Paper short abstract:

Problems such as deforestation, uprooting and generational ruptures have led colombian indigenous communities to transform educational practices in innovative ways towards the recognition of the territory and the value of local knowledge while assuring interaction and spiritual guidance by elders.

Paper long abstract:

The processes of appropriation of education by the indigenous communities has a long history of seeking autonomy to manage their own school education. This process is already showing results in the indigenous peoples of Colombia where many have formulated their community education plans on paper. It is in school practice that creative ways must be developed to decolonize education. An educational institution in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, managed by an Arhuaca community, has focused its efforts on maintaining the identity and spirit of collectivity through education. The Koreguaje people living in a deforestation zone have sought to strengthen the link with the territory through knowledge about the forest and trees, and in multi-ethnic communities in the Amazon, they seek to strengthen especially the traditional knowledge related to the territory and sacred rituals.

These cases show their particularities but also have some elements in common, such as fostering cultural identity, the use of the mother tongue, the sense of collectivity, the importance of knowledge about the territory and biodiversity to ensure physical and cultural survival, and the rooting of young people to their territory as well as respect for the elders. In these experiences, teachers are generally people with great sensitivity towards cultural permanence and curricular innovation.

In these contexts, school education and teachers and their own pedagogical strategies that articulate their own knowledge, play an important role in the governance of the territories and the construction of critical positions that allow the advancement of innovative proposals

Paper short abstract:

Based on a bibliographical analysis of anthropological production on indigenous schooling in Brazil over the last 20 years, I argue that a genuine inter-epistemic dialogue has been emerging in the daily lives of indigenous villages schools, beyond the interculturality proposed in the legislation.

Paper long abstract:

The subject of indigenous schooling in Brazil, in the last twenty years, has received renewed anthropological interest, following the indigenous movement demanding schooling and access to Higher Education and Graduate Studies and the changes in legislation resulting from the 1998 Constitution. It has been a period of intense mobility between indigenous villages schools and Universities, motivated both by indigenous interest in access to academic knowledge and by affirmative action policies and the promotion of the training of indigenous teachers.

The 1988 Brazilian constitution is recognized as an important milestone for establishing that indigenous schools must use their mother tongues and their own learning processes. It initiated a series of public policies aimed at indigenous schooling, based on the principle of interculturality.

Despite the great difficulties of managing indigenous schools in Brazil, we can find several experiences that succeeded in transforming their daily routines to include non-hegemonic sources of knowledge, non-human masters and alternative teaching and learning processes. Based on a bibliographic review on indigenous schooling (2001-2021), we intend to point to the innovations and transformations of these schools.

Recent ethnographies on indigenous schools have revealed greater articulations of daily school life with several other aspects of social life, as shamanism, corporeality, personhood, gender, social and political organization, among others. I suggest that the floor of these schools is currently the true locus of emergence of a more equitable inter-epistemic dialogue, as they are rooted in the daily life of the villages, with their own dynamics and temporalities.

Paper short abstract:

What do indigenous projects of “civilization” mean for decolonial anthropology? This paper explores attempts by Tukanoan schools in Northwestern Amazonia at raising children into what they call “civilized people” and how this productively unsettles notions of indigenization and decoloniality.

Paper long abstract:

In the Papurí River, located in Northwestern Amazonia, Tukanoans cultivate “civilization.” On a daily basis and over centuries they have scrutinized and reworked elements of their lifestyle, sociality, and cosmology to fashion themselves into “civilized people.” This they do by recourse to the imaginaries and values of Tukanoan tradition, Catholicism, Hollywood, conspiracy theories, and Colombian popular culture. Let us call this active and deliberate project a “culture of civilization.”

Local schools have played a pivotal role in this endeavor, first because these are the institutions where ideas of “civilization” are distilled, conceptualized, and transmitted by indigenous teachers to indigenous students. Second, as their own anthropological analyses have led them to conclude, because schools are the places where “Whites” produce and reproduce themselves as “civilized.” Schools hold the promise of this transformative process.

In this paper, I will use the Tukanoan project of raising “civilization” in their indigenous schools to shake up our anthropological ideas of decoloniality and indigenization. Well beyond the usual process of incorporating Amerindian knowledge into a Western institution, indigenous schools in the Papurí speak of a higher-level inter-epistemic dialogue where Tukanoans’ vernacular anthropology has been put to work to study, understand, produce, and teach their own theory of civilization. Reduceable neither to innovation nor assimilation, this process civilizes indigeneity in the exercise of indigenizing civilization. Thus, Papurí Tukanoans see schooling as deeply transformational while empowering and grounded in their culture. Becoming civilized, as we will see, has always been the Tukanoan fate of self-betterment.

