Finding the Taste of Knowledge: The Orphan in Indigenous Epistemologies.

Following the suggestions of my indigenous consultants, that to better understand their
theories of knowledge one has to start from myth, I take here their myth, “The origin of
education” as the starting point for analyzing the alchemical processes of embodiment in
indigenous epistemologies, and I do so in dialogue with information produced through an
ethnography of learning, and with other, Western, theories of cognition. The myth relates
the story of the “Orphan”, a central character in the People of the Center’s moral and
mythical narratives. The Orphan searches for the “taste of knowledge” through a demanding
personal quest that is simultaneously a process of self-discovering and self-shaping. The
quest involves experimenting with different plants and technical procedures, which are
evaluated by the effects produced on the Orphan’s “physical-spiritual body”. Shunning the
Cartesian distinction between the physical and the spiritual, the People of the Center’s
epistemologies emphasize the poietic processes that link knowledge to the ongoing
fabrication, and maintenance, of personal and collective selves, and of the world in which
they live. The People of the Center make the relationship between knowledge and well-being
explicit: true knowledge shows in the ideal state of generalized well-being, an issue that
acquires critical significance in indigenous debates concerning the recreation of authoritative
knowledge, and of authority more generally.