Cultural and Scientific Colonization

Colonization of the American continent occurred in the name of European kings under the justification of Christian ideology (and, nowadays, in the name of global capital and transnational corporations). The main justification remains the preservation and accumulation of material wealth for the powerful and dominant elites and nation-states. It also happens under the guises of economic, political, religious, educational, and military “protectionism.”

Henry (1986) argued that before imperial colonization , religion was dominant in all cultural systems. However, with the emergence of the capitalist world system , colonies and powerful nations began developing in different directions. While powerful countries constructed capitalist systems of production, the new elites gradually came to control the machines of a new and far-reaching imperium. Mythology and the metaphysic worldview of religion were replaced by a market and instrumental rationality to support systems of profitable scientific production, control, and abuse of nature. This violent act has caused severe ecological degradation (ecocide) and cultural genocide (epistemicide) (de Sousa Santos 2016). The colonized countries experienced—and, through globalization, continue to experience—brutal cultural change in the form of structural and symbolic adjustment processes aimed at facing, supporting, and legitimizing the foreign cultural hegemony (Fanon 1963/2004; Maldonado-Torres 2016; Marsella 2015; Mignolo 2011a).

Colonization had a devastating effect through the greedy extraction of not only natural resources but also of entire cultural assets. For some scholars, colonization has not ended. For instance, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) reminded us to ask whether they (the colonizers) ever left the colonies. Similarly, de Sousa Santos (2016) reflected that the still-existing dichotomies of nature/society, savage/civilized, developed/undeveloped provide evidence that the colonial past remains in the postcolonial present.

Among feminist scholars, one common shared definition of power is control of resources and domination of others for the sake of a specific group, class, sexual orientation, or gender. Power is withheld by individuals, groups, institutions, or nation-states whose position in it gives them privileges to control economic, social, cultural, religious, and political decisions. This process influences the allocation of resources and restricts opportunities to seize popular power . Domination is the result of the application of power on nature, humans, other-than-humans, and objects. Exploitation , ambition, and greed are the leitmotivs used for the selfish purposes of profit making.

Egocentrism is the psychological stage that relates the perception of the world to one’s own values, beliefs, desires, needs, and actions. Similar to this concept, ethnocentrism refers to a tendency or inclination toward perceiving reality from the vantage point of one’s own cultural experience. As a result, consciously or unconsciously, we center or anchor our perceptions and affects within a biased viewpoint. The egocentric state described by psychoanalytic theory may end in a narcissistic state of self-centered cognition and affection (Jung 1933; Gruba-McCallister 2007; Watkins and Schulman 2008). Marsella (2003) stated that when ethnocentricity is combined with the power to control knowledge and opinion, the results are dangerous because we are blinded to the possibilities of difference and diversity in the construction of our lifeworld.

Evolutionary scientists viewed the loss of indigenous people resulting from violent and massive colonization and exploitation as only the tragic loss of study materials (Smith 2012). The primary cognitive and affective consequence that remains pervasive today is the genocide caused by territorial expansion and supported by intolerance of otherness. This pervasive ideology constitutes a regime of truth that helps perpetuate conditions of power as a means of silencing other ways of knowing, feeling, and acting. It constitutes hegemonic science manifested mostly in its logical, positivist paradigm. Consciously or unconsciously, people think and act through dominant paradigms and attach affects to them. As Kuhn (1970) observed, paradigms are changes in scientific perceptions (or regimes of truth ) and these changes are perceived as threats. Regimes of truth defend against these threats through the imposition and preservation of their paradigms. Because paradigms are anchored in culture, our perceptions of reality and ways of knowing are culturally constructed; thus, it is tempting to be ethnocentric in our assumptions (Marsella 2003). The study of other ways of knowing within the context of cultural difference helps us avoid ethnocentricity and apply self-reflexivity to de-construct our own culturally anchored assumptions. At the same time, as Mignolo stated (2000/2012) it is essential to be aware of the “colonial difference ” that is marked by colonization and that has regarded other-than-Western knowledge systems as inferior, barbaric, or primitive (see also Deloria 2009; Smith 2012; de Sousa Santos 2016—among others).

As a means of contesting and resisting the colonizing forces, peoples of the colonies have mobilized to reclaim political, economic, and cultural independence from those countries that have invaded their territories. Although the struggles for independence in many colonized countries have been, in part, successful, it is an ongoing struggle, as it has been internalized, psychologically and territorially, constituting the coloniality of power, feeling , and being (Maldonado-Torres 2016; Quijano 2000).

Movement Towards Decolonization

Decolonial efforts are proliferating around the world, particularly in countries that have experienced—and continue to experience—colonization. Important contributions have emerged from scholars who are consciously departing from epistemologies produced in Europe and the United States of America (US)—epistemologies that have been considered superior, scientific, and universal. These epistemologies were—and continue to be—used to oppress and dominate as a key strategy of colonization and the formation of imperial expansion, not only of economies but of ways of thinking, feeling, and being.

As an enormous project of resistance, epistemologies of the South (see Leff 1995; Escobar 2003; Maldonado-Torres 2016; Mignolo 2011b; Quijano 2000; de Sousa Santos 2016—among others) are emerging from these places and their struggles. Catherine Walsh (2007) pointed at the power exercised by processes of neoliberal globalization that regulates scientific theory and its application, judging what constitutes legitimate conceptions of knowledge generation on culture and nature, as well as their relation to political economy (p. 103). In this process, the legitimacy of all other forms of knowing that depart from Euro-American conceptions—valued as rational and scientific—are denied. Other forms of legitimizing knowledge are categorized by race. Eze (2008) named this process “the color of reason” or what Du Bois (1994) called “the color line.” de Sousa Santos (2016) added

Modern western thinking is an abyssal thinking. It consists of a system of visible and invisible distinctions, the invisible ones being the foundation of the visible ones. The invisible distinctions are established through radical lines that divide social reality into two realms, the realm of ‘this side of the line” and the realm of “the other side of the line.” The division is such that “the other side of the line” vanishes as reality, becomes nonexistent, and is indeed produced as nonexistent. Nonexistent means not existing in any relevant or comprehensible way of being…. It is unimaginable to apply to them not only the scientific true/false distinction but also unascertainable truths of philosophy and theology that constitute all the acceptable knowledge on this side of the line. On the other side of the line, there is no real knowledge; there are beliefs, opinions, intuitions, and subjective understandings, which, at the most, may become objects or raw materials for scientific inquiry. Thus, the visible line that separates science, philosophy, and theology, on the one side, from, on the other, knowledges rendered incommensurable and incomprehensible for meeting neither the scientific methods of truth nor their acknowledged contesters in the realm of philosophy and theology. (pp. 119–120)

Modern science has been used as a strategic colonization tool that, as Anibal Quijano (2000) showed, has become a coloniality of power restricting equal distribution of its potential benefits “…as it was originally designed to convert this side of the line into the subject of knowledge and the other side into the object of knowledge. The real-world interventions it favors tend to be those that cater to the social groups with greater access to scientific knowledge ” (de Sousa Santos 2016, p. 193).

Modern science is compartmentalized into disciplinary boundaries. Anthropology is one of the most important disciplines that has made distinctions between objects of study: the aboriginal, the barbarians, the underdeveloped and uncivilized Indians, and the Western scientists, mostly European or North American men, the superior subjects who study, analyze, interpret, and represent the inferior objects of study—and that includes women of all races. In this process, the knowledge of the objects of the study was and continues to be devalued, ignored, and replaced by the superior knowledge systems of the colonizers . As a result, we must ask: How can we bring to the foreground knowledges that have been placed on the other side of the line—those “rendered incommensurable and incomprehensible”? How can we, on this side of the line, co-construct knowledges that can produce anti-racist and decolonial praxes?

Marsella (2009) reminded us of the abuses of Eurocentric psychology applied to other cultures. Like all social sciences, psychology has contributed to the project of colonization. To decolonize the social sciences in general, and psychology in particular, we must invite dialogue about the opportunities and challenges that address the epistemological hegemony formed within Western regimes of knowledge. Psychology’s history has traditionally been described within the context of European history and then, later, of US history. However, other origins have been contested and reclaimed, particularly from geographical locations that have experienced colonization. The dominant discourse of US-Eurocentric science has excluded epistemologies from colonized localities. This constitutes what decolonial intellectuals and activists from the South have termed the “geopolitics of knowledge” (Mignolo 2000/2012).

A decolonial social science must analyze the extent to which a particular mainstream discipline such as psychology has valued only Euro-American theories and practices, making other, non-Western approaches irrelevant, useless, primitive speculation, superstition, sorcery, and, thus, incommensurable, incomprehensible, and invisible. de Sousa Santos (2016) stated

…despite the apparently unshakable hegemony of the arguments invoked by Eurocentric world history to demonstrate the uniqueness of the West and its superiority, there is room to think of a non-Occidentalist West. By that I mean a vast array of conceptions, theories, and arguments that, though produced in the West by recognized intellectual figures, were discarded, marginalized, or ignored because they did not fit the political objectives of capitalism and colonialism that act as a foundation for the construction of the uniqueness and superiority of Western modernity. (p. 99)

Consequently, we must ask where contemporary psychology falls within this legacy of coloniality and whether other psychologies produced in the non-Occidentalist West and East could be constituents of decoloniality . In this process, we must delink the hegemonic paradigms entrenched in current US-Eurocentric social science (Mignolo 2000/2012). In doing so, the linguistic colonial practice that privileges English as the legitimized and universal discourse must be disrupted to address the pervasive consequences of linguistic colonization manifested in the coloniality of power, feeling , and being (Quijano 2000; Maldano-Torres 2016; Mignolo 2000/2012, 2011a).

We must co-construct methodological approaches that disrupt those being used in the current US-Eurocentric scientific discourse. We must publish examples of decolonial praxes from which we can develop a decolonial psychology. de Sousa Santos (2016) proposed the use of frameworks based on “ecologies of knowledges” as counterepistemologies that confront monocultures and hegemonic globalization.

It consists of granting ‘equality of opportunity’ to the different kinds of knowledge involved in even broader epistemological arguments with the view to maximizing their respective contributions toward building ‘another possible world,’ that is to say, a more just and democratic society, as well as one more balanced in its relation to nature. Two main factors account for the emergence of the ecology of knowledges. The first of these is the strong political presence of peoples and worldviews on the other side of the line as partners in the global resistance to capitalism, that is, as significant agents of counterhegemonic globalization . The second factor is the unprecedented confrontation between radically different conceptions of alternative society, so much so that they cannot be brought together under the umbrella of a single totalizing alternative. (p. 190–192).

