Decolonial Science and Multiple Ways of Knowing

Sor Juana lived at the intersection of European and Mesoamerican knowledge systems, drawing from both while remaining critical of how colonialism positioned European knowledge as supreme. Climate science is vital yet has been weaponized to dismiss indigenous land management practices and spiritual relationships with nature that sustained ecosystems for millennia. Decolonial science means respecting multiple ways of knowing: traditional ecological knowledge, spiritual cosmologies that embed environmental ethics, community-based monitoring, and artistic ways of understanding climate impacts. This isn't anti-scientific but anti-colonial—refusing the notion that only Western laboratories produce truth. Many effective climate solutions emerge from indigenous practices marginalized by colonialism. Sor Juana's intellectual humility about the limits of any single knowledge system provides framework for science that learns from rather than erases other traditions.