Paper short abstract:

This research project aims to explore the collaborative model developed by indigenous Atayal communities and the Centre for Teacher Education and Career Development of the University of Taipei in Taiwan.

Paper long abstract:

This research project aims to explore the collaborative model developed by indigenous Atayal communities and the Centre for Teacher Education and Career Development of the University of Taipei in Taiwan. The model relates to the professional development of teachers in the field of special education. The research project involves a two-year schedule with fieldwork scheduled for each year, focused around two Atayal communities located in rural areas in New Taipei City and Yilan County in northern Taiwan. The choice of these two sites responds to, as well as adds to, earlier works by a number of scholars on indigenous and inclusive education.

The first year of study starts with the collection of Atayal knowledge about disability and special education in the contemporary world context. It then reviews theoretical approaches to special needs and disability within the field of education, including the psycho-medical approach, the societal approach, the organisational approach and the socio-cultural approach, which are juxtaposed with the current condition and future challenges of special education in indigenous communities across Taiwan. The second year of study begins with the incorporation of Atayal aspects of special education into the work of the teacher education and career development centre, such as curriculum and pedagogy, practice and training and the collaboration between school and communities, with a view to establishing a sustainable collaborative and sustainable relationship. The research results will reveal Atayal-oriented views on the collaborative relationship between Atayal communities and the Centre for Teacher Education and Career Development.

Paper short abstract:

The development of indigenous education in Taiwan has been historically linked to the social circumstances of both Taiwan and the wider world. This paper involves how to put into practice the educational goal of ‘becoming an Atayal’.

Paper long abstract:

The formation and development of indigenous education in Taiwan has been historically linked to the social circumstances of both Taiwan and the wider world. The lifting of martial law in 1989 and the ensuing educational reform which emerged in the 1990s ushered in a new era of multicultural development within Taiwan, most notably development related to the needs of indigenous people for educational autonomy and cultural sustainability. According to Article 27 of the 2021 revised Education Act for Indigenous People in Taiwan, all public schools should now take into account the multicultural approach by incorporating indigenous history and culture into their curriculum.

Although Taiwanese indigenous education has thus become more diverse and autonomous in both form and content within the context of cultural politics and ethnic mainstreaming, a number of issues started to emerge around the 1990s and local indigenous schools in a number of counties across the country are still in the process of constructing their indigenous knowledge systems. The question of how to put into practice the educational goal of ‘becoming an Atayal’, as well as how to implement, appropriate, negotiate and practise indigenous knowledge, still remains unknown. In addition, as responsibility for indigenous education policies transfers from central authorities to local government, the ways in which local governments interpret, react to and designate appropriate and feasible educational programmes has become crucial. This paper involves a two-year ethnography, with the first year collecting Atayal ethnographic materials and the second incorporating them into school curriculum and practice.

Paper short abstract:

What is the education package that enables tribal students to be rooted and strengthened in their identity, while also overcoming the inter-generational trauma they carry and equipping themselves for accessing the mainstream world, is a question that the Muskaan School has worked on, for 18 years.

Paper long abstract:

A Freirian pedagogy supported with love is the effort that is ongoing in our school in Bhopal.

Authentic expression and a faith in your own voice, your own agency is important for us. Community members come and share their songs and skills, while students on their field trips hear the elders and also examine realities through field surveys and exposure trips.

Discussions on the current realities of the marginalized groups in the country and the world and the history of marginalization supports students to understand the way the world has worked with people like them.

A multilingual approach that facilitates students to express freely in their home language while learning other languages through different approaches, also facilitating metalinguistic skills and transferring concepts to the target language, has been our approach.

Capitalist economies and deep rooted caste system have destroyed survival mechanisms of many indigenous groups. Addictions, suicides and mental health issues are symptoms. Therapeutic sessions in the form of movement therapy, counseling and relationships of love and hope, are our premise.

The school provides residential facilities for some students. Anchored within the community ethos, it is still a getaway from the situations of violations from various quarters.

These efforts have brought forth artistic expressions in the form of literature, paintings, films and theatre that is anchored in the community’s voice. Other professional choices include lawyers, teachers, mental health practitioners, researchers and social workers that respond to their community needs.

Paper short abstract:

Learning from Country is a university based initiative working with pre-service teachers. The Ngaramura Project, for Aboriginal young people, is run by an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation. AIME's Imagi-Nation school initiatives to connect imagination in learning.

