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27.4 (Winter 2003) Indigenous Education and the Prospects for Cultural Survival

Ifugao Knowledge and Formal Education -Systems of Learning in the Philippines

Even with the advent of international declarations and legal instruments that promote indigenous peoples’ rights, discourses on policies and programs affecting indigenous peoples continue to surface in academia and more proactively in international civil society movements. One of the vital concerns is indigenous peoples’ education that is discussed vis a vis human rights and policies on traditional knowledge.

Higher Education on Nicaragua’s Multicultural Atlantic Coast

The University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (URACCAN) is a pluri-ethnic university located in the Caribbean region of Nicaragua. The university provides higher education to some of the country’s most marginalized peoples, including the indigenous Miskitu, Mayanga, and Rama, and the Afro-Caribbean Creole and Garífuna, all of whom live in the eastern half of the country. While comprising only four percent of Nicaragua’s total population, these coastal groups represent most of the country’s cultural and linguistic diversity.

 

Education For Nation-Building

Education in Native communities should uphold the values, interests, and cultures of Native communities and nations. While Native communities have their own methods of transmitting knowledge and understanding, Western society understands contemporary education from the point of view of the formal institutions of primary and secondary schools and college. The best way for Native community members to learn Native history, culture, customs, and social life may still be according to the old ways of transmitting knowledge.

Cultural Property as Global Commodities -The Case of Mijikenda Memorial Statues

As is still customary among the Mijikenda peoples of Kenya, back in the early 1980s, Katana,1 an elderly man from the Giriama subgroup, erected two carved memorial posts to commemorate his two recently deceased brothers. Called vigango (kigango when singular), such statues must be carved for deceased family members who belong to the Gohu society, a male fraternal organization. In 1985, cultural anthropologist Monica Udvardy visited Katana to learn about this semi-secret society, and photographed him beside the two posts.

Crafting Means to Empower Nahua Language and Culture

Challenging yet favorable conditions have prevented the ethnolinguistic group of the Balsas Nahuas in Mexico from fading away, despite the strong pressures during colonial and modern times to assimilate. Isolation, intense commerce, and ritual networking among their communities have produced a propitious context for Nahua cultural and linguistic survival, which is threatened by strong migration and the presence of Spanish-only schools in the region.

Building Bridges in the Bush

Pastoral land use has been a part of the East African landscape for over 3,000 years. As recently as 500 years ago the first ancestors of the Maasai, or “the people of the cattle,” moved into Kenya, dependent on livestock for subsistence. This nomadic people sustained their livelihood through mobility, moving in accordance with the availability of natural resources for livestock. Living without the present-day constraints of land ownership, the Maasai faced only the limitations of the weather and their abilities to utilize the environment.

An Open Intercultural Conflict

The media spotlight has shone brightly on California’s new governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the aftermath of a historical recall election. But another controversy in the state has remained quietly under the national radar screen—a community debate is growing in the city of Davis over a street that was named Sutter Place in the late 1990s despite protests by American Indian groups that continue to this day.

 

Women’s Voices Rise from the Chapare

“Noganchi huarmis jina sumaj organizazga canchis imactinchus cay injusticia cajtin.”

 

Life for women in the Chapare tropical region of Bolivia revolves around the ironic truth cocalera leader Leonida Zurita Vargas expresses in Quechua: “Thanks to the injustice, we as women are organized.”

 

TalanoaMälie -Innovative Reform Through Social Dialogue in New Zealand

The experiences of the Kakai Tonga Tu’a (Tongan people who have migrated to Aotearoa—New Zealand–from the Kingdom of Tonga) can be interpreted alongside the patterns of the tapestry of the lives of Tangata Whenua (“First People of the land”) in Aotearoa and indigenous colonized peoples elsewhere in the world. Our heritage can be traced to the islands of Niua Fo’ou, Niua Toputapu, Vava’u, Ha’apai, Tongatapu, and ‘Eua, which are collectively called the Tonga Islands. The diversity among Kakai Tonga Tu’a is acknowledged and, as a Kakai Tonga Tu’a teacher, I am one of many voices.

Rewriting the Books in Ladakh

When they open to page 52 of the Indian government’s “brand new” class seven social science textbook later this year, students in Ladakh, a mountainous region of far northern India, will find a number of curious claims about the land they call home. One is that “Ladakh is a vast sandy desert with bare gravel slopes and rocky mountains. Because of the severe cold, vegetation can not survive.” Bemused, they might point out to their teacher that, on their way to school, they passed a vast variety of plants—poplar trees, stinging nettles, wild roses, Artemisia—and very little sand.

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