Before the ‘New’: Reclaiming Indigenous Relational Ontologies through Linda Hogan’s Memoir The Woman Who Watches Over the World

Yıl 2025, Cilt: 20 Sayı: 2, 355 - 370, 27.10.2025

Nesrin Yavaş

https://doi.org/10.17550/akademikincelemeler.1693034

Öz

This article critically examines the epistemological limitations of Western new materialist theory by foregrounding Indigenous relational ontologies, with Linda Hogan’s memoir The Woman Who Watches Over the World serving as a focal text. While new materialism has challenged anthropocentric paradigms by recognizing the agency of nonhuman entities, it frequently overlooks longstanding Indigenous philosophies in which land, matter, and spirit are inseparably entangled. This study highlights how Hogan’s narrative embodies a relational worldview where earth, animals, objects, and memory participate in the production of meaning and ethical responsibility. By framing Indigenous materialisms as autonomous theoretical systems rather than cultural supplements, the article redefines matter as sentient, storied, and historically embedded. This perspective not only destabilizes the perceived novelty of Western theory but also proposes a model of human–nonhuman relations grounded in reciprocity, place-based ethics, and spiritual kinship. The article contributes to current debates in environmental humanities and decolonial theory while establishing a foundation for future research on non-Western materialisms, multispecies worldviews, and local ontologies across global contexts.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Indigenous Materialisms , Relational Ontology , New Materialism (s) , Epistemic Colonization , Linda Hogan

Kaynakça

• Ahmed, S. (2008). Imaginary prohibitions: Some preliminary remarks on the founding gestures of the “new materialism”. European Journal of Women's Studies, 15(1), 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506807084854
• Alaimo, S., & Hekman, S. (2008). Material feminisms. Indiana University Press.
• Aluli-Meyer, M. (2013). Holographic epistemology: Native common sense. China Media Research, 9(2), 94–101.
• Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831.
• Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
• Battiste, M. (2011). Reclaiming Indigenous voice and vision. UBC Press.
• Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press.
• Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Polity Press.
• Burow, P. B., Brock, S., & Dove, M. R. (2020). Land, Indigeneity, and hybrid ontologies. In S. Mickey, M. E. Tucker, & J. Grim (Eds.), Living Earth Community: Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing (pp. 193–202). Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0186
• Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Publishers.
• Coole, D., & Frost, S. (2010). Introducing the new materialisms. In D. Coole & S. Frost (Eds.), New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics (pp. 1–43). Duke University Press.
• Deloria, V. (1979). The metaphysics of modern existence. Harper & Row.
• Deloria, V. (1999). Spirit and reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., reader (B. Deloria, K. Foehner, & S. Scinta, Eds.). Fulcrum.
• Deloria, V., (2001). American Indian metaphysics. In V. Deloria Jr. & D. Wildcat (Eds.), Power and place: Indian education in America. (pp. 1-6). Fulcrum.
• Glass, A. (2022). Introduction: For the lives of things—Indigenous ontologies of active matter. In S. Mickey, M. E. Tucker, & J. Grim (Eds.), Living Earth Community (pp. 222–233). Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0186
• Haraway, D. J. (2008). When species meet. University of Minnesota Press.
• Hekman, S. (2010). The material of knowledge: Feminist disclosures. Indiana University Press.
• Hogan, L. (1995). Dwellings: A spiritual history of the living world. W. W. Norton.
• Hogan, L. (2001). The woman who watches over the world: A native memoir. W. W. Norton.
• Hokowhitu, B. (2021). Indigenous materialisms and disciplinary colonialism. Somatechnics, 11(2), 157–173. https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2021.0349
• Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (2012a). Material ecocriticism: Materiality, agency, and models of narrativity. Ecozon@, 3(1), 75–90. https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2012.3.1.452
• Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (2012b). Theorizing material ecocriticism: A diptych. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 19(3), 448–475. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/iss087
• Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (2014). Introduction: Stories come to matter. In S. Iovino & S. Oppermann (Eds.), Material ecocriticism (pp. 1–17). Indiana University Press.
• Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.
• Kovach, M. (2009). Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations, and contexts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• LaDuke, W. (2005). Recovering the sacred: The power of naming and claiming. South End Press.
• Lawres, N. R., & Sanger, M. C. (2022). Recentering the turn: Bringing Native philosophy into ontological studies. General Anthropology, 29(2), 7–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gena.12102
• Little Bear, L. (2000). Jagged worldviews colliding. In M. Battiste (Ed.), Reclaiming Indigenous voice and vision (pp. 77–85). UBC Press.
• Magnat, V. (2022). (K)new materialisms: Honouring Indigenous perspectives. Theatre Research in Canada, 43(1), 24–37. https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.43.1.a01
• Manning, D. T. (2019). The murmuration of relations: Levinas and the responsibility of the sensed. Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, 1(4), 160–178.
• Rosiek, J. L., Snyder, J., & Pratt, S. (2019). The new materialisms and Indigenous theories of non-human agency: Making the case for respectful, anti-colonial engagement. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(3), 330–340. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419830135
• TallBear, K. (2017). Beyond the life/not-life binary: A feminist-Indigenous reading of cryopreservation, interspecies thinking, and the new materialisms. In J. Radin & E. Kowal (Eds.), Cryopolitics: Frozen life in a melting world (pp. 179–201). MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10456.003.0015
• Todd, Z. (2016). An Indigenous feminist’s take on the ontological turn: “Ontology” is just another word for colonialism. Journal of Historical Sociology, 29(1), 4–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12124
• Watts, V. (2013). Indigenous place-thought and agency among humans and non-humans. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2(1), 20–34. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/19145/16234
• Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood Publishing.
• Ziarkowska, J. (2014). “History Lives in the Body”: The Body/Land/History Triad in Linda Hogan’s The Woman Who Watches Over the World. e-Rea: Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.4119