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100			_aSmith, Thomas Aneurin _952780
245			_aEpisodes of concealing: _bthe invisibility of political ontologies in sacred forests
260			_bsage _c2020
300			_aVol 27, Issue 3, 2020 : (333-350 p.).
520			_aIndigenous research has demonstrated how Indigenous ontologies are political and how they have been articulated politically to express counter-narratives to modern understandings of human–nature relations. This article argues that current characterisations of political ontology, particularly in relation to environmental conservation, have yet to fully take account of African Indigenous spiritualities. Current thinking on Indigenous ontologies and decolonial scholarship, and their political manifestations, faces two problems: (1) they assume the visibility and availability of Indigenous ontologies to ‘doing politics’ and (2) presumptions are made about the comparability of place-based Indigenous ontologies and wider attempts to reform the state, and that the political goals of Indigenous people will straightforwardly align with those of the researcher. Drawing from research on sacred natural site protection among the Nyiha in Mbozi District, southwestern Tanzania, I examine how these problems might be addressed in a context where notions of Indigeneity are articulated quite differently to those predominantly evident in current writing on Indigeneity and decolonial scholarship. Nyiha ontologies, although already-political at the local scale, resist becoming ‘available’ to environmental politics at wider scales, making straightforward notions of solidarity problematic. Through a particular encounter with Christian groups attempting to spatially appropriate Nyiha sites, I explore the various ways in which ontologies are made politically available and visible and how the Nyiha analyse Christianity as colonial. Finally, I turn to how Nyiha ontologies and their sacred forest sites are replete with ‘episodes of concealing’ and variable invisibilities, which call into question how visible practices are utilised as ‘evidence-of-ontology’, or as part of a wider decolonial project
650			_aChristianity, _949621
650			_adecolonial, _952781
650			_aforest conservation, _952642
650			_a Indigenous, _949153
650			_aontology, _952782
650			_a sacred natural sites _949457
773	0		_010528 _916510 _dSage publisher 2019 - _tCultural geographies
856			_uhttps://doi.org/10.1177/1474474019886837
942			_2ddc _cART
999			_c12955 _d12955