Conceptualizing and Theorizing the Indigenous Lifeworld

The Euro-industrial revolution, large-scale Anglo colonization, and the emergence of sociology all emanate from similar societal origins and time in history. Yet despite these shared roots, the impact of colonization on societies or on Indigenous Peoples is almost completely absent from sociological theorizing, even in colonized First Nation states such as Australia. But with colonization, the pivotal social issue for colonized Indigenous Peoples, then and now, a sociology without colonization is not an option for Indigenous sociologists. This chapter emphasizes this centrality through an embodied conceptualization and operationalization of distinctive Indigenous lived realities. Using the author’s Palawa lifeworld as the case study, it demonstrates the intertwined intersubjectivities of Indigenous peoplehood and of Indigenous colonized marginalization that make up the Indigenous lifeworld. In doing so, it also demonstrates that a sociology practiced without acknowledging colonization is, at its essence, flawed.