Catherine Walsh (2007) has challenged the construction of knowledge within the ecology of the academy because it is embedded within systems of coloniality that support capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. Other feminist scholars have proposed focusing on everyday conviviality , on ecologies of praxes produced by those whom hegemonic regimes of knowledge have made them invisible. However, in this process, Elena Yehia (2007) urged us to look closely at the actors who produce and reproduce practices of the expulsion of those who inhabit other worlds, ways of being, feeling, and acting.

Epistemologies and praxes from colonized localities have been excluded from the dominant US-Eurocentric discourse. A counterhegemonic praxis would center localized knowledges and different ways of being and acting in the world as the central ecology for co-constructing decolonial epistemologies. Dutta (2016) analyzed the hierarchical systems of academy that produce monolithic narratives judged as superior to other, excluded knowledge systems emerging from peripheral localities of praxes. As academics resisting coloniality, we must create nonhierarchical, reciprocal relationships with the communities in which we practice, as their knowledge systems are regarded as peripheral to the academic, hegemonic center. Almeida and Sanchez Diaz de Rivera (2016b) emphasized openness, humility, and trust as key ingredients for learning from cultures that have historically been silenced and erased. We must learn from what Vizenor (2008, 1999) called survivance practices in communities, constantly identifying coloniality and contesting false universalisms and colonial ideas about the religious, economic, and cultural underdevelopment of non-European societies. Furthermore, Marsella (2009) shed light on the need to critically analyze decontextualized understandings of the psychological, including psychopathology.

In the 60s and 70s, the movement to reconceptualize the cultural and social sciences had a global theme but failed to include the contributions of people of color from dominant countries as well as those kept at the margins, rejected, silenced, made invisible and unknown (Walsh 2007). In Latin America, innovative psychologies evolved to address the structural factors causing poverty and the exploitation of the majority of the population. These socially responsible psychologies became predominantly interdisciplinary and creative in nature. Psychologists applied strategies, tools, and methods based on popular education and solidarity with those excluded from knowledge production and political action (Almeida 2012; Montero 2008: Montero and Serrano-Garcia 2011).

Currently, social scientists in this Southern region of the world are critiquing Western hegemonic discourse and are committed to de-constructing the still-existing coloniality of knowing and being within Western science and technology (Escobar 2003). These scholars have urged us to reconceive academic disciplines “from below,” from the perspectives of those whose knowledge and praxis systems have been erased (Almeida and Sanchez Diaz de Rivera 2015, 2016a; Sanchez Diaz de Rivera and Almeida 2005). In confronting the claimed superiority of knowledge by Western capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, de Sousa Santos (2016) posited that there are other knowledges in which Western science had played no role. For instance, “…the preservation of biodiversity made possible by rural and Indigenous forms of knowledge, which, paradoxically, are under threat because of increasing science reading intervention (de Sousa Santos et al. 2008)” (p. 201).

Being constantly aware of the “geopolitics of knowledge production” (Mignolo 2000/2012), we must imagine “alternatives to modernity ” that transcend “alternatives of modernity” (Escobar 2003; Mignolo 2005; Yehia 2007). The authors of the Global South proposed that for this to happen, we must listen to the silence in our own theoretical frameworks and in relationship models with those who have been excluded from the benefits and opportunities of modernity, or what de Sousa Santos (2016) called the “ecologies of absences .” In counterhegemonic resistance to these ecologies, through a process of deep self-reflexivity, being constantly on guard, questioning our theories and praxes , and imagining that which has not yet been manifested, ecologies of emergencies evolve as a permanent possibility of alternative configurations that avoid one episteme. de Sousa Santos (2016) recommended that in this process we use

…intercultural translation that questions both the reified dichotomies among alternative knowledges (e.g., Indigenous knowledge versus scientific knowledge) and the unequal abstract status of different knowledges (e.g., Indigenous knowledge as a valid claim of identity versus scientific knowledge as a valid claim of truth). …[It] enables us to cope with diversity and conflict in the absence of a general theory…. it is a living process to be carried out both with arguments and with the emotions deriving from sharing under an axiology of care . (p. 212–213)

Building everyday conviviality with those placed under the oppressive side of “the line,” the one that de Sousa Santos (2016) referenced as the manifestation of the margin, the erasure , the absences, we can start including multiple voices. By building relationships with local communities and learning from them, we can co-construct popular knowledge that promotes the co-creation of innovative paradigms for transformative praxes. As de Sousa Santos (2016) proposed, this enables the generation of other knowledges (otros saberes). We must disrupt the colonial practice of privileging English-written psychology literature and practice what Bakhtin (1981) called “heteroglossia” that emerges through the process of dialogic imagination. In this way, polyphony will create innovative possibilities to co-construct diverse psychologies.

A central issue that indigenous scholars have addressed is the imposition of Western paradigms as universal truths representing one science for all, the subordination of indigenous peoples, the inequality of power, and the lack of opportunities to access resources. Indigenous Psychologies are based on plurilogues of decolonial epistemologies and praxes to co-construct a different world in which—paraphrasing the Zapatistas from Chiapas, Mexico—many worlds can exist.

Indigenous Psychologies

Plurilogue engagements bring these conceptual strategies and understandings of multiple oppressions together to more effectively ascertain the complexities of, and varied strategies for, resisting racialized, heteropatriarchal oppressions of global capitalism and colonialism. Shireen Roshanravan 2014, p. 42

Indigenous Psychologies are systems of knowledge and wisdom based on non-Western paradigms originating in their particular ecologies and cultures (Kim et al. 2006). Indigenous Psychologies de-construct psychological phenomena within political, economic, historical, philosophical, religious, cultural, and ecological contexts. Kim and Berry (1993) defined Indigenous Psychologies as “the scientific study of human behavior or mind that is native, that is not transported from other region, and that is designed for its people” (p. 2; cited in Kim et al. 2006, p. 5). By contrast, psychology, as a legitimized discipline within Western scientific paradigms, has attempted to de-contextualize psychological phenomena and has produced universal theories based on White male regimes of truth . Indigenous Psychologies question the universality of existing Western scientific paradigms and incorporate context, meanings, values, beliefs, and locality into research designs and knowledge generation. Kim and Park stated, “Existing psychological theories are not universal since they have eliminated the very qualities that allow people to understand, predict, and control their environment” (p. 31).

Colonial resistance and the centralization of indigenous ways of knowing were stimulated by the paradigm crisis in psychology experienced from the late 1960s (Kim et al. 2006). The collective contestation is that existing psychological theories are not universal. Psychological phenomena must be understood in their ecological, historical, philosophical, religious, political, and cultural context, and at the same time, global context (Marsella 1998, 2013).

Native peoples of the Americas, aboriginal peoples in Australia and New Zealand, Chinese, Japanese, African, Filipino, Hawaiian, Latin American, and Indian scholars (among others) are contesting the imposition of colonized epistemologies and bringing their own systems of knowledge to the center of discourse. Having been born in Mexico and trained in the West, I discovered a lack of applicability among mainstream psychological theories and methodologies while working with several indigenous communities in Mexico and Hawaii. Non-Western psychologists have asserted that Western psychological theories and their related praxes are “culture-bound, value-laden, and with limited validity” (cited in Kim et al. 2006, p. 4). In the US, the late 1960s paradigm crisis in Western psychology was influenced by neo-colonial rejection emerging from various countries around the world. Kim et al. (2006) stated that a collective contestation emerged towards the blind acceptance of universal psychological theories

…since they have eliminated the very qualities that allow people to understand, predict, and intervene in their environment and thus, psychological phenomena must be understood in its ecological, historical, philosophical, religious, political, and cultural context. (p. 5)

Developments in cultural and cross-cultural psychology under Western paradigms have targeted the study of people in context (Tricket et al. 1994). However, indigenous scholars have criticized cross-cultural psychology because it is based mainly on linear models of causality and the imposition of Western standards. Western culture is considered the norm; Western cultural behavior is labeled “civilized or normal” if it aligns with the hegemonic norms and “abnormal, deviant, pathological or primitive” if it is misaligned with them (Deloria 2009; Marsella 1998, 2009, 2015; Smith 2012).

Positivist paradigms are based on a Cartesian dual thinking that separates mind, body, psyche, and spirit. These paradigms are used to understand an assumed universal, cultural behavior. The researcher’s power, expertise, and control are emphasized. By contrast, Indigenous Psychologies emerge from paradigms, epistemologies (how we create knowledge), ontologies (what is knowledge), and axiology (the implicit values in knowledge construction) that bring, at the center, interdependence and relationships (Wilson 2008). For Mignolo (2000/2012), relationality is a key strategy for promoting decolonial encounters that can generate other epistemologies (otros saberes).

Another critique has been that Western psychologies have focused primarily on the individual. For example, Kim and Park (2006) stated that “In psychiatry, Freudian theory has traditionally dominated the conceptualizations and treatment of the mentally ill” (p. 37). Western, universal generalizations were—and continue to be—imposed as the norm under both Freudian psychoanalysis and hegemonic psychology. Cultural differences are explained based on assumptions of the superiority of one race over other races or what Mignolo (2000/2012) has coined “the colonial difference.” These assumptions help justify systems of power, oppression, and the exploitation of others for the sake of monocultural hegemony and the colonization of other races, lands, and cultures (de Sousa Santos 2009; Quijano 2000; Shiva 1997). However, dramatic cultural differences exist. It can be said that Western thinking is primarily individualistic as opposed to non-Western thinking, which has regarded the individual embedded in its social and ecological context under holistic and collectivistic worldviews (Deloria 2009; Hwang 2006; Kim et al. 2006; Marsella 2015; Aluli-Meyer 2008; Mishra 2006; Pe-pua 2006; Wilson 2008).

Kim et al. (2006) asserted that “In east Asia, the word for human beings can be translated literally as ‘humans between.’ [It] is what happens between individuals that makes us human” (pp. 10–11). This conception and development of the self encompasses the individual embedded in the context of family, culture, and nature at large and not embedded in its internal self. The same is true for Native American cultures. For instance, Native American scholars Cajete, Dudgeon, Deloria, Duran, Holm, Meyer, Ryan, Yellow Bird, and Wilson—among others—have highlighted the concept of relationships between human and nonhumans and the natural world at large in the process of knowledge creation, research, ritual, ceremony , and daily living.

