ABSTRACT
500 years of colonialism has dealt a death blow to many such cultures and worldviews, but several still survive, and some are making a comeback. Anticolonial, ecological, Indigenous rights and other related movements are challenging the homogenising project of western modernity and reasserting the value of diverse epistemologies and ontologies. Economic growth-based “development” approaches, led by nation-states or capitalist corporations (increasingly, both together), have added to these, especially by significantly enhancing economic and wealth inequities, destroying the ecological base of the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. Cultural diversity and knowledge democracy, with multiple coexisting knowledge systems in the commons, respect for a diversity of ways of living, ideas and ideologies, and encouragement for creativity and innovation.
