There is also a place on the spectrum for place-based education. From there, the spectrum widens to recognize the importance of teaching about the land to create global citizens who will care for the Earth. However, while being outside is obviously essential to getting acquainted with the land, just going outside is not enough. Outdoor ed-or basically just “doing activities outside”-is at one far end the land-based education spectrum (with the Indigenous component removed), says Wilson. “It is also a form of understanding our place within, and our responsibility to, the wider universe.” “Indigenous land-based education is its own paradigm based on Indigenous worldviews and beliefs and the passing on of knowledge to one another and to the next generation,” she says. Her view of Indigenous land-based education is relational and focuses on understanding how knowledge connects to and comes from land, including water, sky and everything connected to them. Alex Wilson, Opaskwayak Cree Nation, leads the Indigenous land-based graduate program at the University of Saskatchewan. Rather, “she is a dearly beloved, revered relative who is in crisis right now.”ĭr. Or to put it more simply, says Parent, it teaches us that land is not a resource. By its very nature, Indigenous land-based education has the capacity to create transformational opportunities for all Canadians to learn about the many ways in which our education, economic, social and political systems reinforce colonialism. Indigenous land-based education, she says, is a process that centres respect, reciprocity, reverence, humility and responsibility as values connected to the land through Indigenous knowledges-a very different view from the Eurocentric mindset, which has long understood land as a resource and object to serve human uses, much to the detriment of our living world. She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. Amy Parent, No xs Ts'aawit, is Nisga’a from the Nass Valley of northwestern British Columbia and describes herself as an uninvited guest to the territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam peoples. And by changing the relationship that many non-Indigenous people have with the land, it has the potential to lead to a healthier Earth for all.ĭr. It can offer significant benefits to Indigenous people by providing culturally relevant education, promoting opportunities for inter-generational knowledge transfer, and creating safe spaces for healing and learning. It brings together layered concepts like the importance of language and the geography of stories, cosmologies and world views, land protections and rights, relationality and accountability, a connection to reconciliation, and much more. A multi-faceted concept, Indigenous land-based education doesn’t lend itself to simple one-sentence definitions, and does mean different things to different people. Or at least, that’s not all it is-not by far. If your mind went straight to “taking the classroom outside” or “outdoor education,” bingo: that’s what it’s not.

Indigenous land-based education has implications for science, culture, politics, language, environmental stewardship, land rights, reconciliation-and the future of the planet.įor anyone who seeks an understanding of what Indigenous land-based education is, it may be instructive to begin by grasping what it is not. Coalition of Inclusive Municipalities toggle menu.

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