The controversy lies in efforts to legitimize Indigenous Psychology as, on the one hand, “the scientific study of human behavior or mind that is native, that is not transported from other regions, and that is designed for its people” (Kim and Berry 1993, p. 2; cited in Kim et al. 2006, p. 5), and on the other hand as a way of knowing that departs from linear and positivistic epistemologies located far from the scientific empire (Duran and Duran 1995; Duran 2006; Duran et al. 2008; Aluli-Meyer 2008; Wilson 2008). Kim et al. (2006) stated

The goal is not to abandon science, objectivity, experimental method, and a search for universals, but to create a science that is firmly grounded in the descriptive understanding of human beings. The goal is to create a more rigorous, systematic, universal science that can be theoretically and empirically verified. (p. 34)

The authors contradict themselves in their aims to develop, on the one hand, a psychology that is not universal but pluralistic, and on the other hand, a psychology that applies the same Western scientific paradigm of experimental rigor, objectivity, and universality. However, Indigenous Psychologies must emerge out of the particular localities and cultures. Consequently, there are as many psychologies as there are indigenous cultures in the world. Creating alternatives to modernity means co-creating multiple “Indigenous Psychologies” instead of one universal psychology. Indeed, Marsella (2013) suggested that all psychologies are indigenous when these are nested in their own natural and cultural settings and, thus, none of them can be regarded as universal. The emphasis lies in the non-imposition of one science over the other under justifications of hegemonic truth as a means of maintaining the coloniality of power (Quijano 2000).

Indigenous Psychologies contest Western psychological theories because they are not universal but represent the worldview of Europe and North America, centering these cultures’ psychology and traditions and colonizing other ways of knowing (Dutta 2016; Nsmenang 1995; Kim et al. 2006; Diaz-Guerrero 2006; Marsella 2015; Wilson 2008—among others). Indigenous Psychologies legitimize peoples’ profound understanding of themselves based on their own cosmogonies, cosmologies, mythologies, axiologies, epistemologies, relationships, dreams, and visions of the future. This source of deep understanding makes our presence in the world meaningful and strengthens our capacity to act upon our surroundings.

Each culture produces its own ways of knowing, and if we transport one cultural way of knowing into another, the result is an imposition by force or confusion. In 1990, the Viennese philosopher of science Fritz Wallner proposed that one way to achieve knowledge is through “strangification” (Verfremdung) (cited in Wallner and Jandl 2006, p. 57). This is a process involving the application of strategies that transfer “one (logical) system of propositions from their original context into another context and judging this system out of this context” (p. 57). As a result, strangification causes the wrongful judging of a particular system out of its own context. There are three types of strangification: linguistic, ontological, and pragmatic. We experience linguistic strangification , transferring our own language into a “foreign” language; ontological strangification , translating constructs or concepts from one culture to the other; and pragmatic strangification , applying one way of solving particular issues in one culture to another culture.

Wallner and Jandl (2006) concluded that “this type of strangification enables the revelation of (implicit) assumptions as well as showing up the domain of application of a system of statements without falling back to meta theoretical standardization of instances” (p. 57). By the same token, given that science is anchored in culture, “applying a system or a set of methods of a discipline to a very different discipline represents ontological strangification” (p. 57). Lastly, under “pragmatic strangification, the social and organizational context of scientists is observed” (p. 57). This means the application of epistemologies, ontologies, and axiologies from one culture to another represents strangification—and, thus, absurdity. Furthermore, it represents violent colonization caused by the epistemological privilege of modern science since the seventeenth century—a privilege that consolidated Western supremacy (Mignolo 2000, 2005, 2009, 2011b; de Sousa Santos 2016). The latter enabled the expansion of imperial possessions by means of industrial and technological revolutions. Other, nonscientific forms of knowledge were—and continue to be—suppressed in this process as well as the people whose social practice was—and continues to be—informed by such knowledges. This was the case with the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Africans, who were violently oppressed as slaves. The suppression of their bodies, spirits, and knowledge systems constitutes epistemicide as an extension of brutal genocide (de Sousa Santos 2016).

“The Indigenous psychologies of cultures that have survived the cruel impacts of colonization and globalization, whose existing knowledge systems are based on deep respect for nature and the sacred, need to be brought at the center of this discourse” (Ciofalo 2017, p. 2). We must talk about Indigenous Psychologies in plural, integrating multiple perspectives to obtain comprehensive and integrated understandings of their epistemologies and praxes . We must resist Western science that has been used not only to colonize cultures but also to control nature, causing ecocide (pervasive ecological devastation), wars, atrocities, and violence (Marsella 2013, 2009; Quijano 2000; de Sousa Santos 2016; Shiva 1997; Ciofalo 2017).

Indigenous Psychologies resist colonization and its pervasive cultural hegemony , which is based mainly on paradigms developed in the colonial empire of Europe and North America. Indigenous psychologists propose that their own religions, mythologies, philosophies, epistemologies, and axiologies form a fertile ground that generates particular and pluralistic psychologies embedded in social and natural sciences. They contest the fragmentation of knowing and propose transdisciplinary and multi-methodological approaches that help create an understanding of the holistic manifestations of our lives and cultures, including affects and emotions.

Decolonizing Emotions

Marsella (2003), a prominent cultural psychologist who has advocated for indigenous ways of understanding mental health in the context of culture, emphasized that in the realm of moods and affection, Indigenous Psychologies have proposed the development of ethnotheories . This implies looking at the ways in which people in diverse cultures define “abnormality.” Ethnotheories of abnormality may or may not dichotomize the mind–body interaction. In the West, depression is the opposite of being happy or at least of having a positive emotional experience. The emphasis is seen in the loss of pleasure. The abnormal state relies primarily on the loss of happiness or self-love, considered the basic goals of a Western individual. These are obviously culturally constructed definitions of normalcy. In other, non-Western cultures, emphasis may be placed on the care of children and elders or on an individual’s capacity to experience unpleasant emotions such as shame and righteous indignation as morally correct emotions (Deloria 2009; Kim et al. 2006; Wilson 2008).

In Sri Lanka, for example, anthropologist Obeyesekere (1985) showed how Buddhist monks consciously nourish meditation on putrefaction such as excrement and the aging of the body to increase awareness of our material transition in this world. Western researchers have regarded this practice as a manifestation of deep depression or even necrophilia. Psychoanalytic theory posits that the psychic depths hold priority; however, for example, Lutz (1986), a cultural anthropologist, has shown that in the Pacific Islands, particularly in the Atoll culture of the Ifaluk, what is felt introspectively cannot be seen and that is reason enough to not worry about this aspect of the unknown. Meanwhile, for Americans, the private, introspective life is a marker of the self. Introspection is also antithetical to Chinese ethnopsychology , as what is experienced inside an individual is private and approached by other means. However, for Euro-Americans it is the preferred method (Yang 2006). Under the psychoanalytic theory , words are symbols of interpretation to arrive at the unconscious traces or allusions of them. In other cultures, feelings may be expressed in casual conversations or in the form of poetic protest. Under the psychoanalytic theory, the former is considered a repressed expression that may be disguised using casual talk, while the latter may be interpreted as an expression of distress. However, one form needs not to be reduced to the other. Understanding the ethnotheory is crucial for translating cultural, emotional worlds (Lutz 1986).

Asian scholars have asserted that “If one-fourth of the world’s population is thinking, reasoning, and feeling in ways different than those we have learned from current psychology (largely based on American samples) then our understanding of human reasoning is at best incomplete and at worst culturally biased” (Peng et al. 2006; p. 248). Misinterpretations of culturally based emotions and affections were generated by the application of positivist scientific paradigms that assumed definitions of “affective normality,” based on Western ways of being, feeling, and thinking, constituted a universal standard from which other expressions, originating in different ecologies, were valued (Marsella et al. 1996; Marsella 2000, 2007). If those expressions departed from the Western standard, these were—and continue to be—judged or assessed as “abnormal.” Specific therapeutic or corrective methods were—and continue to be—applied to erase this difference. As a result, one important decolonizing strategy is the inclusion of other kinds of research methodologies delinked from US-Eurocentric paradigms that maintain coloniality in all aspects of being, including feeling and thinking.

In the following pages, I will revisit examples of indigenous research methodologies around the world. These examples will make clear the dramatic differences in the ways in which Western and non-Western individuals make sense of their everyday lives. As a result, diverse “ecologies of knowledges” (de Sousa Santos 2016) as well as affections and emotions form the foundation for the proliferation of pluralistic Indigenous Psychologies as a solidary movement toward decoloniality.

Indigenous Research Methodologies

Maori scholar Linda Tuhawai-Smith (2012) overtly stated that “research” is one of the dirtiest words testifying to the atrocities of the imposition of epistemologies developed in imperial worlds as a means of oppressing others through the de-legitimization of their own ways of knowing and being in the world. Smith (2012) asserted that some Maori, as well as other indigenous peoples, feel that they are the most researched people in the world (p. 83). Colonizers came to new land and embraced the pervasive myth of terra nullis, as if no previous residents had lived on the lands they “discovered,” thereby entitling the colonizers to name and claim them. They observed and recorded indigenous lives and stories and published them under their names. Smith asserted

Indigenous peoples were classified alongside the flora and fauna ; hierarchical typologies of humanity and systems of representation were fueled by new discoveries; and cultural maps were charted and territories claimed and contested by the major European powers. Hence some Indigenous people were ranked above others in terms of such things as the belief that they were ‘nearly human,’ ‘almost human’ or ‘sub-human.’ This often depended on whether it was thought that the people concerned possessed a ‘soul’ and could therefore be ‘offered’ salvation and whether or not they were educable and could be offered schooling. These systems for organizing, classifying and storing new knowledge, and for theorizing the meanings of such discoveries, constituted research. (ibid. 2012; pp. 62–63).

Imperial research has been based on “traveler tales,” detailing their experiences with “the savages” and the richness of their lands. These traveler tales provoked the growth of new settlements of people from the imperial zones, who searched for adventure and wealth. The most dangerous tales came from researchers who claimed scientific ambitions. They constructed theories that proved their superior status and allowed them to classify their inferior objects of research. Artifacts from the studied indigenous cultures were extracted and sent to the imperial centers for further study, classification, storage, and display in their museums so that others could enjoy them.

Smith further analyzed the ways in which, during the seventeenth century, the West began recording, collecting, and appropriating indigenous forms of classification and forms of life as new discoveries. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this recording and collection enterprise expanded so that it was carried out with nature. Flora and fauna were classified according to their uses in the capital accumulation resulting from the greedy extraction of natural resources. “This botanical colonization had been successfully carried out in other places: for example, maize, sweet potatoes, tobacco from South America had been widely distributed. At the centre of these locations was the imperial ‘home country”’ (ibid. 2012; p. 65). With the intent of controlling the emergence of indigenous rebellion and resistance to the colonizers’ imposed culture and rules, colonizers had to address the “Indigenous problem” that, as Smith asserted, “…is still present in the Western psyche. … [and has] been portrayed by some writers as a deeply hatred of the Other” (ibid. 2012; pp. 94–95).

