Chapters authored
African and Lakota Ecological Perspectives
This chapter presents a general background of the traditional and religious cultures of Africans and the Lakota of North America. Relying on pertinent works such as Black Elk Speaks and Things Fall Apart, the author shows parallels between both religious traditions. The Lakota and the Africans represent people who had learnt to live in harmony with nature before the advent of colonialism. Evident in the two religious traditions are important ecological themes or ideas that need to be revisited. These ideas are conceptualized in terms of the anthropocentric, theocentric and cosmic/environmental. These three ‘realms’, described by the author as Costheanthropic, represent the emphases on community, God, and the physical environment, respectively. All three exist in a unity of relationship. The author laments the hitherto misrepresentation of this type of relationship to the physical and non-human world as animism, nature worship or earth cult. The ecological relevance of the Costheanthropic worldview is rather compared to Pope Francis’ emphasis, in the encyclical Laudato Si′, on the theme of human relationship with the rest of creation. Both the African and Lakota traditions, as well as other indigenous traditions, deserve further in-depth study towards a worldview that invites humanity to greater ecological consciousness.
Part of the book: Ecotheology