The term indigenous is used to refer to the original inhabitants in a region. With regard to human populations, this term can be politically ambiguous, but the concept is still helpful in referring to small-scale societies with distinct languages, mythic narratives, sacred places, and kinship systems. Located on all the major continents (except Antarctica) as well as the Pacific Ocean areas, more than 500 million peoples are considered indigenous. In many contemporary settings these native societies are so marginalized within their nation-state settings and so subject to the extractive exploitation of multinational corporations that their existence is threatened. In these traditional societies the distinctive activities of understanding nature, the technology of subsistence, and an ethics of balance are not separate from one another. Rather, in diverse ways in these different native settings, the interactive relationships of knowing, producing, and thinking about behavior constitute...