Reimagining Indigenous Education

A confluence of indigenous perspectives on education

Sunflower Sutras organized “Reimagining indigenous education” over a year ago, to honor the arrival of Smrithi and Shriman Adinarayanan to California. Both of them wished to speak with scholars or researchers interested in the topic, so we invited Ayize Jama-Everett and Marlena Robbins, two people whose insight on this (and many) other topics we look up to. We weren’t sure of what would come out of the event, but were very hopeful and excited. The coming together of 4 wise people from different lineages, indigenous traditions and cosmovisions was bound to lead down rich and enlightening conversations.

Through the fellowship CIKS awarded us, we’ve now begun going through the approximately 3 hours of footage we have of the event, which we’ve begun editing into small bites for our Instagram which you can see here. The event's aim was to discuss how to integrate Indigenous Knowledge Systems into our academic spaces and build sacred educational models. One of Sunflower Sutra’s objectives is to help “thread worlds together through faith and collective wisdom.” This event seemed important to us, as westerners rush to incorporate indigenous wisdom and practices into their institutions in what sometimes feels like an attempt to patch a sinking paradigm. How is this exercise to be done respectfully, reciprocally, in a healthy way? The conversation branched into all areas of life, as our guests wove together their thoughts and feelings about what education is or could be, at its core.

Often, their words would touch upon the systemic challenges which indigenous and BIPOC communities face, in the context of a colonizing project which has been invisibilized to the point of serving nowadays as synonym for “civilization.” The Global Challenge of Decolonizing Education “The entire modus operandi of the (modern western) education is to other you,” Ayize begins in one of our videos. I reflect on my own school education and how the goal I was supposed to pursue was my own personal success, divorced from the challenges or life situations of my classmates. During the event, all of them spoke about the importance of community in a decolonized education, from Ayize’s tales of the Bay Area Black Panther’s community kitchens or spaces for children, to Adi’s and Smrithi’s description of their Ashram and the way children’s education is intertwined, informed and guide by their evolving and deepening relationships with the other children, adults, animals and the nature of their land.

Globally, the movement toward decolonizing education focuses on rethinking power dynamics within educational systems, dismantling the Eurocentric worldview, and creating space for indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing. This shift aims to correct centuries of marginalization and oppression, allowing students to learn within frameworks that emphasize community, spirituality, and connection to nature rather than individual success. Movements such as the Zapatista autonomous education in Mexico, Adivasi education models in India, and Maori-focused schooling systems in New Zealand are examples of how communities are reshaping their educational processes to reflect their cultural values and histories.

“The sense of belonginees takes a while to be built into the system.” Smrithi shared, after explaining the work they are doing conjuntly with the Indian government. “Most of it is intellectual content so there’s very little scope to bring the community in place. (...) Values education won’t be a 1 hour subject, but rather the entire school will be modeled around these values, along with a national credit framweork being created where not just classroom education but also the education living in a community will be recognized.”

When we asked during this conversation if any of them believed that mind-colonization was going on in our modern schools, Ayize laughed as a response and launched into an eloquent description of the subtle indoctrination happening as we speak. “Our schools are built by the same people who build our prisons” he pointed out. “They even use the same bricks.”

Wetiko and the Spirit of Colonization But what does it mean to teach in a decolonized way, beyond our current socio-political paradigm? What even is a decolonized thought or way of seeing the world? What is the colonizing spirit, where does it come from, what effect does it have on us? The more I feel into this question -which I think cannot be answered intellectually for it is a matter of the spirit- the more I feel it has to do with separation, of us with the divine and consequently, with the sacred thread that connects us with all of creation. In his book “Columbus and other cannibals,” Jack D. Forbes, indigenous scholar and historian, gives some of the most chilling insight into the heart of the colonizing spirit, which in his tradition they called the “Wetiko”: The cannibal spirit. "Colonization is a deep psychological assault. It teaches the colonized to look at their own cultures, their own ways of life, with contempt. It is a spiritual and mental imprisonment that goes beyond borders and physical violence. Once colonized, people begin to believe in their own inferiority. (...) Colonization is the Wetiko spirit in action, the desire to consume and destroy, to feed endlessly on the lives of others. This is how the colonizer kills not only bodies but entire ways of being, until the colonized people no longer recognize themselves. That is why decolonization must begin in the mind; it must uproot the false beliefs, the lies that have been planted by the colonizer. True liberation is not just political or economic, it is spiritual."

