Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

does it mean to think of land as a source
What
knowledge? How is that knowledge learned,
of
and passed on from generation to
shared
What enables or disrupts those
generation?
education is important because
Land-based
so radically dispossessed
colonization
concept of “coming to know” is used in some
The
knowledges to refer to the process
Indigenous
seeking to understand the world by listening
of
and learning from all our relations. It places
to
learner in relationships of respect, gratitude
the
reciprocity with the natural world—rivers
and
oceans, mountains and hills, plants, animals,
and
humans and others. In many Indigenous
spirits,
traditions, we come to know by
knowledge
attention to these relationships, by
paying
our responsibilities as members of the
honoring
world and by listening to the teachings
natural
knowledge keepers and ancestors both human
of
other-than-human. These stories cover
and
from the teachings of plants and the
anything
of ancestors to the rights of physical
presence
and our responsibilities towards them.
places
to know is a form of knowledge that
Coming
Peoples from their land and the
Indigenous
knowledges and traditions
relationships,
from that land. Land-based education
drawn
to re-establish important connections to
seeks
resources, traditions and the context
nature,
social relationships and community, and
for
a range of pedagogies from sustainable
includes
to ethics.
agriculture
about how one applies that knowledge,
example
in accordance with it and passes it on to
lives
next generation. In this framing, knowledge
the
both explanations, such as what the
contains
is like and why it came to be like that, as
world
as principles for relational living, such as
well
and reciprocity. It is passed on
interdependence
stories, and can be communicated in song,
in
do the sources of Indigenous knowledge
How
the legitimacy of the things we come to
affect
Consider how coming to know about the
know?
or the natural world through Indigenous
past
of knowing intersects with historiography
ways
scientific knowledge. The encounter of
or
and settler or colonial accounts of
Indigenous
past is particularly interesting. How do
the
differing descriptions, explanations and
these
of what happened in the past
understandings
5II. Perspectives
processes?
II.2 Coming to know
poetry, dance and ceremony.
carries responsibilities and expectations, for
meet one another?
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