As a contestation, a new form of research, called Kapapa Maori research , has emerged. It legitimizes the Maoris’ ontology, axiology, and epistemology and establishes principles for conducting research in their communities, led by Maori and for Maori. Similar efforts have emerged in the Pacific Islands, such as Hawaii and Samoa, as well as in the US, with increasing Native American scholarship that is contesting the colonization of culture, spirit, psyche, mind, and nature. This prolific indigenous scholarship legitimizes paradigms based on the interrelationship and care for other species and the earth. For example, Native American scholar Shawn Wilson (2009) has framed research as ceremony and emphasized the axiology of interdependence, with all that surrounds us—including humans, other species, and the natural world—becoming stewards of Mother Earth instead of usurping its natural resources, driven by capitalistic greed.

Research, as a means of the relational co-construction of knowledge, must use indigenous ways of knowing such as storytelling , ceremony , and the awareness of interdependence. Indigenous epistemologies have given humanity imperative decolonial solutions to the pervasive problems that imperialism and capitalism have caused. When these solutions are finally heard and made visible, they are frequently appropriated as new inventions of the West, branded “new age alternatives” to heal the lost relationship with the natural world.

Many indigenous psychologists have developed important guiding principles for the use of indigenous methods. For example, Filipino psychologists proposed the use of Kapwa (shared identity, fellow human being) as a guiding principle for treating research participants as equals, regarding participants’ welfare as more important than data gathering, and using culturally appropriate methods that adapt to existing cultural norms (Pe-Pua 2006). Wilson (2008) proposed that awareness of interdependent relationships among humans, other-than-humans, and nature is the main guiding ethical value that views research as ceremony and sacred celebration. Lastly, indigenous researchers demand that the language of the people should be the language of the research at all times (Kim et al. 2006; Smith 2012—among others).

Indigenous research views knowledge as praxis, relationship building, the development of shared identity and interdependence, and the raising of critical consciousness. Multi-methods are applied to enhance awareness as one-with-the-other. The researcher co-constructs knowledge in relationship with others and gives it back to the community. The problem definition is co-constructed in the culture itself. However, issues to be addressed by research must be present in their cultural awareness or identified through involvement on the basis of respectful empathy with the indigenous culture. In regards to ethical issues, manipulation and “drive-by research” (meaning they come, they take, they go), as Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) called it, is avoided at all times. Results remain in the community and the participants decide what to do with them.

Indigenous scholars contest the dominant Western research as colonizing etic imposed on indigenous cultures. By contrast, Indigenous Psychologies are based on a process of indigenization from within, obtaining emic data from diverse cultural groups and collaboratively developing shared knowledge that is transformative and applied to the co-creation of healing and sacred spaces.

These efforts and revolutionary movements that fall under the umbrella of Indigenous Psychologies are finding an emancipatory language to challenge imperial forms of knowing and being in the world (Ciofalo 2017). These movements are co-constructing alternatives and building partnerships with silenced intellectual traditions to decolonize science and address the imperative issues of genocide, epistemicide , and ecocide. At the same time, indigenous communities have courageously resisted colonization for centuries and have strengthened their autonomous survival in a manner that preserves their own systems of knowledge, ways of being, and cultural traditions (Almeida and Sánchez Díaz de Rivera 2001, 2016a; Ciofalo 2014; Sanchez Diaz de Rivera and Almeida 2005; Sanchez Diaz de Rivera 2013; Gone 2016; Vizenor 2008, 1999). Indigenous psychologists propose that their own religions, mythologies, and philosophies, their own epistemologies and axiology, form the fertile ground upon which to develop their particular psychologies as well as research methodologies. Following this proposal, let us revisit some examples of these exciting developments around the world, led by indigenous psychologists.

Some Examples of Indigenous Psychologies Around the World

American Indian Psychologies

Native American scholar and activist Vine Deloria (2009) engaged in dialogue with the work of Swiss depth psychologist C. G. Jung to understand how European men viewed “the Indian” as a non-being, a primitive. He stated

Primitive/tribal peoples were believed to represent early man—that was the reason for studying them so intensely. They would give scholars clues about how human society evolved. Jung and others of his generation began to develop theoretical ideas about the undeveloped psyche, he looked for examples still living in the world—the non-Western peoples. He projected abstract doctrines onto contemporary non-Western people, playing on the stereotypes that then existed among educated people regarding these groups. Jung became one of the many scientific voices that helped to perpetuate and intensify the oppression of peoples who merely thought differently and saw the world differently than European peoples. (p. 60)

In his writings and teachings, Jung made derogatory statements about the Native American and African people he had met during his very short trips in search of answers to his Western psychological inquiries. Jung’s comparative observations were always measured against an implicit and explicit assumption that the Western psyche was superior and needed only to understand its origins in the undeveloped, barbaric, and primitive psyches of indigenous and aboriginal peoples, who in his time were still living under European colonial rule. The belief that the Western psyche’s lost connection with nature was key to the evolution of its race and culture has permeated the colonial narrative. Civilization required the split of mind, body, spirit, psyche, and nature. It has been considered the eugenic goal for all peoples in the world and has been used to colonize and indoctrinate savages.

While describing the Sioux universe as interrelated, Deloria emphasized that the Indians—as he called himself and his people—receive and process information from different sources, such as the external or physical world as well as visions and dreams . The Sioux, he added, also have a different concept of space,

Behind or underlying this basic notion of space, however, are additional experiences of space, including the ‘other’ places Sioux people visit in dreams and the acknowledgement of the extra-material dimensions of space that they recognize in ceremonies. In using the Sacred Pipe, for example, Sioux religious practitioner always invoke the powers attributed to each of the directions. (p. 85)

He added that the bowl of the pipe representing the universe is infinite and has powers that can be recollected through participation in ceremony . This perception of the universe is “present in its full dimension [and] simultaneously concentrated into a single point” (p. 86). The Sweat Lodge is one such example, as it is constructed through the formation of a sphere with the earth in one half and the sky in the other. Thus, both of these spaces—the Sacred Pipe and the Sweat Lodge—constitute interrelated physical and spiritual experiences.

Another example of the Sioux cosmogony that differs from Western cosmologies is the deep relationship of self with nature as a sacred space through, for instance, the experience of the vision quest. Deloria addressed the pejorative critique that many Western scholars have made about visions experienced during these sacred events—as being caused by fasting and fantasy projections. Deloria (2009) asserted

But fasting generally brings on an amazing surge of energy instead of faintness and fantasy. Voices heard during the vison provide specific practical instructions or data that can be verified easily. …All testimony from people, both Indian and non-Indian who have had a vison quest experience suggests, in fact unquestionably contends, that actual physical visitations are made by spirits, birds, animals and other forms of life. (p. 162).

Medicine men can receive powers through these sacred experiences. Songs play important roles in invoking these powers as well as gaining healing abilities. Songs also have the function of expressing gratitude for all the blessings received during ceremonies, the vision quest, dreams , or everyday life. Medicine men also use them to collaborate with animals in healing practices. Relating to problems in translating important Sioux experiences during the vision quest in Western words, Deloria stated

One central problem in selecting Sioux dream data is that the most frequent translation of the vision experience uses the English word “dream” to describe the psychological state in which the Sioux find themselves in the vision. The Sioux themselves generally use the same words—dream and vision—and sometimes do not distinguish one from the other, making it difficult to separate out grand visions from nighttime dreams. (p. 167)

Dreams can warn about dangers to come and help the dreamer anticipate future events. Regarding the recurrence of mythological symbols in dreams as a central theory of the unconscious in Jungian psychology, Deloria (2009) remarked

And yet, regardless of the psychic tasks to be accomplished, Western psychologists have frequently chosen mythological motifs with a Greek origin and storyline. They have needed little encouragement to appropriate a symbol from one culture and insist that it is present in other cultures, and it appears they have made Greek mythology the standard against which other cultures are judged. (p. 177)

Indians relate to divine beings such as birds and other animals through dreams and visions. They receive powers from them through dreams that their historical memory has captured by means of traditional songs. For instance, traditional Indian dreams have included snake motifs, such as a snake monster that “‘Thick-Headed Horse,’ a Sioux man encountered and learned that he was an old medicine man named Big Snake”’ (pp. 126–127). Deloria further added

For the Sioux it is possible in ordinary life for a man to have the power to assume or adopt other forms in which to express himself. That is what Big Snake did; no symbolic or mythological dimension need be involved. (p. 177).

Anyone could receive these kinds of dreams. When this happened, to be validated, the dreams had to be shared with the community. The cosmic energy to which Indians relate has been referred to by some Indian Medicine men, such as “Lame Deer,” as the Great Mystery (p. 116). This alludes to a spiritual guidance that clarifies the path one should follow and that evolves from one’s deep nature as a call for vocation. Deloria concluded

The Sioux approached this mysterious energy differently, by recognizing it first in personalities, then in the notions of the natural world. They reasoned that it was necessary first to seek a personal relationship with the Great Mysterious, knowing that physical manifestations would follow. Western science, following Roger Bacon, worked from the opposite direction, believing that humans could force nature to reveal its secrets, which, in the end, did not allow science to consider the concept of personal relationships at all. (p. 187)

Deloria clearly has taught us about the Sioux’s rich cosmogony and ways of knowing and being in the world, which White men deeply wish to possess, appropriate, control, exploit, and eradicate. Regarding the application of these knowledge systems to praxes, Wilson (2008) stated:

In an Indigenous ontology there may be multiple realities, as in the constructivist research paradigm. The difference is that, rather than the truth being something that is “out there” or external, reality is in the relationship that one has with the truth….We can extend this thinking—of viewing objects as the relationship we have with them—on to how we see concepts and ideas. The concepts or ideas are not as important as the relationships that went into forming them. …These relationships are with the cosmos around us, as well as with concepts. They thus include interpersonal, intrapersonal, environmental and spiritual relationships, and relationships with ideas. Indigenous epistemology is our cultures, our worldviews, our times, our languages, our histories, our spiritualities and our places in the cosmos. Indigenous epistemology is our systems of knowledge in their context, or in relationship. (pp. 73–74)

Duran and Duran (1995) and Duran (2006) critiqued the counseling profession because it has been an example of Eurocentric imposition on indigenous communities. Based on positivist-logical paradigms and aligned with Western medical classificatory systems of mental disease, such as the Diagnostic System of Mental Disorders (DSM), the counseling profession has contributed enormously to the psychological, physical, and spiritual oppression of Native American people since colonial times. Duran (2006) advocated for the development of a Native American psychology based on Native American knowledge systems and cosmogonies. Western counselors who are interested in practicing in Indian communities must first immerse themselves in learning and understanding native cultural systems. In this way, Western counselors can be exposed to a process of the hybridization of their own professional assumptions and praxes . The two worldviews differ from each other. Native American psychologists would engage in healing the cultural wounds resulting from historical trauma since colonial times. Consequently, for a healing process to occur, the therapeutic intervention must address the whole system in which the person is embedded. In particular, this includes cultural cosmology . For example, Duran (2006) described a liberation psychology that can provide an approach in which the suffering person understands his/her plight as a product of intergenerational trauma due to the violent genocide resulting from colonization and contemporary coloniality. American Indians tend to internalize oppression, nourishing feelings of helplessness, cultural loss, depression, anger, rage, and a lack of self-worth often manifested in the form of alcoholism, substance abuse, and suicide. Healing the soul’s wounds requires raising awareness of these factors within culturally appropriate frameworks (for instance, relating with the spirit of sickness and increasing one’s understanding of the reasons why it is visiting the person). In this way, the relationship with the spirit of sickness gives the suffering person insights into the lessons to be learned as a means of increasing personal growth.

