Tuija Veintie
University of Helsinki, Finland
Introduction
Indigenous education is not Indigenous or education from within our intellectual traditions unless it comes through the land, unless it occurs in an Indigenous context using Indigenous processes (Simpson 2014, 9).
Indigenous education processes in both South America and among the Sámi in the Nordic countries evolved over a long period of living in a place. The first section of the entrance to this broad topic of Indigenous education and sustainability discusses some common sustainability-related aspects of Indigenous education by and for Indigenous peoples, practiced within Indigenous families and communities in diverse contexts in the regional context focused by the project EDGES.
In this same regional context, the second section of this entrance deliberates on Indigenous perspectives on sustainability in schools and education programs for Indigenous peoples and mainstream education. Historically, public schools in South America and in the Sámi areas of the Nordic countries have served as instruments of colonization and active assimilation policies (Aikman 1996; Karsgaard et al. 2024; Sollid and Olsen 2019), alienating many people from Indigenous languages, knowledge, and cultures. Indigenous rights movements and decolonization processes have contributed to gradual societal change, including changes in education policies. These changes have led to diversified curricula or education programs for Indigenous peoples and various attempts to incorporate Indigenous topics into mainstream education programs (e.g. Lange et al. 2025; López 2008).
Key aspects in Indigenous sustainability education
Diverse Indigenous understandings of sustainability are intimately related to local knowledge accumulated through long-term relationships with places (Kealiikanakaoleohaililani and Giardina 2016). The intimate relationship is reflected, for example, in the Andean Indigenous conception of Earth as their mother (Illicachi Guzñay 2014) shared by the Amazonian Kichwa for whom the Runa (people) are integral part of the Kawsak Sacha (living rainforest), the network of interconnected living beings and spirits (Gualinga 2019) Thus, connection to the place, along with relationality—referring to relations and interdependencies between humans and other beings, including relations with the spiritual world—are among the key sustainability-related aspects in Indigenous knowledge and thinking with implications for Indigenous education (Furrey 2024).
Children and adolescents among Amazonian Kichwa (Hohenthal and Veintie 2022; Veintie et al. 2022) and Huaorani (Rival 2000), or the Sámi in Finland (Laiti, Määttä, and Köngäs 2022) and Norway (Balto 2005), learn to respect and live with their environment through their participation in social and productive activities alongside family and other community members. Balto (2005, 89) crystallizes the purpose of Sámi education by stating that “the primary aim of the learning process is to prepare children for life, develop independent individuals who can survive in a given environment, and give them self-esteem, trust, joy, and a zest for life.” In reindeer herding Sámi communities, children participate from an early age in reindeer herding activities. Adults also let children practice diverse skills independently, providing opportunities to gain experience, learn through play, trial and error, and experiment (Balto 2005). Such learning methods help children build their self-confidence and their relationship with the place.
Similar characterizations of learning as a learner-led process that involves practicing multiple intelligences and developing learner autonomy, self-regulation, and a sense of interdependence are found, for example, among Amazonian Indigenous peoples. Rival (2000) argues that in Amazonian Huaorani communities, the relationship between adults and children does not involve an adult being in a position of authority over the child. In Amazonian Indigenous communities, adults do not command or coerce children but rather ask and suggest that children take part in collective activities of their own free will (Rival 2000). Similarly, the role of the parent or teacher among Amazonian Kichwa, Shuar, and Achuar is to provide advice, for example, through stories, and to set an example for children and young people who observe, explore, and experiment, thus allowing the learner to play an active role in their own learning and becoming active members of the community (Veintie 2013).
Thus, education in diverse Indigenous contexts both in Amazonia and the Nordic countries, tends to foster a sense of belonging and commitment to a community that is built of a network of reciprocal relations with extended family and diverse peer groups and intergenerational groups (Balto 2005) as well as a network of diverse visible and non-visible beings that dwell in the environment and its’ sacred places (Gualinga 2019).
The caring relationships between humans and other beings are the basis for Indigenous collective stewardship, the practices of care for the environment and the communities as, for example, in the Amazonian Indigenous Cofán policies and practices seeking for well-being and abundance for current and future generations of all rainforest life forms (Esbach et al. 2024). In the case of the Cofán, daily activities such as fishing, hunting, and gathering provide spaces for community members to share and discuss their observations and insights on ecological conditions. Community meetings further discuss and agree on collective actions and rules for caring for the forest. In the Amazonian context, community meetings are an important part of Indigenous sustainability education, as they offer opportunities for all community members, including children and young people, to engage with community leaders, elders, and other knowledgeable people, and learn about current socio-environmental issues affecting their territories (Hohenthal and Veintie 2022).
