Naturalized Places, Indigenous Epistemology, and Learning to Value

• In Event: 75.031 - Environmental Education in a Sustainable World

Abstract

In this paper, we present data from children and pre-service teachers, while working with the land in a naturalized place on the prairies, to illustrate how learning from the land will reinforce an Indigenous epistemology of relationality. Relationality supports learning to value “other”. Currently, in our “post-truth” world, there is concern about social and ecological justice. However, the concern is not so much about what is true as it is about who decides what is true. If we – all humans, all entities – were to value each other (following on Freire’s concept of humanizing one another), we would listen carefully, and thoughtfully to what others and the land teach us, and each of us could, individually, value the planet and other entities.

Authors

• Janet McVittie, University of Saskatchewan

• Marcelo Gules Borges, University of Saskatchewan