The Lakota Concept of the Nagi

Abstract

This article examines how Indigenous conceptions of mind, self, and personhood challenge and expand the theoretical foundations of Euro-Western psychology.  Drawing primarily on Lakota teachings, the author situates the inquiry within personal lineage and relationship, emphasizing that theories of the self are always embedded in particular lands, languages, and kinship networks.  Engaging Indigenous philosophers and knowledge holders, including Battiste, Henderson, and Cordova, the paper outlines core features of Indigenous ways of knowing: relational ontologies that link humans, other-than-human beings, land, and spirit; linguistically mediated realities; and extended kinship and sacred responsibilities as the basis of ethics and epistemic authority. The analysis contrasts these frameworks with Eurocentric assumptions about progress, literacy, and the self, interrogating the long-standing association between writing, “civilization,” and heightened consciousness.  Drawing on Walter Ong’s account of orality and literacy and on contemporary neurocognitive work on brain organization and written language, the paper argues that oral and literate consciousness should be understood as distinct rather than hierarchically ordered.  Indigenous models of mind and personhood, it is suggested, offer alternative explanations of human nature that unsettle individualistic, intrapsychic models dominant in psychology and open possibilities for practices that foreground relational accountability, land-based ethics, and spiritual dimensions of mental health.  The article concludes by sketching implications for psychological theory, clinical practice, and training when Indigenous philosophies of self are taken as foundational rather than peripheral.