This book brings together essays that explore Indigenous ways of knowing and that consider how such knowledge can inform educational practices and institutions. Indigenous Knowledge is resiliently local in character and thus poses a distinct contrast to the international, more impersonal system of knowledge prevalent in Western educational…

Indigenous communities have successfully used Western geospatial technologies (GT) (for example, digital maps, satellite images, geographic information systems (GIS), and global positioning systems (GPS)) since the 1970s to protect tribal resources, document territorial sovereignty, create tribal utility databases, and manage watersheds. The use…

In this commentary on Brayboy and Castagno's paper, published in this volume, we discuss, on the one hand, many points of agreement between their proposal of culturally responsive schooling for indigenous youth and El-Hani and Mortimer's proposal of culturally-sensitive science education. On the other hand, we focus on a key disagreement, not only…

The purpose of this article is to propose theory and knowledge from the peripheral space. Through an analysis of historical and contemporary perspectives of curriculum, the intent of this article is to make explicit the story of curriculum, and the influence of poststructuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial paradigms on the development of…

The Canadian North, one of the most isolated parts of the world, has been subject to increased scrutiny as a source of untapped oil and gas, a global warming harbinger and casualty, and a center of international sovereignty debate. What is often forgotten is that in addition to a resource bed and a border, the Arctic is first a homeland--a…

As co-editors of this theme issue of this journal, the authors have accepted that knowledge systems and teacher education programs are deeply interconnected. Further, they claim that teacher education programs must incorporate in theory and practice the fact that knowledge systems are a determining factor in the effectiveness of a teacher…

Early Childhood Development (ECD) has emerged as a theme in international and African dialogue on education in recent years. UNESCO's Division of Basic Education Early Childhood promotes an integrated approach to Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) policy development and review. The study examines how this is implemented in three West…

At best, mainstream mental health services are often ineffective with Native American clients, and, at worst, they are a vehicle for Western colonization. As such, the authors explore the notion of abandoning the Western therapeutic project and rebuilding the helping process on the basis of indigenous knowledge foundations. To this end, they…

"Earthsongs" was the third in a series of courses designed and facilitated by Dr. Lorna Williams, Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Education at the University of Victoria. Subtitled "Learning and teaching in an Indigenous world," these courses offer undergraduate and graduate students from the Faculty of Education and across…

As the world settles in to the reality of globalization, it becomes clear that many incongruous facets of human existence have been forced together into a giant tumbler--economy, information systems, finance and people--giving rise to contradictory but also generative responses. Previously excluded and excised "objects" are now occupying intimate…

This article examines the role material culture and making items can serve in establishing a sense of place or informing place-based educational practices. It is arranged around six principles that, if used in a learning context, connect material from a place to an enhanced comprehension of a sense of place. A critical component in making the…

The perspectives of indigenous science learners in developed nations offer an important but frequently overlooked dimension to debates about the nature of science, the science curriculum, and calls from educators to make school science more culturally responsive or "relevant" to students from indigenous or minority groups. In this paper…

The stress and anxiety of new teachers is a pervasive problem that impacts upon teacher preparation and retention. Although new mainstream teacher concerns and experiences have been readily discussed in the literature, the same attention has not been invested for new Aboriginal teachers. In Ontario, Canada, in excess of 60% of the Aboriginal…

In their article Ogunniyi and Ogawa explore the prospects and challenges of training South African and Japanese educators to enact an indigenized science curriculum. They discuss the nature of science and the nature of indigenous knowledge (IK) and also that IK is acknowledged alongside Western science as a legitimate way of knowing in the new…

While much has been written on the problems that can arise when interviewing respondents from a different social group, less attention has been paid to its potential benefits for the research process. In this paper we argue that, by being conscious of one's outsider status, an interviewer can use it as a tool through which to elicit detailed and…