This presentation explores the role of indigenous spirituality in promoting a radical restructuring of modern Western societies in accordance with deep ecology beliefs.

The starting point is the assumption of indigenous spirituality as a challenge to dominant neoliberal discourses in Western societies at the same time as it is constrained by the limits of those discourses.

Western individuals typically have a unitary self, created through binary exclusions that are hierarchically linked both to each other and in relation to society.

I ask what role spirituality plays in changing this unitary self and in encouraging individuals’ collective and collaborative attitudes aimed at modifying environmentally damaging Western societal systems.

It discusses if the indigenous spiritual awakening is a rupture with dominant discourses and practices or a consequence.

Conclusions give insights into how indigenous spirituality facilitates the appearance of the ecological self within individuals’ direct experiences with indigenous values and cosmo-visions that may help us to move beyond the dominant attitudes that originated the current ecological crisis.

This presentation was given as part of the Agrocultures Workshop hosted by the University of Cardiff (UK) in 2018.