Table Of ContentIndigenous Innovation
ADVANCES IN INNOVATION EDUCATION
AIMS AND SCOPE
Industry, Government-sanctioned Research and development and the Private sec-
tors have historically been the champions of fostering innovation with the aim of
addressing changing human needs as well as economic gain. The connectivity of the
21st century coupled with advances in information systems and the unchecked ad-
vent of globalization have resulted in challenges to existing institutional structures in
place as well as a greater awareness of inequities within and across different regions
of the world. Innovation and innovation education are the new buzz words increas-
ingly inundating popular discourses in different media. The aim of this avant-garde
book series is to unfold the conceptual foundations of innovation from historical,
socio-political, economic, scientific and ethical perspectives, as well as apply these
foundations towards issues confronting education, science and society in the 21st
century.
Series Editor:
Bharath Sriraman, The University of Montana
International Advisory Board:
Don Ambrose, Rider University
Robert Este, University of Calgary
Allan Luke, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Marianna Papastephanou, University of Cyprus
Robert Sternberg, Oklahoma State University
Ian Winchester, University of Calgary
Indigenous Innovation
Universalities and Peculiarities
Edited by
Elizabeth Sumida Huaman
Arizona State University, USA
and
Bharath Sriraman
The University of Montana, USA
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-94-6300-224-0 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-94-6300-225-7 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-94-6300-226-4 (e-book)
Published by: Sense Publishers,
P.O. Box 21858,
3001 AW Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
https://www.sensepublishers.com/
All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved © 2015 Sense Publishers
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the
exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and
executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements from the Editors vii
1. Indigenous-Minded Innovation in Shifting Ecologies 1
Elizabeth Sumida Huaman
2. Alternative Imaginations: Examining Complementarities across
Knowledge Systems 11
Netra Chhetri and Nalini Chhetri
3. Deep Sovereignty: A Foundation for Indigenous Sustainability 25
Anya Dozier Enos
4. Waewaetakamiria: Caress the Land with Our Footsteps 43
Huia Tomlins-Jahnke and Margaret Forster
5. Local Knowledge, Cultural Economies: “To Live Well” in an
Indigenous Municipality of Bolivia 57
Karen Marie Lennon
6. Spirit Food: A Multi-Dimensional Overview of the Decolonizing
Diet Project 81
Martin Reinhardt
7. Turkana Indigenous Knowledge: Environmental Sustainability
and Pastoralist Lifestyle for Economic Survival 107
John Teria Ng’asike and Beth Blue Swadener
8. “Why Can’t We Admire Our Own?”: Indigenous Youth, Farming,
and Education in the Peruvian Andes 129
Elizabeth Sumida Huaman
9. Adharshila Shikshan Kendra: An Experiment to Reconstitute
Possibilities for Adivasi Children 149
Karishma Desai
10. Ruvden as a Basis for the Teaching of Mathematics:
A Sámi Mathematics Teacher’s Experiences 169
Anne Birgitte Fyhn, Ylva Jannok Nutti, Ellen J Sara Eira,
Tove Børresen, Svein Ole Sandvik and Ole Einar Hætta
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
11. Mônahaskwêwin Pahki-Nahâpaminâkonan (Harvesting Is a Part
of Our Identity): Harvesting as a Traditional Land Use and
Technology Paradigm 187
Eli Suzukovich III, Fawn Pochel, David Bender and Janie Pochel
Book Contributors 209
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FROM THE EDITORS
The editors would like to thank each contributing author and their families and
communities for the meaningful work they have shared with us. From the United
States to Aotearoa to Kenya, we find the work of these scholars inspirational.
The editors would also like to thank our institutions—Arizona State University
and University of Montana, Missoula, for their support of our research and academic
work.
Elizabeth Sumida Huaman would like to thank the following individuals for
their support and encouragement of her research and work: Bryan Brayboy, Beth
Blue Swadener, and Mary Margaret Fonow. She also acknowledges colleagues who
provided advisement and support during this project—including Wendy Cheng and
Karen Leong with photography advisement and assistance with the book title. She
also offers her most heartfelt thanks to her family members: Hortensia Huaman
Carhuamaca de Sumida and Masahiro Sumida for their love and support; Tia Ines
Callalli Villafuerte, Tia Michicha, for her guidance, strength, and teaching; Steve
Smith (White Earth Nation) for his comments and suggestions that continue to shape
Indigenous innovation, Indigenous STEM priorities, and a deeper understanding of
traditional ecological knowledge; her communities of Huamanmarca and Chongos
Bajo; and her family who are the descendants of Natsu Sumida, Chiyo and Kunimitsu
Sumida, Paulina Limaymanta Alvarado, and Antonieta Jesus Carhuamaca Alvarado
de Huaman and Antonio Huaman Rojas.
Both Elizabeth Sumida Huaman and Bharath Sriraman also thank the editorial
team and the staff at Sense Publishers for their support of this work.
vii
ELIZABETH SUMIDA HUAMAN
1. INDIGENOUS-MINDED INNOVATION
IN SHIFTING ECOLOGIES
LOCAL INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS
Rooted in diverse cultures and in distinct regions of the world, Indigenous people
have for generations created, maintained, and negotiated clear and explicit
relationships with their environments. Despite numerous historical disruptions and
steady iterations of imperialism that continue through today, Indigenous communities
embody communities of struggle/resistance and intense vitality/creativity. In this
work, a fellowship of Indigenous research has emerged, and our collective intent
is to share critical narratives that link together Indigenous worldviews, culturally-
based notions of ecology, and educational practices in places and times where
human relationships with the world that are restorative, transformative, and just are
being sought. We are not alone in this work. Rather, we take inspiration from local
community and family members, as well as those whose research and ideas have
been disseminated across the globe.
In the 1990s, Yupiaq educational scholar Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley composed
a dissertation using participant observation research to examine the relationship
between Indigenous knowledge and western knowledge with Yupiaq community
members in Alaska. This work offered not only Yupiaq and Alaska Native
communities, but also Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations worldwide,
demonstration that local Indigenous knowledge rooted in the environment—
epistemologies, languages, cultural practices, and beliefs—could be linked with
western modern science (WMS) in order to promote Indigenous self-determination
and self-reliance. This work would later become A Yupiaq Worldview (1999, 2006),
celebrated as a seminal piece of research and writing on nature-mediated education,
which Kawagley argued could be accomplished in teaching through the culture. In
2005, Kawagley and Ray Barnhardt further theorized the vastness of Indigenous
ways of knowing, environments, languages, and cultural practices as Indigenous
Knowledge Systems (IKS). They wrote,
Indigenous peoples throughout the world have sustained their unique
worldviews and associated knowledge systems for millennia, even while
undergoing major social upheavals as a result of transformative forces beyond
their control. Many of the core values, beliefs, and practices associated with
those worldviews have survived and are beginning to be recognized as being
E. S. Huaman & B. Sriraman (Eds.), Indigenous Innovation, 1–9.
© 2015 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