Similar to Deloria, Duran engaged in dialogue with Jungian psychology that, to him, appeared closest to Native American psychology. One such convergence exists in the importance of dreams and dream work in the process of individual and cultural healing. Duran (2006) noted that American Indians would feel relief when talking about their dreams , which are not experienced as separate from waking life. In many cases, dreams have healing effects that provide insights into important life decisions. Dreams become the pathway to the spirit world, the “black world,” or the “unconscious ” (p. 16). The psyche is part of the dream. The dreamer has an active relationship with the dream, and an exchange of gifts often takes place. Duran motivated the people he related with in healing processes to bring a gift to the spirits that had made themselves present in their dreams. These spirits, in turn, provided gifts of enlightenment, the understanding of wrongdoing, and the ability to forecast future events. When the dreamer exchanges gifts with the spirits, the relationship becomes reciprocal. By relating to the spiritual entities that manifest in dreams (these may be father, mother, grandparents, son, daughter, etc.), the healer can provide a diagnosis. However, the author stated, “…in Native cosmology it is recognized that naming the entity is a naming ceremony and in no way does that imply that the patient is the diagnosis” (p. 17).

In addition, the healing of soul wounding requires treatment in ceremonial practices led by a counselor or psychologist, who learns to participate in energetic fields from traditional healers. Duran (2012) noted that Native psychology views psyche as not separate from cosmology , which, in turn, is earth awareness (p. 11). In Native psychology, as this author called it, the healing container is not the consulting room but “…a ceremonial earth place. The container is a medicine wheel that makes up the ceremonial sacred space” (p. 14). Duran et al. (2008) described healing from a Native perspective as the individual relationship with the cosmos and the search for ways to fit back into it. He highlighted the notion that the Western mental health profession antagonizes the cure against the symptoms and disrupts the balance and harmony that the Native psyche needs to have with “the universal life force” (p. 297).

Duran (2006) asserted that up until today, the relationship between the healing professionals and the Native/Original peoples has been immersed in a “historical narcissism” that validates Western belief systems and delegitimizes those who come from other epistemologies (p. 7). This implies that Western professionals impose foreign mythologies on indigenous mythologies (Duran et al. 2008, p. 291). The author further reinforced the notion that the current mental health ailments Native American peoples face are a product of the historical genocide that continues to impact their individual and community well-being.

Dunbar-Ortiz (2014) wrote extensively about the true history of the United States with a recollection of oral histories and historical memories gathered from Native American people. Her book describes the brutal cultural genocide of the original people of the Northern American continent at the time of the British colonization. The author narrated, in great historical detail, the pervasive effects of the usurpation of native lands, the oppression of Indian tribes, the forced relocation to other lands, and the confinement of indigenous settlements in the form of reservations without respect for the treaties that had been written to defend their sovereignty during independence from the British empire. This violence is still going on in contemporary times. Consequently, it is imperative that psychological processes be understood as embedded in these pervasive historical, economic, and political factors, and that liberating and decolonizing approaches be implemented to address them.

African Psychologies

One example of Indigenous Psychological theories in Africa is Optimal Theory. It was inspired by ancient traditions in African culture. According to these traditions, each human being is seen as an expression of life energy. Variations in individuals are diverse manifestations of this energy. People become alienated from this unity of consciousness when they perceive themselves as individual selves, building their identities on external criteria. Oppression is the result of suboptimal frames of reference that are self-alienating and result in the alienation of others. All those who internalize a fragmented worldview are oppressed. Liberation occurs through self-awareness and the motivation to move beyond external criteria to a self-definition that generates collective empowerment. It is based on socio-political assumptions and traces the roots of oppression in the human psyche itself (Myer and Speight 1994; cited in Tricket et al. 1994).

In his work entitled, The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose through Nature, Ritual, and Community, Somé (1999) alerted us to the fact that in his Dagara culture, relations with nature, the spiritual world, and ancestors are key factors preserving community cohesion, cultural sustainability, and well-being. This author contrasted the yearning for connection that permeates the Western modern world and its presence in everyday life in non-Western, African rural communities. Without denying the pervasive impacts of colonization, the severe poverty, and the marginalization that have also affected the loss of cultural traditions, certain expectations of proper behavior, as well as a means of knowing the world, still exist not only as historical memory but as responses to everyday community life. Somé described in detail how, for instance, a family problem was addressed by means of divination still practiced by shamans or healers. In addition, spirituality continues to be the spinal cord in many African rural communities and, perhaps in less intensity, in the acculturated and colonized urban hubs of the African continent.

Children are considered very important, as they represent the continuation of the lives of ancestors, who return as newly born spirits. This is why they relate easily to their grandparents, who are getting close to the Other World while the newborns have just arrived from it. Every newborn has a gift to bring to the community. The community’s responsibility is to spark children’s real purpose in life and encourage them to give their gifts back to the community. If a person cannot recognize these gifts, a crisis would be experienced. The community recognizes that the activity of a Spirit provokes such an individual crisis. It supports the person in crisis by helping him or her relate to the acting Spirit to whom he/she offers gifts, requesting healing and balance.

Art is closely linked to the sacred. Somé asserted that artists are healers because they can produce community healing through creativity. Art objects cannot be stored in one place because doing so would mean that the community is experiencing a deep spiritual thirst that cannot be satisfied. Western museums could be regarded as evidence of this thirst and of the need experienced by the Western societies that created them.

Stories contain the collective wisdom that is passed on to generations. Thus, storytellers are the keepers of historical memory and contribute to the sustainment of culture. Somé used storytelling to share important methods and strategies for addressing community conflict. The people residing in a community must come together to address conflict through rituals that promote community support and cohesion.

Elders are key guardians of community health and cultural sustainability. They preserve traditions considered to be, “…the way of the ancestors, the manner in which those who lived before us walked and talked, the knowledge and practices that allowed them to live enough to bestow life upon others” (p. 124). This is a key condition of cultural survival. Somé went on to state, “In Indigenous cultures, this is crucial to life, because to forget the way life used to be is to be endangered” (p. 124). Elders are respected and regarded as the conduits for relating with the spiritual world and with ancestors. Community well-being cannot be created without the presence of elders, who become the main decision-makers, leaders, and mentors to the younger generations. They are involved in identifying what is working and what is not working in the community and they receive inspiration from ancestors to correct wrongdoings and malfunctions. When a person must be reminded of proper behavior, the elder indirectly addresses the whole community. The community carries the recognition of wrongdoing but the expectation is that the person who caused it will come forward and seek spiritual guidance. Acknowledgement of wrongdoing provokes shame that an elder will then address by means of ritual. In this way, shame does not have negative outcomes in the individual or community psyche but, rather, is treated with the intervention of spirits. Reparation is used to correct hurt by deepening the relationship with the person on whom pain has been inflicted. A wrongdoer who is not accountable will cause ill to his or her family and community. Wrongdoers can be found by means of divination and required to sacrifice and provide gifts to the spirits to reestablish harmonious relations with the ancestors. Elders are close to the sacred because they are close to the Other World. They are the keepers of rituals , and one of their important responsibilities is to maintain shrines and communicate with ancestors. Somé contrasted the place elders hold in his Dagara culture with that held by elders in the West, where elders are regarded as a disposable, unproductive sector of society that must be segregated and kept in isolation until they die. The author recommended the revision of the irreparable loss of community gifts experienced through the marginalizing of elders in the West.

Grills (2002, 2006) emphasized the importance of an African-centered psychology that will disrupt the Western paradigm and center on its own cultural paradigm. African-centered psychology is founded in trans-African philosophical principles, values, and traditions that themselves are based on harmony with the universe and the liberation of the Spirit. Its foundation is the recognition of collective existence and the understanding of the self as embedded in community. Well-being is achieved through optimal functioning maintained through collective consciousness and the acknowledgement that everything is interconnected and permeated with Spirit. For Grills, African-centered psychology centers on African epistemology, which posits that the past is as important as the present and that the human being is a participatory vital force. One important philosophy that is central to this Indigenous Psychology is Ubuntu, which highlights the fundamental principles of respect, dignity, compassion, solidarity, and survival. The African concept of the self is intimately linked to the cosmos, nature, ancestors, spirits, humans, and other-than-humans. Okra is the soul given to humans by divine action. Sunsum (spirit) can leave the body, and its shadow contains the metaphysical realm. Mogya is the blood that establishes the relationship to the clan and the ancestors. Yikyere is a revelation attained through dreams or divination. These are some examples of the elements that constitute the African consciousness (Grills 2006).

Recent scholarship in South Africa has critiqued the emergence of African-centered approaches in psychology. For instance, Makhubela (2016) considered the notion that the process of decolonization cannot become a particularistic effort to contain psychology within the boundaries of African traditions, epistemology , and cosmogony because this would imply the negation of African contributions to what is now considered Western science. Decolonization means to assert these contributions and identify them within Western science. This author asserted

Decolonial psychologists in Africa, as Moll (2007) observes, are generally of two persuasions – those who view psychology as an Indigenous area of study marked by distinctive worldviews and lived experiences of the continent (for example, Akotia and Olowu, Baloyi, Bodibe, Matoane, Mbiti, Mkhize, Nobels, Nyasani, Sodi, Tempels, etc), and those who see it as a universal disciplinary practice predicated on and concerned with psychological affairs of Africans yet whose postulates traverse cultures and race (for example, Akbar, Dawes, Fanon, Gulerce, Hountondji, Moll, Mashegoane, Nsamenang, Nwoye, Okpara, Ratele, etc). (p. 2)

For this author, there is a danger in negating the other-than-Western scholarship and the value of its contribution to universal knowledge that could be considered scientific in nature because it is contained in the particularity of cultural traditions. Makhubela (2016) stated that the unique universalizing potential given only to Western scholarship must be decolonized. He referred to Nsamenang and Dawes, who alerted African psychologists about the need to identify aspects of Western psychology that are Eurocentric—such as Piagetian formal thinking being considered a superior cognitive ability—but to not reject all Western theories and empirical findings. Similarly, the goal should not be to develop an African psychology based only on traditions and ancient epistemologies and cosmogonies as if these remained stagnant over the centuries. Makhubela (2016) proposed that it would be more accurate to refer to the precolonial structures or systems of thought that Fanon analyzed. However, through colonization and globalization , the African culture has experienced a dramatic change. Lastly, the author proposed the project of decolonization not as a counterhegemonic strategy against Westernization but as a project of pluriversality , following Dussel’s transmodernity project, which can contribute to the dilution of dichotomies and the development of an ethical universalism transcending colonialism, anti-capitalism, and cultural reductionism.

