Multispecies World-Making in Southeast Alaska: Focusing on Tlingit Indigenous Society

This paper critically examines ‘ontological anthropology’ and ‘multispecies ethnography’, which are anthropological trends of ‘posthumanism’ that have become the paradigm of the Anthropocene era, and examines how making a multispecies world where humans and nonhumans coexist is realized and practiced in Tlingit indigenous society of Southeast Alaska. ‘Ontological anthropology’ and ‘multispecies ethnography’ are expanding beyond human-centered thinking to nonhuman beings, but they still have a strong tendency to force indigenous societies into a ‘savage mind’, which has not yet been modernized. Thus, they do not properly represent the reality and alternative life that indigenous society is facing and making in the era of globalization. However, Tlingit indigenous society in Southeast Alaska is strengthening a symbiotic multispecies worldview in the midst of Western modernity and tribalism, and is working on making a sustainable Earth and achieving environmental justice. Therefore, this paper opposes the project of relegating indigenous societies to a world beyond civilization, and instead sheds light on them as practical agents who are making a multispecies world where humans and nonhuman beings coexist in the age of globalization.