Indigenous Religious Knowledge and Environmental Ethics Stewardship: A Case of the Wakara in Ukara Island

This article reconstructs how Wakara religiosity in Ukara Island constitutes a coherent moral ecology that binds Wakara religiosity to environmental practice. Using a hybrid design ethnographic case study integrated with African philosophical analysis the article synthesizes 58 participants’ testimonies (KIIs, FGDs, observation) into four interrelated domains: (i) totemic reverence for isatu (python) that sacralizes species and landscapes; (ii) animistic engagements with sacred stones (Bulebeka, Mkwaya) whose perceived agency organizes healing, obligation, and place based restraint; (iii) taboos over sacred waters (lijibha) where spiritual sanctions and mythic enforcement create effective community water governance; and (iv) ritual life (cleansing, death practices, sacred woodlots) that translates cosmology into embodied environmental limits. The findings validate a metaphysics, axiology, deontology chain: beliefs generate value commitments (life, purity, danger) that issue in binding duties (taboos, ritual prohibitions). The article’s novelty lies in documenting intensified Wakara religiosity ecologies (vital force loss, responsive sacred objects), ethically ambivalent conservation, and intergenerational ritual governance advancing biocultural conservation and African eco philosophy.