Anthropocentrism is a symptom of the dominant worldview and human exceptionalism. Education is now tasked with addressing conflicting and contradictory aims and needs. Intellectual and skill development within the dominant educational paradigm is insufficient to address the polycrisis. Indigenous worldviews and knowledges, when engaged with meaningfully, can guide the development of ethical-relational capacities of learners to act more humanely, think holistically and systemically and to collaborate. However, education must facilitate a shift out of the dominant worldview in which reductive materialism is characteristic. An introduction to Indigenous worldviews and philosophies will help guide new thinking and new approaches. Two-eyed seeing within the dominant ontology only serves to perpetuate left-brain hegemonic approaches to knowledge and education. By shifting to an Indigenous worldview, right-brain Indigenous eye development and strengthening can occur. Greater ethical and relational action can unfold through the cultivation of the Indigenous eye and the relational capacities of learners to take more humane and less harmful action, and reconnection to that which is sacred is essential. Education has a significant opportunity to become a praxis for cultivating a more humane, less human-centric civilization. A first step towards change and transformation can begin with endeavoring to shift worldviews by engaging in more ethical and relational ways of knowing, being, and doing, while and by facilitating a reconnection with that which is sacred.

Authors:
Denise Findlay, Simon Fraser University, Canada

About the Presenter(s)
Denise Findlay is a sought after community scholar and practitioner consultant.Her interests revolve around decolonizing and Indigenizing education,health and mental health.She is currently advising re:the creation of SFUs medical school.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/denise-findlay-21442923

See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule

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