A treaty on personal development under settler colonialism: Jillian Fish, ‘Towards a Haudenosaunee Developmental Science: Perspectives From the Two Row Wampum’, University of Minnesota Medical School, 13/10/21 | settler colonial studies blog

A treaty on personal development under settler colonialism: Jillian Fish, ‘Towards a Haudenosaunee Developmental Science: Perspectives From the Two Row Wampum’, University of Minnesota Medical School, 13/10/21

20Oct21

Abstract: The Two Row Wampum belt represents a treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch about how the two nations would coexist with each other in the context of settler colonialism. The oral tradition of the Two Row Wampum states that the Haudenosaunee would travel down the river of life in a canoe containing their ways of being and knowing, while the Dutch would travel alongside them in a ship with their own orientations to the world. However, the original principles of the Two Row Wampum contrast with the colonial realities of the Haudenosaunee. In an application of the Two Row Wampum to developmental science, in which the river is the life course, Mainstream developmental science is the ship, and Haudenosaunee developmental science is the canoe, I use the Principles of the Two Row Wampum to propose a Haudenosaunee perspective of the field. I compare this with how Mainstream developmental science dominates the field, marginalizing various Indigenous developmental sciences in a manner similar to the Betrayal of the Two Row Wampum. Though I recommend that Mainstream developmental science returns to the principles of the Two Row Wampum, I demonstrate that Indigenous developmental sciences operate beyond the constraints of developmental psychology by centering Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies to promote Indigenous futures.

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