Happy to announce this 2nd Annual Barrio Fest taking place in Fort Stockton, Texas, Sept. 14-17, 2023. It's really neat to see that the history of LULAC in Fort Stockton will be a focus of conversation as part of this. I have family in Ft. Stockton that's located in "deep" West Texas, if you will.
-Angela Valenzuela
Frankly, I always felt that language in the traditional bilingual language classroom was too stiff, creating distinct lanes for English and Spanish despite a real complexity of language often referred to as "Tex-Mex" that teachers looked down on when I was growing up. I imagine that many people still do.
Not so in the world of bilingual education, with CUNY Graduate Center Professor Dr. Ofelia Garcia and her students like Dr. Nelson Flores and others.
When I think of the concept of translanguaging, the word, "freedom," pops immediately into my head. This piece by Ileana Najarro in Edweek affirms that view.
-Angela Valenzuela
What Is Translanguaging and How Is It Used in the Classroom?
Getty
By Ileana Najarro — July 13, 2023 | Edweek
For years, research into the best instructional approaches for students identified as English learners has pointed to the concept of translanguaging.
Identified by bilingual education researcher Ofelia García, it’s both a skill set and a total shift in the way language is thought of, used, and taught in K-12 classrooms where multiple languages are honored and addressed, even as English remains the dominant language of instruction, said Marybelle Marrero-Colon, the associate director of professional development for the Center for Applied Linguistics.
Researchers are looking into how it can be applied to formal assessments, such as state standardized tests on which English learners might struggle to demonstrate their academic proficiency because they are tested in an unfamiliar language.
Here’s a look at what translanguaging means in the context of classroom instruction and how all educators, including monolingual English-speaking teachers, can cultivate spaces for translanguaging to occur.
What is the definition of translanguaging?
Translanguaging is the ability to move fluidly between languages and a pedagogical approach to teaching in which teachers support this ability.
In translanguaging, students are able to think in multiple languages simultaneously and use their home language as a vehicle to learn academic English.
A student could be reading an article about the solar system in English, but in their brain, they are also thinking and making connections in Spanish. They might annotate in Spanish or first write down reading comprehension responses in Spanish and then figure out how to provide the responses in English, said Marrero-Colon.
It’s all about encouraging students to access their full linguistic repertoires, said Emily Phillips Galloway, an assistant professor at the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University.
Translanguaging is also multimodal. More research is underway, for instance, on hearing impaired translanguaging by students who are part of families with American sign language, Spanish sign language, and signs families create for themselves, said Maria Cieslak, the professional development content manager at the Center for Applied Linguistics.
How is translanguaging used in the classroom?
Teachers can engage in a variety of activities that deliberately encourage translanguaging, ranging from providing vocabulary in multiple languages to collaborative translation opportunities. The goal is to get students translanguaging as a practice that can be leveraged toward supporting literacy outcomes and engagement, as well as other academic endeavors.
For example, two students could be assigned to solve a word problem, and one might be stuck on a word in English. The two students can then use an equivalent word in their home language to make sense of what the word problem is asking of them, Phillips Galloway said.
Or in group activities, students can be prompted to share with the rest of the class how something taught in English would make sense in Spanish by highlighting similar and different grammatical structures between the two languages, Marrero-Colon said.
“When you translate, you don’t have to do it word for word. You’re really trying to capture the feeling of that text,” Marrero-Colon said.
Once teachers start doing these activities, research has found that students who have not spoken before start speaking and students who were not as engaged in text-comprehension activities suddenly are, she added. That’s occurring because they are being encouraged to use their home language in class to think about language use overall.
How is translanguaging different from translation?
Translanguaging extends beyond translation to something where students gain an understanding of how language functions and works.
Although translation activities are a way to engage in translanguaging, it’s not word-for-word translation. It’s about a student using the words and thoughts they have in their home language to make sense of English and then be able to respond in English, said Kia Johnson, the director of PreK–12 language and literacy at the Center for Applied Linguistics.
