Losing our connection to our land: a multi-site study of Indigenous world heritage stewardship education

• In Event: Encountering the pluriverse through Indigenous pedagogies

Proposal

With over a third of UNESCO World Heritage Sites listed as in danger from climate change (UNESCO, 2023), it becomes increasingly critical to maintain and privilege the land stewardship knowledge held by Indigenous communities. The areas that have been continuously managed by Indigenous communities are estimated to contain close to 80% of the world’s biodiversity (World Bank, 2021), a testament to the success of empowering and following the long-standing practices of Indigenous land stewardship. Despite growing acknowledgement of the importance of Indigenous knowledge in land stewardship, there is a worrying increase in Indigenous youth disengagement in land and heritage stewardship on a global scale (Ericson, 2017). This paper draws from a multi-site study of Indigenous pedagogies for world heritage education to find that youth disengagement is driven by (1) a lack of culturally responsive pedagogy and (2) limited employment pathways. Collaboration and resource-sharing between these communities, however, is working to mitigate these problems by developing shared, but context specific, educational strategies for connecting Indigenous youth with land, culture, and heritage.

The three sites participating in this study are: (1) the Huna Tlingit village of Hoonah, Alaska in the United States which helps steward Glacier Bay National Park, (2) the village of Tegano in the Solomon Islands which stewards Lake Tegano, and (3) a Sepik Indigenous community in Papua New Guinea which stewards the Upper Sepik River Basin. Glacier Bay National Park and Lake Tegano are UNESCO World Heritage sites, and the Upper Sepik River Basin is on the tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage status. All three sites are rural Indigenous communities who have stewarded the land around them since time immemorial but are geographically disparate with no shared interaction prior to this project. Despite their differences, all three communities are experiencing struggles engaging their youth in land and heritage stewardship. This paper draws on data gathered through a 1-2-weeklong visit to each of the three sites including interviews with 5-8 Elders and educators per site and observations of classroom instruction and community gatherings. The transcripts from the interviews combined with field notes were analyzed using iterative coding cycles and reflective analytical memos to develop major categories for theory generation. The codes and analysis were shared back with the interviewees for verification.

Engaging youth in Indigenous land and heritage stewardship requires bridging the significant gap in understanding how Indigenous land and heritage stewardship is taught and learned (Wildcat et al, 2014). This paper is framed through the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), “an intellectual foundation for an Indigenous theory and practice of politics and ethics, centered on natural places and connection to the natural world” (Pierotti & Wildcat, 2000, p. 1335). TEK is based on close observation of nature and natural phenomena; however, it is combined with a concept of community membership that differs from that of Western political and social thought. This is an epistemology that relies on the connection between the community and its spiritual beliefs and traditions supporting what Cajete (1994) terms an ‘ecologically-informed consciousness’. Within this conception, the community is a sacred place, a center for teaching and learning supported by every community member toward the betterment of the community as a whole.

Unfortunately, youth are found to be leaving these communities, threatening this ecological-informed consciousness, in part due to a disconnect between the existing education systems and local knowledge. In all three sites, Indigenous children are required to spend extended portions of their day participating in Western schooling. Given these time constraints, Elders expressed concerns around youth not being present to learn many of the land management practices necessary to steward their sacred land. Formal schooling teaches none of the local cultural practices or land management practices. Additionally, the Western styles of teaching and learning used in these schools were reported to either disconnect youth from wanting to learn, or force them to, as one Elder described, “learn the English way.” Shifting ways of learning through mandated Western educational pedagogy was found to leave youth skeptical of local knowledge with a perspective that this knowledge is not something that is important to learn, and disconnect Indigenous youth from their land and culture.

All three sites also reported limited pathways for sustainable employment in land and heritage stewardship. There are either not enough jobs available or the jobs do not pay a living wage. In this vocational environment, compounded by Western capitalist ideologies of the importance of material wealth, it becomes difficult to motivate youth to want to engage with learning local knowledge. Without a way to make a living, the extensive time necessary to learn local land stewardship techniques—learning that can only happen in the already limited time outside of formal school—becomes viewed by youth as unwise, unnecessary, and unproductive. To maintain critical Indigenous land stewardship knowledge requires teaching in culturally responsive ways through Indigenous pedagogies while also educating about existing opportunities, expanding these opportunities, and creating new pathways for employment.

In confronting these issues, communities described feelings of isolation, looking for collaborators experiencing similar problems. Working to find peace against the educational and environmental violence wrought by consumption-driven Western values on these Indigenous communities and the land they steward, the three communities have begun to share best pathways for building educational pathways for Indigenous people to pass down critical knowledge and build agentive capacity for Indigenous youth to enact change and dictate policy in land and world heritage stewardship. This initial network is intended as a foundation for more partners to join and learn together. Indigenous communities can draw from the findings of this project to co-create best practices and build capacity for youth engagement in world heritage stewardship. From these findings, Policymakers will be better informed about the importance of Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy in world heritage and able to leverage this information in lobbying for global change in land management to best combat climate change.

Author

• David Elikak Kancewick Smith, University of Idaho