Indigenous Education and Sustainable Development: Rethinking Environment Through Indigenous Knowledges and Generative Environmental Pedagogies

In places across the Americas, Indigenous relationships with land are reflected through worldviews and cultural practices that comprise intellectual, pragmatic, and spiritual elements. However, owing to threats rooted in coloniality, maintaining good environmental relationships is not ensured through education for Indigenous students. What's more, Indigenous lands are threatened through destruction of natural habitat, environmental pollution, and climate change, and sustainable development is looked to as a solution framework. As Indigenous researchers and educators, we explore Indigenous knowledges and education and sustainable development discourse. We offer generative environmental pedagogies, which center Indigenous knowledge systems and affective relationship building in ways that challenge us to rethink the meaning of sustainability in unjust and consumption-driven societies.