Indigenous sustainability perspectives in formal education
The range of education programs for Indigenous peoples is wide and varies in terms of who administers the education, what the objectives are, and how they reflect Indigenous education approaches, worldviews, and knowledge. Consequently, they address the multiple perspectives of Indigenous peoples on sustainability differently. Top-down policies and national curricula may provide limited space for Indigenous self-determination and incorporation of Indigenous perspectives into educational practices within government-led education for Indigenous peoples, such as intercultural bilingual education (IBE) in several Latin American countries with broad networks of government-financed IBE schools (López 2008).
Community-level administration of curricula, educational approaches, and teaching methods through initiatives such as communitarian education (Hernández Loeza 2016) or ethno-education (Muñoz Sánchez 2024) may increase the possibility of discussing and practicing Indigenous sustainability perspectives in schools. For example, the Sarayaku Kichwa community in the Ecuadorian Amazon seeks to replace the IBE model of schooling by developing its own communal education program that follows the principles of sumak kawsay, “beautiful life,” living sustainably by conserving and protecting nature and ensuring local food security (Veintie et al. 2022), thus practicing the caring relationships mentioned above.
The goals for Indigenous education sovereignty are often linked to the need to sustain and revitalize young people’s connections to Indigenous language, culture and knowledge (McCarty and Lee 2014). For example, in Ecuador, Indigenous Shuar and Kichwa teachers recognize that among Indigenous young people, many have limited connections with the Indigenous language and community life cycles (Veintie, Sirén, and Minoia 2024). In response to this, also the IBE schools are expected to work on educational experiential calendars to link the education processes with the seasons of the year, community productive and economic activities, socio-cultural experiences, and spiritual practices. In Finland and Norway, respectively, Sámi educators highlight the practice of seasonal outdoor activities and nature-based learning through Sámi pedagogical approaches that promote independence, active participation, learning by doing, and storytelling, as central aspects of Sámi education for sustainability in early childhood education units and schools (Krempig and Enoksen 2024).
Nature-based or place-based approaches are often associated with Indigenous education and environmental education. Place-conscious education and eco-pedagogy resonate with Indigenous approaches to education for sustainability by incorporating social justice and critical consciousness into environmental education. These approaches aim to deconstruct socio-environmental issues and understand power dynamics behind interrelated environmental degradation and social oppression (Hohenthal and Veintie 2022). Land education, advocated particularly by North American Indigenous scholars, addresses settler colonialism, the need to engage with difficult questions of identity, diverse relationships with places, and how dominant understandings of place and environment have been constructed in the context of settlers occupying lands from which Indigenous peoples were displaced (Calderon 2014).
Decolonizing goals should be an essential part of place-based education and education for sustainability. However, current mainstream education systems and curricula tend to provide limited opportunities for decolonizing work (Calderon 2014) and fail to incorporate Indigenous holistic knowledge comprehensively (Karsgaard et al. 2024). Mainstream curricula and conceptions of sustainability have been built on dominant Western epistemologies of Christianity, philosophy of science, and capitalism, which incorporate ideas of dualism between humans and nature (Breidlid 2013) and a tendency to focus on categorization and separation instead of relationality and holism (Zeyer and Aikenhead 2025).
Consequently, mainstream curricula and conceptions of sustainability continue to reproduce the notion of nature as a resource available for extraction (Belcher 2024) and enforce separation between ecological, cultural, and social dimensions of sustainability. Moreover, the persistent Western idea of human supremacy, combined with the perception of Western hegemony over “othered” humans and “othered” epistemologies (Breidlid 2013), forms an integral part of colonialism, resulting in exploitation and violence, for example against Indigenous people, and non-human biota and ecosystems (Dotson 2024).
Thus, Indigenous conceptualizations of education and sustainability are epistemologically and ontologically rebellious, based on holistic thinking and viewing humans as part of a multispecies network of reciprocal relations (Calderon 2014) where all beings are mutually dependent (Carpena‐Méndez, Virtanen, and Williamson 2022). Understanding such perspectives can offer science and society an opportunity to expand and renew the prevailing understanding of both sustainability and education.
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