Languages reflect and reinforce cultural values, giving insights into their speakers' world view and relationships to the natural environment. Indigenous languages help us to respect local knowledge and extend our sense of community to the larger world. However, despite bilingual education in schools, all Native American languages are endangered;…

Languages reflect and reinforce cultural values, giving insights into their speakers' world view and relationships to the natural environment. Indigenous languages help us to respect local knowledge and extend our sense of community to the larger world. However, despite bilingual education in schools, all Native American languages are endangered;…

During a kayaking expedition in 1983, the author was sucked into an underwater tunnel in Mexico's Rio Urique. He miraculously emerged unharmed, but this near-death experience awakened in him a primal awareness that had been coddled to sleep by his so-called civilized perceptions. He gained intuitive insights from this awakening that enabled him to…

Although rich in theoretical constructs, American Indian Studies is not considered a discipline because it lacks a core assumption or paradigm. The concept of peoplehood could be that core assumption because its elements--language, sacred history, religion, and land--make up a complete system that accounts for particular behaviors of people…

Addresses problems associated with the appropriation of indigenous knowledge and the marginalization of indigenous intellectual accomplishments by the academic and scientific community. An example is the misuse of indigenous medicinal plant knowledge and the lack of equal status given to this knowledge at nonindigenous institutions. Offers…

Presents evidence that Native peoples' profound understanding of ecology, the nature of individuality, and resulting differences in survival and reproduction led them to develop ideas of evolution through natural selection long before Europeans. Suggests that in order to survive, Native Americans must not allow Western ways of thought, which are…

Anticipated the modern physics relativity theory, American Indians gained information about the natural world through careful observation based on the principle that all things are related. American Indian students could radically transform scientific knowledge by grounding themselves in traditional knowledge about the world and working this…

As Aboriginal peoples gain more access to schools of social work, the academy needs to respond to their educational needs. This involves incorporating Aboriginal worldviews and research methodologies into social work education. This paper focuses on one definition of worldviews according to Aboriginal epistemology and implements an anti-colonial…

Worldview theory in science education has generally proceeded from an assumption that there exist distinguishable entities called "science" and "indigenous knowledge" in all times and every place in the world. This assumption has been the philosophical ground point of typologies that describe the relationship between science…

This paper explores aspects of Indigenous knowledge on several levels and examines the role of Indigenous knowledge in Indigenous empowerment as the number and influence of Native people in academia increases. Indigenous peoples worldwide have a common set of assumptions that forms a context or paradigm--a collective core of interrelated…

Intensive rotational grazing by Wisconsin dairy farmers represents a local expression of the sustainable agriculture movement. Contrary to interpretations that view local knowledge in agriculture as idiosyncratic, these graziers use horizontal forms of organizing and information exchange to overcome the limits of personal experience and share…

Every component of traditional indigenous life is influenced by the natural world, but indigenous studies programs exclude the natural sciences. To wrest indigenous studies programs from the Eurocentric worldview of the typical American university, the natural sciences should be incorporated into what must necessarily be an integrated,…

Indigenous peoples throughout the world have sustained their unique world views and associated knowledge systems for millennia. Many core values, beliefs, and practices associated with those world views have an adaptive integrity that is as valid today as in the past. However, traditional educational processes to transmit indigenous beliefs and…

Interviews with 32 traditional Lakota elders, educators, leaders, and mental-health providers found that prereservation Lakota approaches for ensuring social health and well-being were preventative, holistic, spiritual, and linked to the tribe's ceremonial life. Discusses a resurgence of traditional healing practices among the Lakota and…

Globalization pushes aside social, cultural, and ethical goals of education in favor of marketplace goals. Two stories of the indigenous Ju/'hoansi tribe in Botswana illustrate how even well-intentioned multicultural education programs can marginalize indigenous people, and how "globalization from below," fueled by communities of…