Educate to Perpetuate: Land-based Pedagogies and Community Resurgence

• In Event: Highlighted session: Indigenous research and theoretical proposals: towards resistance, decoloniality, and resurgence

Proposal

When perpetuation is discussed within an Indigenous context, we often think of ways that Indigenous knowledge is transmitted to, acted on, and regenerated by future generations. This perpetuation of Indigenous knowledge and nationhood occurs everyday, and are often unnoticed or unacknowledged actions that take place within intimate settings, such as homes, ceremonies, and communities (Corntassel 2012; Hunt and Holmes 2015). Focusing on everyday acts of resurgence shifts our analysis away from the state-centered, colonial manifestations of power to the relational, experiential, and dynamic nature of Indigenous resurgence, which offers important implications for re-thinking gendered relationships, community health, and sustainable practices. This presentation examines ways that place-based pedagogies can challenge colonial systems of power at multiple levels while being critical sites of education and transformative change (Simpson 2014; Tuck, McKenzie and McCoy 2014). Drawing on a case study of community practices in the Cherokee Nation, this presentation examines strategies for fostering “land-centered literacies” (Goodyear-Ka’ōpua 2013) as pathways to community resurgence and sustainability. The findings from this research have important implications for Indigenous notions of sustainability, health and well-being and ways that Indigenous knowledge is perpetuated by future generations.

Authors

• Jeff Corntassel, Indigenous Governance, University of Victoria, Canada

• Tiffanie Hardbarger, Northeastern State University