Contribution short abstract

This presentation discusses an ecocritical analysis of oriki, a form of Yoruba praise poetry, as a repository of environmental epistemologies. Understanding Indigenous epistemologies of forest stewardship is essential for rectifying colonial legacies and the future of African forests.

Contribution long abstract

Environmental degradation on the African continent is inextricably linked to European colonialism and its piercing and persistent legacies. This presentation builds upon the work of postcolonial thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Ngugi wa Thiong’o by arguing that, in addition to cultural and social subjugation, the erosion of environmental epistemologies and ontologies has enabled the continued political and economic domination of Africa. In Nigerian environmental history, the cosmological transformation of forests was integral to facilitating the colonial project. The conversion of forest land into plantations or the conversion of Yoruba sacred groves into European churches has not only had lasting social, economic, and political consequences, but is predicated on the continued marginalization of indigenous knowledge systems.

Responding to the growing push to consider indigenous perspectives on conservation, this presentation identifies a set of environmental epistemologies as articulated in Yoruba oral praise poetry, known as oriki. Yoruba culture presents a valuable case for the study of environmental epistemologies because Yoruba cosmology embodies a profound reverence for and interconnectedness with the natural world. An ecocritical analysis of key oriki genres illustrates dynamics of interspecies kinship and care, thus providing the basis for resistance and responses to ecological precarity. Representations of the sanctity of forests and discussions of ancestral ties between certain species and lineages can serve as a counternarrative to dominant justifications of environmental exploitation, answering the question of how we can harness the liberatory potential of indigenous ideas and activate them in the name of justice and conservation.