Translanguaging requires students to think about language components such as the placement of adjectives, what cognates are in various languages, and more in multiple languages at once, Phillips Galloway said.
Does translanguaging require bilingual teachers?
Teachers don’t have to speak the home languages of students to help them engage in translanguaging.
It does require teachers to be comfortable being a learner themselves as students teach them what they know about their own language. Some teachers may fear that students may engage in off-task behavior in languages the teachers don’t understand, but research has found that in such cases, teachers are still able to register what is going on and get students back on task, Phillips Galloway said.
She also said that teachers who work in states with laws requiring English-only instruction can and should still allow students to use other languages in the classroom to help them access academic content.
The key, Marrero-Colon said, is flexibility. For instance, a student may need to write an essay in English. They can instead start with building a PowerPoint primarily of images that convey a story or meaning. The teacher can then use the PowerPoint to help students come up with words and phrases, then move to sentences and paragraphs, and so on.
Does translanguaging just benefit English learners?
All students can benefit from a classroom welcoming of translanguaging because few use academic English at home, regardless of their home language.
For instance, Black students may be fluent in African American Vernacular English and can use translanguaging activities to engage in academic classroom English, Johnson said.
An example of English-only translanguaging is asking students to turn William Shakespeare’s sonnets into modern pop songs, because it is a use of language in different registers, or levels of formality, Phillips Galloway said.
Students are also more interested in acquiring more languages after hearing their peers use their home languages, which helps them succeed in an increasingly global society, she added.
Would translanguaging hinder a student’s ability to acquire English?
The more opportunities students have to use language, whether that’s English or not, breeds more language use, which is then associated with language learning.
“I think the mistake that we often make is that we don’t help students to make the connections between the linguistic resources that they bring in languages other than English,” Phillips Galloway said. “And in the course of doing that, we take a whole set of resources that could be used for comprehending texts as they read in English, or learn to write text in English, we take those resources off the table.”
More research has found that allowing students to participate in translanguaging helps English learners eventually outperform their monolingual peers because they become more flexible in thinking about and using language in academic contexts, Marrero-Colon said.
How can schools overall better encourage translanguaging?
Improved curriculum, professional development, and mindsets around the value of home languages can all help schools to encourage translanguaging and support students in the process.
Phillips Galloway is working with colleagues on a curriculum that better guides teachers in translanguaging activities since not all curricular materials recognize the concept.
Researchers at the Center for Applied Linguistics, including Cieslak, also work on professional development and policy discussions that help educators and policymakers alike understand how English learners bring with them linguistic assets that should be nurtured for overall academic success.
“It’s about understanding cultural identity, and my language is part of my identity,” Cieslak said. “And I’m going to naturally translanguage, whether you tell me I can or cannot.”
Just learned a new word, "Astroturfing," from journalist Sharyl Attkisson who delivered this excellent Ted Talk at the University of Nevada. It refers to fake, grassroots forces whose job is to generate widespread support for a service, product, or agenda to advance certain narrative when confronted with inconvenient facts.
Their language is often charged and they "controversialize" those that oppose their views. Attkisson exposes and calls out the people in journalism whose "news" are actually "artificial, paid-for reality." This is a must-listen to gem of a presentation. Also, check out her book, Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism. We are living in dangerous times.
There are so few of these kinds of surveys that I thought I would post. It's great to learn about the Alliance for a Better Community (ABC) nonprofit that is advocating for youth in Los Angeles schools. What's interesting in the results, as the title indicates, the really large differences in results depending on whether one was an English or Spanish speaker.
I really can't imagine much has changed since 2018-19 as the kinds of issues raised here are systemic in nature. I also can't help but wonder on whether they were worsened by the pandemic. 😬
-Angela Valenzuela
Laura Greanias | February 26, 2019
Parents whose children attend L.A. Unified schools in Board District 5, where voters will go to the polls next week to choose a new board member, hold widely varying views of their schools depending on the language they speak at home, according to a new survey.