“You’re making me think of my kid”, replies Marlena when we ask for her thoughts, after not speaking for a while. “I’m scared that he’s gonna forget that he’s Dinné (Navajo).” Much of Marlena’s family stayed back in Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the U.S. “The school system in Arizona is a school-to-prison pipeline” she shares, and about how the prison system predicts the amount of new cells they’ll need by the test scores of high school students. She shares that she had to cut her boy’s long hair, against her will. That even now, in Berkeley, California, she must be consistent in reminding her son that not everything they teach him at school is correct or the truth.

Marlena’s words and the fear of her son forgetting that he’s Dinné reminds me that colonization is not something that happened 500 years ago on the shores of faraway countries, but rather an on-going, thriving and enduring process, seeking always to impose a standarized way of being. Perhaps then, an essential attribute of a decolonized mind is honoring all diversity and the distinct spirit within all things, sentient or not.

After all, diversity and divergent thought or ways of relating to the world seem to pose a threat to the colonizing system. Diversity challenges the normativity of the Western educational paradigm, which often gears students toward becoming obedient workers rather than critical thinkers or community members. The current system favors standardized assessments and linear learning, disregarding the rich, holistic perspectives indigenous cultures offer. Indigenous education emphasizes relationality, empathy, and self-awareness. Rather than molding students for economic productivity, it nurtures their role within the ecosystem of their community, stressing harmony with the land and all life forms.

Kinship With Earth “Everything co-existing, not competing.” Shriman chimed in as we were approaching the end of our night in that Berkeley classroom, surrounded by old photographs of scholars and professors (all of them white). “Each growing in its own part. The shrub is not trying to become a tree, it's a cooperative process, each adding to the other and robustly growing in their own manner. This we believe is an appropriate perspective to have when we approach diversity.”

Our current education system teaches children to understand reality in a fragmented and hyper specialized way, which probably aids in the later dissection and consumption of nature they will carry on as adults. Indigenous and decolonized systems of thought are so threatening because they reawaken people to the knowing that all life is interconnected, that everything in existence comes from and returns to the same place, making all life deserving of respect. If more people started regarding the earth as kin and not resource, industry would halt overnight. Interestingly, the “desk environmentalists” (as some indigenous people from Brazil refer to all the big ecological NGOs) most often still refer to nature as a resource, with the difference that they want to preserve it. But the emotional and spiritual disconnection remains, as meaningless carbon credits are swapped around along with empty promises. 

“In the Western worldview, science and education are often focused on deconstructing the world into its smallest parts to understand them, but this fragmented approach loses sight of the whole. Indigenous ways of knowing teach that understanding comes from relationships, from the interconnectedness of all beings. When you lose that, you lose the sense of responsibility and reciprocity that binds us to the natural world. The education system, in its current form, produces a worldview that allows for the Earth to be seen as a resource to be exploited rather than a community to be honored and protected.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi) – Braiding Sweetgrass

In Western paradigms, nature is often viewed as a resource to be exploited for human benefit. This is reflected in systems of extraction and industrialization. Conversely, in indigenous cultures, nature is viewed as a living, sentient being deserving respect and reverence. As Robin Wall Kimmerer expresses, “In indigenous ways of knowing, land is not just land, it is a living being with whom humans share a reciprocal relationship.” The concept of nature as a relative rather than a commodity is central to many indigenous worldviews and is perhaps, what has led to 80% of the world’s biodiversity to be currently held in indigenous territories, despite them representing only 5% of the world’s population. This begs the question: Can we have a healthy relationship with land without attributing sentience and personhood to it? 

Too much uncertainty, too many fires, so much to do in what sometimes feels like little time left, as the doomsday clock ticks on. I left this conversation with more questions than answers, but I also took with me Marlena’s antidote: “Hey little Navajo boy, come sit.” Come sit at the altar, honor your ancestors, remember who you are, where you come from, your roots. Within a storm which I can’t fully see, as we collectively wake up from this century-old trance- a clair de lune, a small path, a quiet intuition. Amidst everything, Little Navajo boy, come sit. Perhaps we can all sit to lay a hand upon our roots and ask for guidance. Even us, who are not Navajo or indigenous. After all, weren’t we all indigenous at some point, if we travel back far enough into our distant memory? Across the illusion of time, what are those ancestors trying to tell us?