Ancestral Prolepsis: Cultivating Relational Learning with Land and Generations for Indigenous and Planetary Futures

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together educators and scholars who position Ancestral Prolepsis as both a methodological and ethical commitment to Indigenous education. Ancestral prolepsis is a framework for the co-construction of relational responsibility with Land, dynamically navigating intergenerational contexts of learning environments and their rich histories as sites of changemaking. In doing so, this symposium invites our audience to imagine how educational research can actively engage future generations in meaningful relationships with the natural world.

Through a transdisciplinary analysis of learning ecosystems that illustrate communal and micro-interactional grammars of student sense-making—shaped across places, grounded in wellbeing, colored by affect, and lived through stories—Ancestral Prolepsis cultivates a contemporary terrain of constructing educational futures on Indigenous terms.

Sub Unit

• Division C - Learning and Instruction / Division C - Section 3a: Learning Environments

Chair

• Megan Bang, Northwestern University

Papers

• Ancestral Seeding: Indigenous Stories as Dispersals for Sovereignty, Self-determination and Relational Wellbeing - Cecelia Hoffman, Northwestern College; Megan Bang, Northwestern University

• River as Relative: The Mutually Constitutive Roles of Physical and Psychological Closeness in Water Education - Forrest Bruce, Northwestern University

• Educational Assessment as Relational Learning Towards Ancestral Flourishing - Miguel Angel Garcia-Bocanegra, Northwestern University; Anna Lees, University of Washington

Session Organizer

• Miguel Angel Garcia-Bocanegra, Northwestern University

Discussant

• Anna Lees, University of Washington