In this paper, we aim to contribute to ongoing work to uncover the ways in which settler colonialism is entrenched and reified in educational environments and explore lessons learned from an urban Indigenous land-based education project. In this project, we worked to re-center our perceptual habits in Indigenous cosmologies, or land-based…

The Aymara of the Andes use absolute (cardinal) frames of reference for describing the relative position of ordinary objects. However, rather than encoding them in available absolute lexemes, they do it in lexemes that are intrinsic to the body: "nayra" ("front") and "qhipa" ("back"), denoting east and west,…

Inuit myths, folklore, and material culture are filled with examples of people who turn into animals. Margaret Lantis, a well-known Eskimologist of the mid-twentieth century, once commented that human-animal transformation in Inuit mythology had an "immediacy and a reality" that was unknown in other parts of the world. It is hard to…

Refutes the notion of leaders of the 1960s ecology movement that American Indians could teach their land ethic to White Americans. Points to the differences in western cosmology and suggests that the land ethic is a comprehensive way of life to American Indians. (Author/KC)

Presents an overview of Native American environmental values, cosmology, and philosophical and spiritual ties with the land and animals. Rebuts recent claims that American Indians did not have a conservation ethic and recent attacks on the authenticity of Chief Seattle's famous orations. Contains 18 references. (SV)

Examines aspects of Navajo cosmology relevant to understanding Navajo spatial representations. Compares Navajo children's spatial knowledge with Piaget's findings about the development of geometric concepts in Swiss children. Describes classroom activities whereby Navajo children explore the geometry inherent in their cultural and physical…

Presents a hypothesis about what is characteristically North American in social theory, proceeding from three concepts that recur throughout the theology and cosmology of aboriginal Americans: individual conscience, universal kinship, and the endless creative power of the world. Concludes that from an aboriginal American perspective, industrial…

A connection with nature constitutes the difference between Western science and indigenous perspectives of the natural world. Understanding the synchronicity of natural and astronomical cycles is integral to Anishinaabe cosmology. Examples show how the Anishinaabe cultural worldview and philosophy are reflected in their celestial knowledge and how…

Intended for compilers or retellers of folktales, for storytellers or librarians serving children, or for children themselves, the annotated bibliography contains references to 152 sources of North American Indian folktales. Sources in the non-comprehensive bibliography were selected on the basis of (1) a statement of sources and faithfulness to…

Among the American Indians of western Washington State and northwest Oregon, stories have served as educational tools by presenting lessons concerning the traditional culture. Several types of instruction have been noted in the oral literature of these Indians of the Southern Northwest Coast. Today these stories present another type of insight and…

This book examines the Navajo system of spatial knowledge and describes a culture-based curriculum for the development of an intuitive geometry based on the child's experience of the physical world. Aspects of the Navajo cosmology relevant to spatial knowledge are discussed: the structure of the world; the dynamic nature of the universe;…

This research paper examines hidden cultural patterns establishing the expression of historical thought in Native Alaskan narratives which describe first contact with Russians. Historical consciousness in oral contact stories is always mythic in form, as well as in content. Native American oral cultures understood new events by…