Learning and Knowing in Indigenous Societies Today
The loss of their specialised knowledge of nature is a grave concern for many indigenous communities throughout the world. Education, as it is understood in a Western context, occupies a pivotal role in this process, highlighted by many as both a major cause of the decline of indigenous knowledge, and also as a potential remedy for its demise. Commendable efforts are being made to better align educational curricula with indigenous realities and to incorporate local knowledge and language content into school curricula, but the interrelationship and balance between these two different ways of learning remain delicate. These issues, and attempts to address them, are explored within the UNESCO publication Learning and Knowing in Indigenous Societies Today.
The book is organised into three sections. The first addresses the link between indigenous knowledge and indigenous language, and explores the opportunities this interconnection provides for understanding and countering declines in both. The second section examines how the loss of indigenous knowledge due to insensitive school programmes may be countered by integrating indigenous knowledge and languages into school curricula. The third section explores the need for the revitalisation of indigenous ways of learning, generally outside of a classroom environment, and how this may be practically viable in modern contexts.
 The book will be launched on 2 April 2009 in Bonn, Germany, on the occasion of the ‘UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development - Moving into the Second Half of the UN Decade’ (31 March - 2 April 2009). This conference takes place five years into the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) for which UNESCO is the lead agency.
UNESCO, 2009, Learning and Knowing in Indigenous Societies Today.
Edited by P. Bates, M. Chiba, S. Kube & D. Nakashima, UNESCO: Paris, 128 pp. Download a Copy Here (.pdf).
Contents Introduction Peter Bates & Douglas Nakashima
The indigenous peoples of Venezuela in search of a participative and intercultural education for their survival
Marie-Claude Mattéi Muller
Sustaining indigenous languages and indigenous knowledge: developing community training approaches for the 21st century
Margaret Florey
Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and biocultural diversity: a close-up look at linkages, delearning trends, and changing patterns of transmission
Stanford Zent
Biodiversity regeneration and intercultural knowledge transmission in the Peruvian Andes
Jorge Ishizawa & Grimaldo Rengifo
Loss of traditional practices, loss of knowledge, and the sustainability of cultural and natural resources: a case of Urak Lawoi people in the Adang Archipelago, Southwest Thailand
Supin Wongbusarakum
Transmitting indigenous knowledge through the school curriculum in a diminishing bio-cultural environment: the case of Botswana
Herman M. Batibo
Learning and Inuit knowledge in Nunavut, Canada
Peter Bates
African hunter-gatherers: threats and opportunities for maintaining indigenous knowledge systems of biodiversity
Nigel Crawhall
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