Nearly half of all Spanish-speaking respondents said their child’s school was on the wrong track. They also were three times more likely to say they had difficulty getting help for their children.
English speakers were far more positive about their schools. Those respondents were 14 times more likely to say their school was headed in the right direction. Among English speakers, 86 percent said their schools were on the right track, and the same percentage said it was not difficult to get help for their children.
Overall, only 28 percent of all respondents said their child’s school is generally headed in the right direction; 35 percent said it was on the wrong track.
The survey was conducted by Alliance for a Better Community, a nonprofit organization that advocates for Latinos in Los Angeles. It asked parents and constituents in Board District 5 about their educational priorities and also held focus groups. The group released the results at a candidate forum earlier this month.
Here are six things to know about the survey’s results:
Parents’ top priorities for their children’s schools were teaching quality and safe and welcoming schools. Both received 86 percent of respondents listing them first.
Special education supports and facilities tied for second place. College access and readiness came in third.
The survey’s authors noted that the majority of respondents said all 16 issues listed in the survey were a high priority. Even the lowest-scoring of the issues — support for LGBTQ students — received 59 percent of respondents saying it was a high priority.
Spanish-speaking respondents put a higher priority on supports for English language learners, the budget deficit and equitable school funding.
Among all respondents, equitable school funding and the budget deficit came in ahead of parent engagement and student and staff attendance.
There was a marked difference between how English- and Spanish-speakers saw their schools.
When asked, “Would you say your child’s school is generally headed in the right direction, or do you feel it is on the wrong track?,” 86 percent of English speakers said it was headed in the right direction, compared with only 6 percent of Spanish speakers.
Almost half of Spanish-speakers — 49 percent — said their school was on the wrong track. Only 1 percent of English speakers thought so.
When asked if it is “difficult for you to obtain help for your child from your school and/or the district,” 43 percent of Spanish speakers said yes, compared with only 14 percent of English speakers. Among English speakers, 86 percent said it was not difficult to obtain help, compared with 57 percent of Spanish speakers.
One of the top three most important characteristics in a board member is that he or she speaks Spanish, the survey found.
A vast majority of respondents, 84 percent, said it is important to have a board member who is Spanish-speaker, but only 48 percent thought that person has to be Latino/a or have a Latino background. And 90 percent said their board member should have “a professional background in education.”
More than 90 percent of respondents supported each of five statements about bilingual education and support for English learners, such as saying schools should value the native language and culture of every child, and that every teacher should be trained to meet the needs of English learners.
Respondents also wanted graduates to be bilingual.
When asked, “How valuable do you think it is that students can graduate high school being able to speak more than one language?,” 73 percent said it was very valuable, while 17 percent said it was fairly valuable. No respondents answered that it was not valuable at all, and 2 percent said it was a little valuable; 8 percent were unsure.
A majority said teachers are not strongly supported in Board District 5.
When asked, “Do you feel that teachers are supported at your school,” less than 30 percent said they are strongly supported, and 23 percent said teachers are a little supported. About 29 percent said they are fairly supported. Less than 4 percent said teachers are not supported at all.
The groups of students who respondents said are the least adequately supported were special education students (22 percent), English language learners (17 percent) and those experiencing homelessness (14 percent).
However, English learners also had the highest percentage of “yes” answers to the question of which students groups are “adequately supported at your school” — 58 percent. The next-highest were low-income students, with 53 percent. Tied for third, with 49 percent answering yes, were special education students and gifted students. The student group with the fewest “yes” votes answers were for LGBTQ students — only 30 percent of respondents said these students are adequately supported.
About the survey:
Alliance for a Better Community collected 452 surveys from more than 30 schools and conducted focus groups with 75 parents and students between December and February. Of the respondents, 85 percent identified as Latino or Hispanic, and 56 percent said their home language was Spanish. Six percent of respondents said they were white, and 26 percent said English was their home language. Both languages were the home language for 16 percent of respondents. The rest — 2 percent — said their home language was Tagalog.
