Towards an indigenous and traditional “pedagogy of repair”: an ecological approach to environmental education

Abstract

This article explores some of the arguments, ethical directions and implementation options that emerge when indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge (ITEK) is brought into critical dialogue with the universal approach to environmental education. Moving from an ecological perspective (meaning one that focuses on relationality), the article aims to reaffirm the value of ITEK (which recognises interrelational interdependence between human beings and non-human “others”) in response to mainstream environmental pedagogy, which is universally implemented as “education for sustainable development” (ESD). The potential that ITEK may hold in terms of addressing ongoing and conjoined environmental and epistemic injustices is explored through the post-humanist heuristic of an “ecologics of repair” – which responds to “damaged ecologies and communities” by subtly endorsing transformational processes. In this case, ITEK is positioned as an alternative way of thinking about sustainability that provides an ecological, re-contextualised and bio-regional approach to environmental pedagogy and which, it is suggested, holds important implications for both ecological and cultural diversity and literacy.