Indigenous Perspectives of Wellbeing: Living a Good Life

Abstract

Indigenous peoples (IP) around the world are quite diverse and have different perspectives of wellbeing. Common to many of this diverse group of peoples is the understanding of the world as a series of relations (Escobar 2017). For IP, life is composed of a set of reciprocal relationships in which the energy of creation is recognized in all of the beings that form part of the relations (Durie 2012). In this relational worldview, the individual, nature, and the world do not exist as separate entities but as a relational continuity (Escobar 2017). It is the view of the inherent connectivity between humans and the rest of the elements of nature and the world that informs Indigenous peoples’ notions of wellbeing across the globe. Indigenous ways of being and relating to the world surpass Western understandings of wellbeing by extending it from the individual to the community, nature, and the Earth (Cajete 2000). The Indigenous principle “what we do to the land we do to ourselves” (Kimmerer 2011, p. 258) illustrates how wellbeing of IP is bound to wellbeing of the community and wellbeing of Earth. For IP, wellbeing entails a responsibility to take care of the Earth. Indigenous wellbeing is found when the relationships between people and the land are nurtured (Cajete 1994, 2000).