The future of humanity depends on how we will manage to live with the technological revolutions that happen all around us. This is a good time to bring voices into the discussion that have long been excluded from impactful discussions about the future of humanity: voices of indigenous people, whose received wisdom reflects millennia of sustainable living in their respective contexts. Some of this wisdom has been worked out in distinctive indigenous philosophies, and the focus of this class is to explore some of these philosophies and assess what lessons they teach for the technological age. A focus is on indigenous authors from the U.S., but we encounter authors and perspectives from all continents. Topics we explore through the lens of indigenous philosophies include attitudes towards nature; views on technology generally; the Anthropocene; traditional ecological knowledge; artificial intelligence; genome-editing; geo-engineering; human rights; and the meaning of life. Engaging with indigenous perspectives on these matters is likely to have a transformative effect on how one approaches the big questions of the 21st century.

This course is offered by HKS as DPI 210. 

It will meet in Littauer 280 on Mon/Wed from 10:30-11:45 and the review will take place on Wed 3-4:15 in Wexner 436. 

See information on HKS Course Preview Days, which take place on September 2 and 3. 

Note that this course follows the HKS academic calendar, which has an irregular start of term with Friday, September 5th held as a Monday. The first class meeting will be on Friday, September 5th. It will meet regularly thereafter.