The “Board District 5 Report: Elevating the Voices of Board District 5 Constituents” is available in English and Spanish.
Friends:
This is an urgent matter. What is happening at this very moment along the Rio Grande river, separating Texas from Mexico is appalling.
I blogged on this more than a month ago on June 13 on the humanitarian disaster in the making in a piece titled, Sinking to the Bottom: As summer temperatures rise, so do the GOP’s dehumanizing policies and rhetoric, by Melissa Del Bosque. Thanks to Del Bosque for keeping us updated. Termed "necropolitics," the racist, anti-immigrant, Texas Republican party traffics in death and this is one of its more extreme manifestations.
This becomes the real-life manifestation of Texas Young Conservatives' disgusting "catch an illegal immigrant game" that has played out on some college campuses in prior years (Bernier & Dunbar, 2013). However, rather than a theater of the macabre, these actions are finding horrific expression in reality, amounting to state-sanctioned violence.
Geez, the setting up of razor-wire-wrapped-barrel traps and then denying men, women, and children water is tantamount to premeditated murder. Just as sickening, this "policy project" becomes a spectacle of violence and death to which anyone that lets this happen is a participant, wittingly or unwittingly. So glad that a state trooper has courageously spoken up.
How can we possibly claim to be a beacon to the world on human rights when this tragedy is playing out along the U.S.-Mexico border?
The Biden Administration needs to get involved immediately. I just called Congressman Lloyd Doggett's office on the matter, urging him to exert pressure on Congress and the president to take these traps down immediately. I've already reached out to the Mexican American Legislative Caucus in the Texas House and they, too, see this as an urgent matter and are doing what they can, as well, to investigate this matter and to get the Biden administration involved. We ALL need to be making calls right now!
Reach out to whoever represents you in the Texas State Legislature, as well as in Congress to bring a halt to this state-approved cruelty. If you do not know who represents you, simply go to this link (Who Represents Me) to find out. Not on our watch, my friends.
-Angela Valenzuela
#StopTheCruelty
#necropolitics
Reference
Bernier, N. & Dunbar, W. (2013, Nov. 19). A Brief History of Student Conservatives' 'Catch an Illegal Immigrant' Games (Update), Texas Standard 90.5 FMExclusive: Texas troopers told to push children into Rio Grande, deny water to migrants, records say
Benjamin Wermund July 17, 2023 | Apple News | Updated: July 17, 2023 7:29 p.m.
Eric Gay/Associated Press
Migrants cool themselves in the waters of the Rio Grande after crossing to the U.S. from Mexico near a site where the state is installing large buoys to be used as a border barrier along the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday, July 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
WASHINGTON — Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.”
The July 3 account, reviewed by Hearst Newspapers, discloses several previously unreported incidents the trooper witnessed in Eagle Pass, where the state of Texas has strung miles of razor wire and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.
According to the email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.
The email, which the trooper sent to a superior, suggests that Texas has set “traps” of razor wire-wrapped barrels in parts of the river with high water and low visibility. And it says the wire has increased the risk of drownings by forcing migrants into deeper stretches of the river.
The trooper called for a series of rigorous policy changes to improve safety for migrants, including removing the barrels and revoking the directive on withholding water.
“Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” the trooper wrote, later adding: “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”
Jerry Lara, San Antonio Epress-News | Migrants walk along concertina wire blocking their entrance to the U.S. in Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday, July 10, 2023.
Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considine did not comment on all the contents of the trooper’s email, but said there is no policy against giving water to migrants.
Considine also provided an email from DPS Director Steven McCraw on Saturday calling for an audit to determine if more can be done to minimize the risk to migrants. McCraw wrote troopers should warn migrants not to cross the wire, redirect them to ports of entry and to closely watch for anyone who needs medical attention.
In another email, McCraw acknowledged that there has been an increase in injuries from the wire, including seven incidents reported by Border Patrol where migrants needed “elevated medical attention” from July 4 to July 13. Those were in addition to the incidents detailed by the trooper.
