Indigenous wisdom for regeneration: reducing the knowledge gap
Publication Details
Wooltorton, S.
(2025).
Indigenous wisdom for regeneration: reducing the knowledge gap.
Environmental Education Research, 31 (9), 1939-1957.
Abstract
The author of this paper uses Indigenous-informed literature and explores the use of a Multispecies Collaboratory to hear place-based voices and practice ways of knowing often denied value by the mainstream. In the Indigenous nation of Australia, the author sets out to learn ways to practice environmental education that build upon aeons of experience at caring for and responding to Country. The starting point is a 2024 paper with three claims, which are: a culture of epistemic violence and denial support the mainstream paradigm which silences Indigenous voices; an Indigenous-informed way of being with living-places can inform the core of environmental education; and an Indigenous-informed Multispecies Collaboratory can enhance the sense of multispecies engagement that underpins environmental education. Using mostly Indigenous-informed references, the author addresses the perennial question of how to reduce the gap between mainstream knowledge and that which is Indigenous-informed. To heal the distance between these ways of knowing – and have real impact on society – requires the Indigenous values and practices of care, respect and humility, recognition of the vitality of places and praxes of refusal of colonialism. This strengthens the framework for regenerative socio-ecological practice.
Keywords
regeneration, praxes of refusal, indigenous wisdom, response-ability
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