“Places and people: Interepistemic dialogues across, with and for Indigenous worlds”

In person and virtual event. This talk will be held in Room 252 Erickson Hall or via Zoom. Register for Zoom here.  

Speaker: 

Elizabeth Sumida Huaman

Abstract: 

In her Foreword to Ho‘oulu/Our time of becoming, Kanaka Maoli author, Manulani Aluli Meyer writes:

We need to voyage again so that we can arrive at the original place of non-judgement. This time we go inland—into mind and the outer coastline of spirit. Each of us. Our own open-minded voyage of re-discovery is vital because when you can answer, clearly, what it means to feel connected to place and people then you will work always to heal yourself with others as both, always, must thrive. Place and People. People and Place (2016, p. X). 

This talk is a reflection on the current critical moment of human impact on Earth—one of many that life beings will increasingly face in coming generations. In this time, our challenge as educators may be to unlearn and “prepare to learn,” as Cree scholar Cora Weber-Pillwax (2009) has offered. Drawing from Indigenous educational research, this talk will highlight educational design that centers the many layers of human engagement with places. Prominent in this talk is the adaptive role of the human educator and the resiliencies of Indigenous places in the context of global development, which require us to transcend racialized/culturalized/borderized fixations instead toward interepistemic earth relationing models of education. Shifting our individual and collective lenses of interpreting the planet from human-centered formal education to cross-learnings that prioritize caring with places, this talk will offer a rethinking of educational design that is in mindful dialogue with Indigenous worlds.