“The purpose of the wire is to deter smuggling between the ports of entry and not to injure migrants,” McCraw wrote. “The smugglers care not if the migrants are injured, but we do, and we must take all necessary measures to mitigate the risk to them including injuries from trying to cross over the concertina wire, drownings and dehydration.”
Texas Department of Public Safety personnel are seen in a closed off area of a public park by the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday, July 10, 2023.
The incidents detailed in the email come as Abbott has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to physically bar migrants from entering the country through his Operation Lone Star initiative, escalating tensions between state and federal officials and drawing increased scrutiny from humanitarian groups who say the state is endangering asylum seekers. The most aggressive initiatives have been targeted at Eagle Pass.
The state has also now deployed a wall of floating buoys in the Rio Grande, which triggered complaints over the weekend from Mexico.
Federal Border Patrol officials have issued internal warnings that the razor wire is preventing their agents from reaching at-risk migrants and increasing the risk of drownings in the Rio Grande, Hearst Newspapers reported last week.
The DPS trooper expressed similar concerns, writing that the placement of the wire along the river “forces people to cross in other areas that are deeper and not as safe for people carrying kids and bags.”
The trooper’s email sheds new light on a series of previously reported drownings in the river during a one-week stretch earlier this month, including a mother and at least one of her two children, who federal Border Patrol agents spotted struggling to cross the Rio Grande on July 1.
According to the email, a DPS boat found the mother and one of the children, who went under the water for a minute. They were pulled from the river and given medical care before being transferred to EMS, but were later declared deceased at the hospital. The second child was never found, the email said.
The governor has said he is taking necessary steps to secure the border and accused federal officials of refusing to do so.
“Texas is deploying every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings between ports of entry as President Biden’s dangerous open border policies entice migrants from over 150 countries to risk their lives entering the country illegally," said Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary. "President Biden has unleashed a chaos on the border that’s unsustainable, and we have a constitutional duty to respond to this unprecedented crisis.”
The DPS trooper’s email details four incidents in just one day in which migrants were caught in the wire or injured trying to get around it.
On June 30, troopers found a group of people along the wire, including a 4-year-old girl who tried to cross the wire and was pressed back by Texas Guard soldiers “due to the orders given to them,” the email says. The DPS trooper wrote that the temperature was “well over 100 degrees” and the girl passed out from exhaustion.
“We provided treatment to the unresponsive patient and transferred care to EMS,” the trooper wrote. A spokesperson for the Texas National Guard did not respond to a request for comment.
In another instance, troopers found a 19-year-old woman “in obvious pain” stuck in the wire. She was cut free and given a medical assessment, which determined she was pregnant and having a miscarriage. She was then transferred to EMS.
The trooper also treated a man with a “significant laceration” in his left leg, who said he had cut it while trying to free his child who was “stuck on a trap in the water,” describing a barrel with razor wire “all over it.” And the trooper treated a 15-year-old boy who broke his right leg walking in the river because the razor wire was “laid out in a manner that it forced him into the river where it is unsafe to travel.”
In another instance, on June 25, troopers came across a group of 120 people camped out along a fence set up along the river. The group included several small children and babies who were nursing, the trooper wrote. The entire group was exhausted, hungry and tired, the trooper wrote. The shift officer in command ordered the troopers to “push the people back into the water to go to Mexico,” the email says.
The trooper wrote that the troopers decided it was not the right thing to do “with the very real potential of exhausted people drowning.” They called command again and expressed their concerns and were given the order to “tell them to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and leave,” the trooper wrote. After they left, other troopers worked with Border Patrol to provide care to the migrants, the email said.
Eric Gay/Associated Press
Migrants trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico approach the site where workers are assembling large buoys to be used as a border barrier along the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, Tuesday, July 11, 2023.
The trooper did not respond to a request for comment Monday. His email was shared by a confidential source with knowledge of border operations. It was unclear whether the trooper received a response from the sergeant he’d messaged.
