Whose knowledge counts? Inuit Epistemologies and sustainability governance in Arctic resource politics

Sustainability governance is a contested terrain where competing worlds, knowledges and futures collide, overlap and are selectively authorised. These tensions become particularly visible in contexts of state-building and resource extraction, where claims to sustainability are mobilised alongside projects of economic development and political autonomy. This article examines how Inuit onto-epistemologies are framed and differentiated within contemporary sustainability and resource governance in Greenland, and how such framings contribute to the reproduction of epistemic and colonial hierarchies. Drawing on pluriversal thinking, decolonial scholarship and political ecology, the analysis explores how knowledge, power and ontology intersect in debates on resource governance. More specifically, it suggests that Greenland’s state-building ambitions generate tensions between Indigenous identity and modern development imaginaries, reinforcing epistemic hierarchies even within an Indigenous-led polity. Finally, the article highlights how struggles over sustainability governance are also struggles over territory, futures and competing projects of world-making, emphasising the limits of state-led sustainability approaches that remain grounded in inherited epistemic frameworks.