From Athens to Turtle Island: Indigenous Thought and Neo-Aristotelianism

What is Indigenous philosophy and how does it relate to the Western tradition? This dissertation addresses those two questions. Existing scholarship on the intersection of Indigenous and Western philosophy emphasizes dialogue between Indigenous thought and liberal multiculturalism, Marxism, and critical theory. While these relations are useful, I argue that they all come at the expense of attention to Indigenous thought’s positive substance. Instead, paying close mind to the substance of Indigenous thought in the realm of natural, ethical, and political philosophy reveals that it has more in common with contemporary Aristotelian philosophy. Both paradigms of thought, I suggest, understand the natural world to be purposive and inherently moral, have an account of habituated moral practices that are not rule or ends-oriented, and suggest that political life is at its best when practiced in relatively small communities oriented around the common good. After chapters on each of these realms of philosophy, I conclude by turning to debates about sovereignty in contemporary politics. Though some scholars suggest that the common law tradition in North America has the resources to endorse Indigenous sovereignty claims, I argue that they do not. Instead, I suggest that the most strident defenses of

Indigenous sovereignty in the North American legal tradition are based in some conception of natural law. Given that Indigenous accounts of sovereignty are also connected to Indigenous natural law, I argue that these debates on sovereignty reaffirms my overall argument that Indigenous philosophy finds more resonances with Western political philosophy rooted in the Aristotelian tradition.