Considine acknowledged that DPS was aware of the email and provided the additional agency emails in response. Those emails detail seven other incidents reported by federal border agents in which migrants were injured on the wires, including a child who was taken to the hospital on Thursday with cuts on his left arm, a mother and child who were taken to the hospital on Wednesday with “minor lacerations” on their “lower extremities,” and another migrant taken to San Antonio on July 4 to receive treatment for “several lacerations” that required staples.
Victor Escalon, a DPS director who oversees South Texas, wrote in an email Friday to other agency officials that troopers “may need to open the wire to aid individuals in medical distress, maintain the peace, and/or to make an arrest for criminal trespass, criminal mischief, acts of violence, or other State crimes.
“Our DPS medical unit is assigned to this operation to address medical concerns for everyone involved,” Escalon wrote. “As we enforce State law, we may need to aid those in medical distress and provide water as necessary.”
As we're all sweltering in this unprecedented, oppressive heat, let's give due consideration to Indigenous knowledge and wisdom while respecting and supporting Indigenous rights and sovereignty. So much of what we are experiencing is an artifact of an extractive world view that views Earth as having limitless resources without consequence. In total agreement with Professor Four Arrows.
"We merely need to bring complementary worldview reflection into our homes and schools, and ultimately our governments and the broader society, using the significant literature available that compares and contrasts dominant and Indigenous worldviews."
Let's also take to heart Four Arrows' words that "It is no mere coincidence that the 5 percent of the global population that are Indigenous are responsible for 80 percent of Earth’s biodiversity."
What I appreciate in his words is that addressing climate change is not reducible to a "policy fix." I couldn't agree more. Rather its about raising consciousness through instruction, literature, and modeling how we are to be in right relation to Mother Earth. And here is where a good and honorable education comes into the picture that the oil cartel doesn't want you to have. So much is at stake for them that they don't even want you to believe in the very global warming that's responsible for so much death and suffering that we're all witnessing before our very eyes.
-Angela Valenzuela
Earlier this month, the United Nations released a report warning of the imminent extinction of as many as 1 million species, the result of climate change, pollution, exploitation of land and sea, and other human-created assaults on the environment. The report has tragic significance, but offers hope if “transformative change” occurs immediately. The problem is that the source of that transformative change has been largely ignored by most media; one must read the report’s summary—all that has been released so far—to realize that such transformative change is largely about indigenizing our systems and institutions. It is about a worldview that connects us to nature.
It is no mere coincidence that the 5 percent of the global population that are Indigenous are responsible for 80 percent of Earth’s biodiversity. The summary of the report says as much. Throughout it are references to the importance of Indigenous “paradigms, goals and values” along with examples of the “wide diversity of practices” that help nurture biodiversity. There is no denying, the authors write, that the destructive extinction trends, so visible across the planet, “have been less severe or avoided in areas held or managed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities…. Nature managed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities is under increasing pressure but is generally declining less rapidly than in other lands.”
Beyond these explicit nods, the report also telegraphs a more subtle, implicit message on the need to adopt indigenous models and approaches. In one section, it describes different views about our relationship to nature, such as “the material versus the spiritual domain” and “living well in balance and harmony with Mother Earth.” Under “Key Messages,” the authors write: “Nature embodies different concepts for different people, including biodiversity, ecosystems, Mother Earth and other analogous concepts.” Although they are careful not to alienate the public, such unprecedented language suggests that they are referring to the two core belief systems operating in our world today. One is essentially human-centered, hierarchal, patriarchal, and materialistic. The other animistic, non- hierarchal, matriarchal, spiritual/aesthetic. Considering that a “worldview” is the foundational lens through which we understand the world and is much more than a religion, culture, belief, or ideology, we can assume the report is talking about the dominant worldview and the contrasting Indigenous one.
The degree to which the authors apparently have utilized Traditional Indigenous Knowledge is unprecedented—a point the authors themselves acknowledge in the summary.