Expanding these contributions to the development of psychologies representing African Americans, Du Bois (1994) wrote extensively about the impacts of slavery on the African-American psyche. He clearly analyzed the ways in which structural racism imposed a veil that could not be surpassed in front of the White world, directing its glance upon the Other who, simply because of skin color, was relegated to the role of outcast, deprived of access to the opportunities designed for the White race. Thus, a double consciousness is created by which the African self seeks to be American without being devalued, oppressed, and exploited. This double struggle has caused the African-American individual to feel ashamed while at the same time realizing the beauty of his/her race, the strong faith of redemption and emancipation, and the sorrow songs of long-lasting slavery. One reads Du Bois’ sharp observations as forecasts of the continuation of a still-existing marginalization not yet addressed by a White supremacist regime still alive in the midst of modern coloniality.

Fanon (1963/2004) and Albert Memmi (1967) conducted a similar analysis of the colonized African psyche and the conflictive dynamic of processes of identification with, and rejection of, the aggressor constituting an interplay of colonized self as well as colonized colonizer, who identifies with the aggressor and subjugates and exploits those of the same Black race.

Na’Im Akbar (1979, 1980) deeply studied the effects of slavery on the African self as well as the impacts of the label “Negro,” which had the intention of portraying the African as dead, inert, without the capacity to initiate, and condemned to imitate the White race. However, the awareness of the deep self gives Africans the capacity to energize and focus on self-preservation. Akbar recommended that Africans return to spirituality to regain the original self. This would be the only way to liberate oneself from pervasive mental slavery. For Akbar (1984), one of the most precious gifts of the African self is intuition, which serves as a guide to building empathetic relationships. Important psychological work involves confronting the fact that in spite of historical, economic, and political struggles to improve the conditions of African Americans, the effects of mental slavery are still in full function unless these are consciously targeted (Akbar 1984, 1996, 2004). Many of the current social problems that African-American communities confront involve these inner (psychological) and outer consequences of a still-existing structural racism.

Lastly, James (2017) proposed a decolonial approach toward knowledge and praxis generation based on Yoruba Orisha traditions that include rituals, ceremonies, spirituality, and the sacred. This is led by women’s ways of knowing that disrupt the damage-based narratives disseminated by Euro-American epistemologies that perpetuate the hegemony of the White supremacist, colonial, universal science practiced in the academy.

Chinese Psychologies

Indigenous Psychologies in China are being constructed under philosophical approaches inspired by Confucian Relationalism. Hwang (1987) applied a model to analyze the deep structure of Chinese cultural tradition, adapting the Freudian method as well as structuralism (Hwang 1987; cited in Hwang 2006). He used a psychosociogram adapted from Hsu (1971) that depicts the levels under which cultural phenomena may be observed (Hsu 1971; cited in Hwang 2006). The deepest level is the unconscious , followed by the pre-conscious, the unexpressed conscious, and the expressible conscious. Other societal structures follow, namely, the intimate society based on relationships, the operative society based on productive functions and job roles, the wider society relating to culture, and, finally, the outer world (Hwang 2006, p. 98). Hwang (2006) further stated that cultures “create the deep structure of their culture unconsciously with rationality, but the structure cannot be recognized intuitively through the rationality of ordinary people. The structure can only be recognized when revealed and reinterpreted by a researcher” (p. 99).

As cited earlier, the concept of ren, the transaction with other human beings, is central to maintaining psychological and interpersonal equilibrium. Ren allows for the alignment of one’s behavior with the demands and expectations of culture and society (Hsu 1971; cited in Hwang 2006, p. 98). It can be said that ren constitutes the basis of Confucian relationalism that “perceives the self as integrated with society; the self cannot be removed from one’s complicated interpersonal network” (Hwang 2000; cited in Hwang 2006, p. 102). Lastly, Hwang concluded that “…the important goals for indigenization of psychology in East Asian societies are to ascertain the deep structure of various cultural traditions, construct micro-worlds as a scientific theory, and use these micro-worlds as a frame of reference for conducting empirical research on people’s life-worlds” (p. 104). The latter reference to experiencing the theories developed from the deep structures of society (including the deepest unconscious structures) in people’s life-worlds provides a link to the nourishing of conviviality to develop Indigenous Psychologies that emerge from the bottom up—from the experiences and the relationships among human and non-human beings to the building of theories in a different way (de otra manera).

Yang (2006) wrote about the Chinese conception of the self as an approach towards co-constructing a psychology informed by Chinese culture as an indigenization movement to contest cross-cultural research applied to non-Western populations. He proposed, “Genuine understanding of another culture requires not differentiating it from others, but examining it from a native’s point of view” (p. 327). Yang went on to suggest the “age-old Chinese yin/yang mode of thinking” for understanding the Chinese concept of self that is delinked from Western modes of thinking (p. 329). Under this model, yin (the receptive principle) and yang (the active principle) are not contradictory concepts but represent a relationship in movement. This conception is incompatible with Western systems that include “concepts, substances, logical opposites, categories, dialectics, and compromises, which are all constituents of the philosophical thinking of essentialism and dualism” (p. 330), whereas the yin/yang mode of thinking is non-essentialist.

Chinese psychologists would seek to understand the decisions and behaviors accomplished by actors who are in relationship with these possible states in particular situations and contexts. This constitutes a meta-cognitive framework that can explain behaviors. Yang (2006) further proposed the study of the historical roots of the Chinese self, which is composed of two elements: wo and wu. Wo means autonomous, powerful I or me, one’s consciousness of oneself as a physically separate identity—the awareness of the I or me as the source of self (p. 332). The embodied person entails a mythological existence of wu

…a person who could be in two states of consciousness interchangeably: the embodied and the disembodied state. In the latter state, the person [can] leave the body, sometimes with the help of mythical animals, to converse with mythical figures, including the souls of deceased acquaintances. (p. 333)

Historically, the Chinese person was expected to relate to others in society following li and yue. The former set the rules or guidelines for proper behavior while the latter related to music as “the vehicle used to arouse pleasant emotions to help people internalize and practice li” (Yang 2006, p. 334). Li and yue constitute principles of social order and harmony under Confucian teachings. Another important concept based on a pictograph is xin. It represents the heart as the organ in charge of thinking and emotion—thus, the pairing of heart–mind.

Yang (2006) concluded that following his historical review of the conception of the self during the Confucian/Mencius Era, the person is at the center of the universe and is valued for what can become the cultivation of self-perfection and the assumption of the role of sage through the exercise of self-restraint. The person must relinquish the private and individuated self—the small self—and embrace a larger collectivity to belong to the big Self. The person is expected to work for the public or a larger collectivity. Only then will he/she be judged good and moral. Chinese individuals worry about issues of sincerity, loyalty, and trust (Yang 2006). The self is always in relationship with others.

Naïve Dialecticism and Taoism

Psychologists from China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have made efforts to pursue emic approaches towards Eastern psychological phenomena. This has led to the proposition of applying naive dialecticism and Taoism to the development of a framework for their own psychologies (Peng et al. 2006). Chinese culture has three main teachings: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Taoism deals with the art of living and an understanding of the nature of the world, knowledge, and human life. There is no equivalent for the word Tao, which means “the way” or “path.” “Tao,” as expressed in word form, is not the same as the eternal Tao. The construct is, in essence, nameless and embraces diverse meanings such as rules, patterns, laws of nature, and means of understanding. Peng et al. (2006) asserted that “none of these interpretations allows Western audiences to fully grasp the Chinese concept of Tao” (p. 250).

The ontological foundations of Taoism are the concepts of non-duality and of yin and yang. The Tao operates through their interaction. Yin is negative, passive, and feminine, whereas yang is positive, active, and masculine. Neither can exist without the other. The basis of non-duality is the notion of perpetual change. According to Taoism, contradictions can be mutually opposed as well as connected and exist in harmony and dependency. All things in the universe are constantly changing in cycles.

Contemplation leads to understanding; tranquility is achieved when pain and loss are as essential as pleasure and gain. Peng et al. (2006) asserted that “Taoist teachings exist as both cultural ideology and as individual, cognitive representations” (p. 253). Consequently, these teachings are connected to the psychology of Chinese individuals and can be used to understand their behaviors and affections. In doing so, the authors described the main principles of the philosophy of Taoism: (1) the principle of change; (2) the principle of contradiction; and (3) the principle of relationship or holism. The authors said

Western folk beliefs of knowing, or understanding of the nature of the world and human life are Aristotelian in spirit, emphasizing constancy (identity), synthesis (non-contradiction), and extremes (no middle ground). In contrast, Chinese emphasize a dialectical approach that values change, contradiction, and relationships. These important cultural variations have broad implications for the ways in which psychologists understand and theorize about cultural variation in general. (pp. 256–257)

Chinese epistemology is dialectical based on the yin yang symbol of Tao depicting harmony between two opposites as well as continuous movement that constitute “a synthesis of different ways of thinking” (p. 259) and that, thus, are conducive to the development of Indigenous Psychologies in plurilogue.

Filipino Psychologies

In the Philippines , Rogelia Pe-Pua (2006) has led efforts to decolonize psychology utilizing the Pakapa-Kapa approach. Torres (1982) defined it as: “A supposition-less approach to social scientific investigations…. An approach characterized by groping, searching, and probing into an unsystematic mass of social data to obtain order, meaning, and directions for research” (Torres 1982; cited in Pe-Pua 2006, p. 109). The main principle is the understanding of Filipino thought and experience from a Filipino perspective. For instance, Western scientists have regarded the indirect style of communication that Filipinos use as dishonest and as a deceptive verbal description of reality (Enriquez 1992; cited in Pe-Pua 2006, p. 110). However, its culturally anchored meaning expresses “concern for the feelings of others to avoid the other person losing face or getting embarrassed if directly confronted with negativity, conforming with the norm of humility and modesty by not directly recognizing one’s own abilities and achievements” (p. 110). Filipino psychologists use concepts that the Filipino people define themselves. One such concept is kapwa (shared identity), which is at the heart of Filipino values. Another concept is pakikisama, which American psychologists viewed as the value of maintaining smooth interpersonal relations (conformity). However, Enriquez (1978, 1994) clarified that “pakikisama is simply a colonial/accommodative surface value, and that the core value is pakikipagkawa, which means treating other person as kapwa or fellow human beings” (Enriquez 1978, 1994; cited in Pe-Pua 2006, p. 110). Filipino psychology is based on an assessment of historical and socio-cultural realities, understanding the language anchored in the cultural setting, rediscovering the dimensions of the Filipino character, and explaining psychological concepts and phenomena using a Filipino perspective (Pe-Pua 2006).

