ABSTRACT
Indigenous mental processes have been recognized by anthropologists as having a sophistication rarely seen in Western thinking, where the environment was perceived in a non-linear and relational way, with less dependence than modern cultures on objects and a perceived objective reality. Gregory Bateson believed that in the development of the biological sciences and Darwinian theories of evolution that have shaped our contemporary view of nature, something important has been left out. WEIRD perception of indigenous cultures is often complex and conflicted and touches deep feelings of loss that can become polarized into romantic idealization or imperialist jealousy and genocidal hatred. Indigenous people were more likely to be deeply embedded in the processes of the right brain, a type of perception that would be open to non-verbal clues and emergent messages from the natural world that has been observed in hunger gatherer cultures.