Past scholarship has mostly dismissed Indigenous ways of understanding the world. Consider The Invented Indian, published as recently as 1990, by James Clifton, who writes that “acknowledging anything positive in the native past is an entirely wrongheaded proposition because no genuine Indian accomplishments have ever really be substantiated.” Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony, published in 1992 by UCLA anthropologist, Robert Edgerton, claims child abuse and other social maladies were far more pervasive in primitive societies, proving the superiority of Western culture. And as recently as 2000, in The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, Shepard Krech was asserting such falsities as the demise of the buffalo was the fault of the Indians themselves.
The UN extinction study clearly challenges such dismissals of the worldview that guided us for 99 percent of human history before we began our conquest of nature. The authors “recognize the positive contributions of Indigenous peoples to sustainability” such as their unique “knowledge, innovations and practices, institutions and values of Indigenous peoples…that often enhances their quality of life, as well as nature conservation, restoration and sustainable use, which is relevant to broader society.” They add that “regional and global scenarios currently lack and would benefit from an explicit consideration of the views, perspectives and rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
Although every effort to support Indigenous sovereignty should be part of the equation for restoring life systems, there is not sufficient time for whatever positive potential exists for such political transfer of power. So, while we fight for sovereignty in the future, we can immediately begin reembracing the Indigenous worldview, as the report suggests.
More and more scholarship is calling for this to happen. Consider the recent publication, Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom (2019) whose noted contributors describe our original nature-based relational worldview and how it relates to anthropology, psychology, sociology, leadership, science, history and art. Such an effort to Indigenous mainstream education coincides with decolonizing and counter-hegemonic movements in higher education.
As uncomfortable as it may be to reconsider the value of our Western or Eurocentric based assumptions about human-nature relationships, the extinction report is clear about the need to do so. It calls for a very different way of understanding how to live in harmony with nature. Audrey Azoulay, director general of UNESCO, says as much in a statement about the report:
This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity. Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.
The different way to live on earth is not about more reliance on science or technology so much as it is about understanding our place in the world. Whatever diverse religions, cultures or beliefs we may have, and such diversity is vital, the underlying worldview that sees our interconnectedness with Nature, as many Indigenous Peoples still do, is essential. While respecting Indigenous rights and supporting sovereignty, we can all begin to relearn to incorporate such a worldview into our otherwise diverse perspectives. We merely need to bring complementary worldview reflection into our homes and schools, and ultimately our governments and the broader society, using the significant literature available that compares and contrasts dominant and Indigenous worldviews.
I close with a brief success story that further proves the wisdom of the UN report as relates to transformations that align with Indigenous knowledges and worldview. In April of this year Misak educator Gerardo Tununbalá, co-founder of Misak University in Colombia, presented before a group of Navajo students striving to obtain doctoral degrees from Fielding Graduate University. The students want to use the degree to walk in both worlds in ways that can help maintain and nurture their at-risk traditional lifeways and language. Having all but lost their traditional knowledge and language, the 11,000 members of the Misak nation began decolonizing their education systems in the early 1980s. Today most of them now speak their mother tongue and practice their traditional ways of being. Not only are the people happier and healthier, but their local husbandry and ecosystems have been significantly enhanced as a result.
We may not be able to learn the original place-based languages of those on whose land we dwell. Nor will we easily learn their ancient knowledge of the landscapes. We can, however, while doing our best to stop continuing genocide and culturecide of Indigenous peoples and support their goals for sovereignty, reclaim our shared worldview that guided us for most of human history. We can learn to live with just enough modern technical and structural conveniences while creating systems of egalitarianism and sustainable living based on both Western and Indigenous science. With new intentionality, spiritual awareness, trance-based learning, community support and courageous truth-seeking, we might be able to do this before it is too late. Inspired by the vital message hidden in the sobering UN report that the way to live on this planet “differently” involves a new partnership with our original Indigenous worldview and those that still fully understand it, we can have hope for future generations. Of course, concern for future generations may depend on which worldview precepts we choose as well.