Torres (1982) advocated for an anthropological, methodological approach that sets aside theoretical, universal assumptions and that discovers cultural particularities (Torres 1982; cited in Pe-Pua 2006, p. 173). For example, through the use of an adapted version of participant observation, the researcher establishes rapport using informal visits or “pagdalaw-dalaw—dropping in.” Gradually, the researcher moves into a more direct interaction in the cultural habitat: “pakikipanuluyan—live-in visitor.” A deeper approach would involve becoming a dweller in the particular culture (“pakikipanirahan—participant dweller”) and then entering a state of being accepted (“pagpisan—live-in, one of us, participant”). There will be different degrees of trust in regards to the data, depending on the kind of participant observation. A higher data quality is expected when the researcher participant lives in the particular culture (ibid. 2006, p. 112).

Bennagen (1985) advocated that “….one embraces not just the external ways, but becomes one in thought as well as have the readiness of the mind to understand them” (Bennagen 1985, p. 406; cited in Pe-Pua 2006, p. 113). The researcher and participants are perceived as equals, with equal rights in determining the research questions. The questions evolve in the interaction and are not predetermined before the interview takes place.

Several researchers used a variation on the interview method, “pakikipagkuwentuhan (story-telling)” (p. 117), in contexts of inquiry about sensitive topics. An example is the approach that De Vera (1976) used when studying extra-marital relations (De Vera 1976; cited in Pe-Pua 2006, p. 117). To discuss this topic, De Vera dialogued with men about Philippine movies, allowing them to talk freely and express their opinions. However, Orteza (1997) criticized her because de Vera did not openly inform participants about her intention to study their own extra-marital relations and not those of the movie actors. Orteza proposed the use of this method in any situation in which people are free to tell their stories in everyday life (Orteza 1997, cited in Pe-Pua 2006).

Another method is the collective indigenous discussion that Enriquez (1994) promoted under the Philippine Psychology Research and Training House. This method has three indigenous elements for discussion: (1) a concept or practice; (2) a drink; and (3) food. Its main goals are consciousness raising, application into everyday life, and open and continuous reflection and discussion. This method is embraced by this organization as well as by the National Association of Filipino Psychology (ibid., 120).

The whole research process is guided by “rules of pakikipagkapwa (treating each other as fellow human beings) that produces a story or stories that can be analyzed” (ibid. 2006, p. 122). In Hawaii, a similar method is used, known as the “talk story approach.” Because of this similarity, cross-indigenous research can be conducted. Filipino psychology sets an example from which Western Psychology can learn.

Hawaiian Psychologies

Manulani Aluli Aluli-Meyer (2008) proposed the development of “theories from ancient agency so we can respond to what is right before our very eyes…via ideas that were indigenous and authentic, old and new, cycled and creative, ancient and developed-this-moment” (p. 217, italics in the original). The author contributed to the development of Hawaiian Indigenous epistemology informed by ways of knowing orally taught by mentors, friends, and family, highlighting the notion that “specificity leads to universality” (ibid. 2008, italics in the original). Native Hawaiian ways of knowing are based on spirituality (ea—the animating principles) and a deep respect for the land (aina), the ancestors (akua), and the family (ohana). “Spirit as knowing is a real idea that allows us to ritualize ways to collect medicine, read a text, prepare a meal, or communicate with family” (p. 219, italics in the original). Knowledge is attained through relationship with nature and with other humans and nonhumans: “Relationship gave mentors opportunities to practice generosity with others, harmony with land, and ways to develop their own pathway to an idea” (p. 221). The Hawaiian worldview does not separate mind, body, and spirit. Knowing means deep and inter-subjective understanding of feelings, emotions, and connections with all our relations as well as with our genealogy and with the land (aina). The main aim of our being is to reach wholeness. “If knowledge is power then understanding is liberation” (Aluli-Meyer 2003; cited in Aluli-Meyer 2008, p. 229).

The understanding of the particular cultural ways of knowing and being through the accumulation of experience develops collectivity that is not conceived as universal uniformity. When conflict disrupts family or community wholeness, Ho’oponopono (collective dialogues or talking stories) is used to incite collective harmony and well-being. These contributions are nourishing approaches towards cultural healing and are tending the Hawaiian —and our collective—soul.

Indian Psychologies

Mishra (2006) asserted that the Indigenous Psychology in India is rooted in philosophical religious thoughts and ancient sages. Many Indian psychologists accept the authority of the Vedas or the Upanishads. Several systems of philosophy emerged to provide integrated theories based on the interpretation of the Upanishads (Mishra 2006). In proposing the construction of an Indian psychology by focusing on cognition, Mishra (2006) stated that the closest term to this concept is jnana, which means knowledge. He stated that “according to Datta (1932) the word jnana stands for all kinds of cognition whether it is veridical (yatharta) and non-veridical (mythia)” (p. 267). One form of jnana is scientific; another is collective and based on traditions. Lastly, another form of knowledge is personal and based on experience. Mishra added

Consciousness is regarded as the first stage of cognition. This conceptualization goes against the notion of Freud (1915), who showed how complex thought processes could occur without awareness…The unconscious is not the negation of consciousness; instead, it refers to phenomena that are not available to introspection. (p. 267)

In Indian and Buddhists thought systems, the mind is considered a sense organ that can apprehend objects. The mind serves to apprehend knowledge while other organs—such as the hands and feet—serve to apply knowledge. Individuals know about the external world through the sensory and motor organs. “The function of these senses is presided over by the internal senses that include mans (mind), ahamkara (empirical ego), and buddhi (intellect)…[the latter] has the capacity to utilize knowledge [jnana] in order to think clearly, objectively, and understandably (pp. 267–268).” For knowledge not to be destructive, intellect (buddhi) requires sensitivity. “Pure knowledge is free from all kinds of biases. It has no boundaries of time, place, or person; it is universal in the true sense of the term” (p. 268).

There are two types of self: the individual self (atman) and the embodied person (jiva). The theory of Yoga proposes that one’s being is governed by purusha (pure consciousness) and prakritti (matter). The former cannot be perceived but is accessible through prakritti. Chitta is the functional mind that is instinctual and inherited (p. 269).

Consciousness without phenomenal awareness can be attained by following an eightfold pathway that distinguishes four states: (1) the waking state—determined by external objects, (2) the dream state, (3) the deep sleep state, and (4) the transcendental state. Yogic perception can include a state of consciousness (samadhi) in which “one can apprehend all objects of the world simultaneously” (pp. 270–272). Meditation can have impacts on perception and consciousness.

Memory studies distinguish between recognition of experiences that occurred in the past and recollection, by which an object can be recognized because it was perceived in the past or because of its own qualities. A healthy body will play an important role in determining which objects are recognized and recollected. Memories can be produced actively or passively. An example of the former is attained through reflection, whereas the former is more spontaneous in the form of recall by association. Indian scholars have asserted that

Imagination transcends the limits of past experience, and in doing so it not only creates new order into the contents of past experience, but also adds some new dimensions to the objects or events. …Imagination belongs to the territory of the mind in which one can exercise free will. (Mishra 2006, pp. 275–276)

The common characteristics of objects are gathered through the thinking processes and are expressed in words. Thus, Buddhists believe that the thinking process is tightly related to speech, as we attach words to our cognitive construction of common characteristics. Visible and invisible objects can be inferred by means of inductive and deductive reasoning. Mishra (2006) has concluded that Indian theoretical and experiential systems of knowledge are a rich contribution to Western psychology that transcends its perspectives.

Mexican Psychologies

Before the Spanish colonization began with Christopher Columbus’ arrival in 1492, a great diversity of indigenous cultures existed across Mexico. Their rich legacies continued to exist throughout centuries of colonial rule. Examples of such contributions come from the great cultures of the Aztecs, Tlaxcaltecans, Olmecs, Totonacans, and Mayans, among many others (Diaz-Loving 2006). Among the colonizers were the Spanish priests, whose goal was to convert the “primitive Indians” to Christianity and, in the process, kill their Gods, Goddess, language, and culture. Some of them, such as Fray Bartolome de las Casas , a Dominican who settled in Chiapas, recorded in writing the everyday lives of the Mayans, their beliefs, customs, and traditions. In a detailed historical analysis of the function of the Dominicans in Chiapas to oppress and “indoctrinate” the Indians, De Vos (1982; 2015) suggested we must recognize that these priests not only disseminated a universal religion—Christianity—but were priests of a national church and government agents at the service of colonial powerholders anchored in Spain. With this spiritual and psychological colonization, much work would need to be done to reconstruct Indigenous Psychologies based on the philosophies and ancient wisdom of the rich indigenous cultures in Mexico, similar to the work conducted by the abovementioned Chinese and Indian scholars who used their ancient scriptures to construct their own psychological theories and praxes.

Mexican psychologists’ contributions have been emerging since the early 50s. Some of them were widely influenced by European and North American psychology. For example, Samuel Ramos (1934), a psychologist influenced by Adler, in analyzing the Mexican self as a historical being influenced by a rich indigenous past that was repressed and devalued through colonization, asserted that the Mexican psyche lacked the capacity for independence and was covered by an inferiority complex (Ramos 1934; cited in Diaz-Loving 2006).

Other Mexican psychologists were trained in the United States and brought behaviorism and experimental psychology to Mexico, claiming it to be the scientific approach par excellence. As was the case in other colonized countries in Asia and Africa, psychology as a discipline was imported to Mexico by those who were trained in the West, without a critical analysis as to whether the different cultural context—to which it was exported—was a good fit or, instead, caused brutal strangification and further colonization.

