Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to research the trade in knowledge as a commodity between advanced nations and less developed ones. Design/methodology/approach: Investigates knowledge transfer between nations and examines cultural factors and their effect on this exchange. Findings: Finds that successful adoption of traded material calls for…

Promoting educational resilience is integral to prevention of maladaptive outcomes for children and adolescents in general, but is a particularly pressing need for Native students. The discontinuity between indigenous and dominant culture worldviews creates a sense of disorientation and distress for many Native students. Moreover, students from…

Arizona, 71 Hopi pupils left their families and homes to attend Sherman Institute, an off-reservation Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. Accompanied by their Kikmongwi (Village Chief), Tawaquaptewa and other Hopi leaders, the Hopis embarked on an adventure that forever changed their lives. For the majority of Hopi students, the…

Teaching about Native artworks as part of school arts curriculum can serve to pass on traditional ecological knowledge while also contextualizing colonialism's influence on traditional and contemporary Native arts practices. This article explores how schools can actively engage in community arts partnerships with American Indians who have…

Educational assessment, as it is typically conducted in U.S. schools, does not successfully capture or build on potentially important content knowledge and understanding of Indigenous students. In fact, current policies (such as the No Child Left Behind Act, 2002) are interfering with the implementation of many of the things we know about making…

To identify diverse student strengths and to learn how teachers can build instruction on those strengths, the author and his colleagues have conducted multiple studies among students in Alaska, the mainland United States, Kenya, and other countries. In a series of studies in Alaska and Kenya, the researchers measured the adaptive cultural…

This article attempts to showcase how one particularly financially endowed organization is seeking to modify its instructional and organizational practice to better serve its Inupiat (Eskimo) target/client population. This is an extreme and instructive situation of socio-cultural tension that provides interesting contrasts with the issues of…

This book of essays draws on a cultural geography project in which an ethnographer and Apache consultants mapped the area around Cibecue, on the Fort Apache Reservation (Arizona). The essays focus on different Apache individuals and examine the ways that Apache constructions of place reach deeply into other cultural spheres. Many Apache place…

Written in English and French, this paper outlines current Canadian intellectual property legislation as it relates to Aboriginal people in Canada, and provides a general review of the implications and limitations of this legislation for protecting the traditional knowledge of Aboriginal people. An initial discussion of Aboriginal perspectives…

The Cup'ik people are a group of Yup'ik Eskimos who live in southwest Alaska. This curriculum aims to enhance Cup'ik students' interest in their own culture by making that culture a part of their daily activities; to teach students to practice the traditional Cup'ik respect for elders, fellow students, and others in the community; and to teach…

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative (AKRSI) promotes systemic educational reform based in the culture and philosophy of the Alaska Native world view. AKRSI's first 5-year funding cycle ended in August 2000, and AKRSI was funded for a second 5 years beginning in November 2000. AKRSI activities are…

A great deal of traditional indigenous knowledge is being irretrievably lost in New Zealand as the Maori elders age and pass away. There has been a resurgence of interest on the part of the Maori in recording traditional knowledge, particularly at the local or community level, and using new technologies to make aspects of traditional knowledge…

The Seri people, of Sonora state (Mexico), have traditionally fished and hunted turtles in the Gulf of California and gathered plants in the Sonoran Desert. Intergenerational transmission of the intricate environmental knowledge needed for these activities was accomplished through storytelling and observational learning, but is now threatened by…

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…