Paper long abstract:

This paper shares three projects that set out to creatively transform school learning. Learning from Country (LFC) is a long term project with collaborators Katrina Thope (Worimi) based at UNSW, and Cathie Burgess and Valerie Harwood based at USYD. The purpose of LFC is to connect pre-service teachers, most of whom are non-Indigenous, with experiences of Learning from Country, so that they are prepared for this work when they are in school and early childhood settings.

The Ngaramura Project operates from Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation, Port Kembla NSW, an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation. Led by Prof Kathleen Clapham, Aboriginal researcher, anthropologist and Director of Ngarruwan Ngadju First Peoples Health and Wellbeing Research Centre, our team conducted a three year collaborative evaluation with Ngaramura (2018-2020). Since 2018 the Ngaramura “See the Way” Program has provided an alternative education service for Aboriginal young people suspended or risk of suspension from school in the Illawarra region of NSW. Ngaramura provides a unique educational and cultural learning environment that meets the needs of Aboriginal students facing challenges in their school and social environments.

AIME started in Sydney, Australia in 2005, with university students mentoring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander school students. AIME is focussed on mentoring and imagination, growing nationally, and internationally. This paper will present school-based work that is part of AIME's Imagi-Nation initiative. Our team of Aboriginal and non-Indigenous researchers is working with AIME on this work to creatively transform schools.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates how Alaska Indigenous Culture and Native Studies are being taught at select high schools in the Anchorage School District. It also investigates social and natural studies curricula to investigate how much of the material is dedicated to Indigenous Ecological Knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Anchorage, Alaska has some of the most diverse schools in the country, including enrollment of a significant proportion of Alaska Native students. Previous research shows that place-based education improves learning for diverse students, especially for Indigenous students who often do not have their cultural heritage represented in their schools and classrooms. With the current institutional and academic changes being made across Alaska to implement culturally inclusive lesson plans and curricula, is the Anchorage School District, the largest school district in Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city, following these trends of cultural inclusion in its academics. This current study seeks to examine Alaska-specific cultural material and content in both the official curriculum of the Anchorage School District as well as in the teaching practices of its Social Studies and Science teachers, to investigate how Alaska-specific content is integrated into classrooms and instruction. Results could help improve how teachers engage youth in subjects relating to Alaska and how teachers engage with the materials pertaining to the state history, Indigenous and Native cultures and histories, and the current diverse student population that attends school in Anchorage. The main objectives of this research are to: 1) investigate Anchorage high school teachers' perspectives on if, and how, Alaska-specific content is integrated into their teaching, and 2) explore Anchorage high school teachers’ perspectives on what factors influenced their integration of Alaska-specific content in their teaching (i.e. background, training, previous teaching experience, etc.) Amber Perry and Sasha Addison hope to administer a maximum of 300 teacher online surveys and conduct 20-30-minute interviews with 15 teachers throughout three Anchorage public high schools to explore their perspectives on and experiences with the current district-provided curriculum, in addition to their professional experiences and training on integrating Alaska-specific content.

Paper short abstract:

This paper delves into educational paradigms in Dolpo, Nepal, highlighting the unique context of one of the world's highest schools, operated by volunteer teachers.

Paper long abstract:

Unlike conventional academic-centric approaches, Dolpo's winter schools prioritize experiential learning deeply rooted in the natural environment, fostering holistic development and environmental stewardship. Situated amidst the towering peaks of the Himalayas, Dolpo faces geographical and logistical challenges, making access to education difficult. Yet, the commitment of volunteer teachers ensures educational continuity despite harsh winter conditions, embodying resilience and community spirit.

These winter schools serve as bastions of cultural preservation, transmitting indigenous knowledge and values to younger generations. They install in students a profound connection to their surroundings, nurturing environmental consciousness and a sense of responsibility towards their fragile ecosystem. By immersing students in place-based education, these schools cultivate a deep appreciation for their cultural heritage and the importance of sustainable living practices.

Despite resource constraints and logistical hurdles, Dolpo's winter schools exemplify the power of community-driven initiatives in promoting education and sustainable development in remote mountain regions. The study advocates for greater recognition and support for such initiatives, emphasizing their vital role in preserving cultural identity, fostering environmental stewardship, and mitigating rural depopulation. By harnessing indigenous cosmovisiones and experiential learning, these schools offer a compelling model for holistic education aligned with Agenda 2050 goals of global sustainability.