Diaz-Guerrero (1971, 1982, 1994, 2006), the first social and cultural psychologist to have founded a unique Mexican psychology, conducted abundant research in the identity and personality development of the Mexican people. Notwithstanding, this Mexican psychology was still within scientific psychological expectations to prove the hypothesis by means of strict statistical analyses. It was, however, a shift in paradigm in that it centered culture and history as the most important contexts under which to scrutinize psychometrics as well as theoretical constructions. His son, Rolando Diaz-Loving (2006), a Mexican psychologist who continued his father’s legacy , stated that Mexicans have been impacted by colonization and then, later, by the struggle for independence from Europe. However, Mexicans maintain a deep psychological dependence on Europe and its colonial regime. In this ambivalence, Mexicans frequently ask themselves the question “With whom do I identify?” In an effort to resolve this confused identity, some Mexicans identify with the conquerors and colonizers (i.e., the Spaniards) and become the Criollos, who are their sons and daughters born in indigenous land and who become colonized colonizers, preserving and maintaining internal processes of colonization. Another group of Mexicans identifies with the Mestizos, who are the sons and daughters of indigenous and Spanish parents, or who may opt to identify with the indigenous people themselves and with their numerous ethnic groups. Diaz-Loving (2006) remarked

The emergence of the twentieth century saw a civil revolution. At stake, aside from a power struggle, were the identity of a country and the emancipation of an Indigenous Mestizo movement. In its aftermath, Jose Vasconcelos, a writer, politician, and thinker, promulgated the coming of a cosmic race that extracted its strength from its mixed past. The measuring stick for ethnic identity was now Indigenous. No more comparisons were made to the European past. (p. 316)

Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero devoted his life to the understanding of the Mexican psyche and integrated biology, psychology, history, and culture into the analysis of Mexican personality development. This author proposed that culture is transmitted in structures constituting a system of interrelated premises that provide norms for how people should feel, think, act, and relate to others. The psychological structures, transferred by means of a system of interrelated, cultural premises, are internalized by individuals promoting the preservation and maintenance of culture. These cultural psychic structures stipulate the where, when, how, and with whom to play specific roles. Diaz-Guerrero found different personality structures that described specific typologies of the Mexican self: (1) an affiliate obedient type (or, as per Franz Fanon, a colonized type); (2) a rebel type that goes against the norms of society (the emancipatory and revolutionary type); and (3) an authoritarian, aggressive, corrupt, impulsive, pessimistic, uncontrolled, and servile type (or, as per Franz Fanon, the colonized colonizer).

I had the fortune of having met and worked with Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero in the late 70s and mid 80s. One of the projects I conducted in the highlands of Chiapas integrated a set of interrelated cultural-historic and biological premises he developed. I adapted them for the purpose of my study with indigenous populations of the highlands of Chiapas, which were the Tzotzil and the Tzeltal . I was researching the role of play in culture, following Huizinga’s (2016) landmark book, Homo Ludens. I was working with a group of Tzotzil and Tzeltal children from two indigenous communities, respectively, San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán. I invited the children to play freely during afterschool sessions and observed manifestations of ancestral ritual dances and legends that are still alive in their culture. As Huizinga observed, cultural traditions and oral histories are reproduced freely in children’s play. Many anthropologists made similar observations in regards to the reproduction of these legacies in adult play conceived of as dance, song, and music.

As part of my goal to involve their parents, I invited them once a week to discuss the activities conducted with their children throughout the week, as well as the products or outcomes. During one of those meetings, which frequently took place in the main community square located in the center of the town between the main church and the municipal government offices, I started reading Diaz-Guerrero’s cultural premises that contained such sentences as: “Children should obey their parents without question; the most important thing in life is having good relationships with one’s family and fellow residents in one’s community.” I loudly read these statements to the involved parents and asked them if they agreed or disagreed with the statements. It impressed me that the audience expressed collective agreement with the statements if they aligned with the audience’s own cultural premises, and expressed disagreement if the statements were misaligned with the same. This was evidenced by their collective response of “de acuerdo (agreed)” or “no de acuerdo (disagreed),” expressed in full consensus. They discussed the content of such matters until collective consensus was reached and provided a collectively agreed-upon answer or decision. The community residents who gathered in the town’s main square manifested a high degree of collectivism when making decisions, such as collectively agreeing or disagreeing with a premise or any other community matter. Similarly, when the children played games, if a game required that one of them be the leader (as is usually the case in Western competitive games), all the children responded that they would play the role together. In both experiences with the parents and their children, there was no “yo (I)” but a collective “nosotros (we).”

Diaz-Loving (2006) stated that the affiliative personality type represents the majority of the Mexican population and is “… reminiscent of the Hispanic cultural script of simpatia advanced by Triandis, Marin, and Betancourt (1984) which bestows a general tendency that emphasizes positive and agreeable behaviors and the avoidance of interpersonal conflict” (p. 322). This construct is similar to the “pakikipagkawa” referenced above under Filipino psychology . Diaz-Loving concluded that the Mexican personality is determined mainly by the search for harmony with ecosystems. “The socio emotional self comes through and works for the good of the group, not for personal expectations or gains” (p. 324). Rolando Diaz-Loving (2012—in Caso Niebla, p. 133) asserted that the worst problem Mexican psychologists must confront is

…the intervention [that] requires knowledge of the ecosystem and the culture in which we are immersed. In the new Philosophy of Life published in the 90’s, Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero found the love versus the power factors and stated—among other things—that the Mexican culture is love, that is, we are interested in having fluid interpersonal relationships that are also pleasant; things such as science and objectivity do not interest us much. There cannot be love in science, because it is not about keeping all of us happy nor what we like the most; we cannot vote for a finding to be true or false, it is only a matter of power, of being very right and rigorous. In academy and in science, it is not about democracy, opinion, or subjective well-being; it is about information. In the interpersonal relationships we must apply flexibility, kindness, and camaraderie….when I observe data, it is about power but when I interact with my colleagues, it is only about love. (cited in Caso Niebla 2012, p. 133—translation by the author)

Eduardo and Maria Eugenia Sánchez Díaz de Rivera (2001, 2014) expanded the development of Mexican Psychology by including the voices and worldviews of indigenous peoples as well as transformative community action for committed social and ecological justice . Eduardo Almeida is the founder of an indigenous community psychology based on authentic and equal participation with community members. Almeida collaborated with a team called Proyecto de Animacion y Desarrollo (PRADE) (Project of Animation and Development). PRADE committed to live for over 40 years in the Nahuat (descendants of the ancient Aztecs) community of San Miguel Tzinacapan of the Northern highlands of Puebla (Almeida and Sánchez Díaz de Rivera 2001, 2014, 2016a, b; Sanchez Diaz de Rivera and Almeida 2005). PRADE applied participatory action research based on the indigenous people’s popular knowledge and life stories : “Autobiogafías de vida or vivencias ,” which emerge from placed-based experiences and are informed by people’s knowledge systems (Rahman and Fals-Borda 1991, p. 31). The indigenous participants became what Fals Borda (1985) called “organic intellectuals, who generated new paradigms of liberation” (Ciofalo 2017, p. 3).

In Latin America, decolonial feminist scholars have challenged patriarchy and contested assumptions about progress and civilization that justify inequity and engender human and ecological atrocities. Confronting patriarchal hegemony based on rationality and universalism that silence women’s and others’ ways of knowing and being, “decolonial feminists from the global South are co-constructing knowledge and praxes in a different way (de otra manera) as alternatives to modernity ” (Ciofalo 2017. pp. 2–3). For instance, Sanchez Diaz de Rivera (2015) asked:

Is it not precisely the living earth, the pathos—that horizontal and solidary commotion, compassion—[our] spirituality, the deepest record of our humanity, the possibility of the tender everyday-life, [and] the creative resistance what we can call the place of the feminine? Is this not the capacity to think with the body, to understand wholeness, to feel deeply? Is it not from here that diversity emerges, the multi-temporality and plurality of which some women authors speak as forms to experience the world? Are these not new forms to live politics? (cited in Millán 2015, p. 169 and Ciofalo 2017, p. 3—the author’s translation)

Sanchez Diaz de Rivera added that decoloniality is a living process that does not end in a closed theory because it is based on the feminine co-constructed in plurality. A decolonial epistemology is based on women’s ways of knowing that build a non-capitalist society (p. 169—the author’s translation; cited in Ciofalo 2017, p. 3).

Concluding Remarks

A decolonial position to knowledge generation centers other epistemologies, particularly those of Indigenous Psychologies, that emerge from multiple localities and are not based on paradigms that promote and maintain the desecration of nature and racial and ethnic inequities. Indigenous Psychologies center in the reality of the indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South America as well as of other indigenous communities around the globe. This decolonial position is informed by the methodological approaches applied by indigenous scholars and practitioners (Deloria 2009; Aluli-Meyer 2008; Pe-Pua 2006; Smith 2012; Wilson 2008—among others) who have co-constructed indigenous knowledges through conviviality, establishing “dignified relationships of mutual recognition and trust” (Almeida and Sanchez Diaz de Rivera 2016b, p. 7). These relationships weave the process of research as ceremony (Wilson 2008). In this way, knowledges are produced based on indigenous cosmogonies and praxes.

As Yehia (2007) emphasized, we must resist the Western codification of indigenous epistemologies and ontologies within the dominant Western discourse as an intent to “legitimize” them vis-à-vis the hegemonic academic apparatus. The aim should be to understand the perverse impacts that colonization, coloniality, and neoliberalism have had on indigenous communities as a means of promoting cultural and ecological justice as well as emancipatory community well-being (buen vivir).

As non-indigenous solidary partners in this process, we must work on the de-powerment of ourselves and the hegemonic system, constantly being self-reflexive, confronting one’s privilege, cultivating humility, and building reciprocal and respectful relationships. In this way, we may learn from other cultures’ distinctive ways of knowing, feeling, and being alongside human and other-than-human realms. A decolonial position embraces plurivisions and solidarity with the struggle for cultural and ecological justice.

The recent interest in indigenous ways of knowing has produced a wide range of knowledge generation, theory building, and methodological approaches to intervene in praxis. A central issue that indigenous scholars have addressed is the imposition of Western paradigms as universal truths, the subordination of indigenous peoples, the inequality of power, and the lack of opportunities to access resources (Deloria 2009; Marsella 2013; Aluli-Meyer 2008; Smith 2012; Wilson 2008).

These revolutionary movements and contestations of hegemonic psychology are finding an emancipatory language to challenge imperial forms of knowing and being in the world (Ciofalo 2017). Indigenous Psychologists address imperative issues of cultural genocide, epistemicide, and ecocide as a result of coloniality and contribute to decolonization by centering their own ontologies, epistemologies, axiologies, and praxes .

Nakata et al. (2012) suggested that we do not need to reject all that is Western as a means of co-constructing indigenous theories and praxes. These authors recommended that instead of getting stuck in binaries of choice (i.e., whether or not to reject Western epistemologies), we raise awareness of the complexity of the task of recovering traditional knowledge and praxes and contextualize this awareness within contemporary indigenous expressions. This requires an increased understanding of new forms of cultural identity and cultural revitalization.

Yehia (2007) recommended the co-construction of multiple knowledges and embodied and localized praxes as an “epistemology of a praxiography” that allows for the mapping of theories based on one’s own actions and ontologies recognizing hegemonic nodes such as race, gender, and class privilege (Mol 2002—cited in Yehia 2007, p. 93).

Paraphrasing Sanchez Diaz de Rivera (2015), decoloniality is a living process that does not end in a closed theory. Indigenous ways of knowing, research, and praxes produce open theories as alternatives to coloniality and contribute to the co-construction of “new ecologies of knowledges” that move from “knowledge as regulation” or representation of the other (Western science) to “knowledge as emancipation and solidarity” (Santos et al. 2008, p. li).