The latest issue of AlterNative: an international journal of indigenous peoples is out now. 

This issue features three articles that focus around the epistemological framing of indigenous stories. Devi Dee Mucina examines Ubuntu storytelling within the Maseko Ngoni of sub-Saharan Africa.  Vanessa Andreotti, Cash Ahenakew and Garrick Cooper look at the way alternative epistemologies might be introduced into higher education, drawing from the work of Portugese sociologist Boaventura de Souza Santos.  A team of New Zealand researchers including Amanda Gregory, Belinda Borrell, Tim McCreanor, Angela Moewaka Barnes, Ray Nairn, Jenny Rankine, Sue Abel, Ken Taiapa and Hector Kaiwai look at how Europeans and immigrants respond to stories about Maori in the mainstream media.

Policy is the focus of the remaining articles in the issue. Yega Muthu and Gregor Grzezczyk  do a cross-cultural comparison of the Australian and Canadian governments’ policies  towards aboriginal peoples, and find the Australian government’s approach wanting.  Obesity and Maori youth forms the focus for Amohia Boulton, Heather Gifford, Anne Kauika and Kiri Parata’s examination of New Zealand’s policies towards indigenous health.

This issue we launch a new section: the situation report.  Situation reports are short pieces that describe a critical issue for indigenous peoples without scholarly analysis.  In our debut of this section, Hacky Kx’ami G|ao provides an overview of the issues facing the preservation of the Ju/’hoansi language of the Kalahari San in Namibia. 

Finally, this issue also  has two book reviews.  Carwyn Jones reviews Vincent O’Malley, Bruce Stirling and Wally Penetito’s The Treaty of Waitangi Companion: Maori and Pakeha from Tasman to today (2010), a book that examines the 1840 Treaty between the British Government and the indigenous people of New Zealand. Michelle M. Jacob reviews Tove  Skuttnab Kangas and Robert Dunbar’s Indigenous Children’s Education as Linguistic Genocide and a Crime Against Humanity? A global view (2010).