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Fences On The Epistemological Prairie: A Settler Colonial Approach To “Religion And Science”, Lisa L. Stenmark

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Building on the idea of religion and science as conceptual maps of intellectual territory, I use a settler colonial analysis as a framework for thinking about decolonizing religion and science in a way that moves away from abstraction and towards action; addressing not just the ideas, but the tools of control—the fences—that impose ideas on the territory itself. Comparing the Wyoming prairie with the epistemological prairie, I describe the maps, fences and other tools and technologies of settler colonialism used to appropriate Indigenous Land and knowledge, eventually turning it into private property. It is in this last step—the creation of …