scientific Revolution (which laid the foundations for modern science) provided Western Europeans a heightened degree of instrumentality over certain laws of nature.
Aspects of the classical elements - Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Aether - were instrumentally leveraged to produce systems of industrial manufacturing and intensive agriculture, alongside a cacophony of new tools & technologies like the steam engine, combustion engine, electricity, telescopes, guns, antibiotics, clocks, telecommunications, etc.
In a sense, there is no way we could imagine the modern world existing today if these developments hadn’t occurred.
This is why the Renaissance is fascinating, as there most likely could have been no Scientific Revolution without Renaissance Humanism. Renaissance Humanism was by and large a movement of scholars, artists, and thinkers which emphasized a return to the ancients of the European heritage.
This return to the sources was called Ad Fontes. Scholars like Francesco Petrarch, Leonardo Bruni, and Lorenzo Valla reintroduced classical literature and philosophy to the public. Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Rafael, and Michaelangelo, inspired by the naturalism & realism of Greco-Roman thought, looked to nature anew, and studied anatomy, light, nature, and physics with a new intimacy.
It was this revival of classical values which inspired the age so much so that we call the period between 1400 - 1600 the Renaissance, the rebirth, a revival of classical learning and wisdom.
The sense at the time was that society was inhibited by an overbearing latin-catholic tradition. In order to purify both Christianity & Philosophy, the Renaissance Vanguardists wanted to study the original texts intimately without societal adulteration. Ad fontes, the return to the sources, was a return to the ancestors.
The Potency of the Ancestral-Future
Just as in the way that Renaissance Humanism allowed for the rebirth of values & culture preceding modernity, our age draws a striking comparison.
It is very recent that the ancestral wisdom of the indigenous knowledge (which stretches back much further than European Antiquity) has had the capacity to speak and be heard. Centuries of colonization, slavery, oppression, and re-education have inhibited Modern awareness of Indigenous Knowledge.
According to many scholars, it’s only as recent as the late 1990s that Indigenous Knowledge has begun to be understood and interpreted for a global audience from an authentically indigenous perspective. The cultural anthropology which attempted to do this from the 1800s to the present day, has approached the matter from a Eurocentric & Modern Scientific worldview. This unfortunately has had the effect of not understanding Indigenous Knowledge through-itself.
Today however, due to three key reasons, a global audience is beginning to understand Indigenous Knowledge with more intimacy. These reasons are: (1) the humanities and social sciences, particularly since the 1990s has begun to ‘indigenize the academy’; (2) the inability of modern society to adequately coexist ecologically has called for new insights; (3) the postmodern philosophy evolved from within modern society has created space for a pluralistic epistemology.
In the arena of popular culture, the breakout success of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (2014) indicates these changing tides.
There are new ears for a new world.
After 500 years of oppression, negation and ignorance of the global ancestral wisdom(s), the immense potential of an Ancestral-Future Renaissance lies at our doorstep. Its effects on values & relationships may provide the inspiration required to solve many of our modern conundrums.
While it would be nice to repeat the old adage and say that ‘history repeats itself’ and so to assume that the outcomes of the Ancestral-Future Renaissance will be similar to those of the European Renaissance… we shouldn’t pigeon-hole the matter.
What is already clear is that Indigenous Knowledge (IK) provides a very comprehensive understanding of ecology. From the perspective of IK there is no way to understand life which does not formulate a spiritual unity between land, culture, language, and tradition.
It is their spiritual integrity, holistic awareness, moral stewardship, and cosmic vision which can help adapt the modern paradigm. If we make space for it, their heterogeneous traditions can inspire a new wave of ecological & holistic innovation in the arts, architecture, philosophy, fashion, politics, and economics.
Below you can find three interesting case-studies our team reviewed which highlight the practical outcomes of the native revival. The first is a geospatial study which observed which cultures steward highly conserved and preserved natural environments. The second is more philosophical, and observes what it is like to create shared meaning through a polycentric ontology which the Ancestral-Future invites, and can heal many of our post-truth era divisions. The third is a reflection upon the immense value which Traditional Ecological Knowledge can provide in relating to Metacrisis.
