Re-Building Sustainable Indigenous Communities

Gregory A. Cajete, Ph.D.Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico

Presentation to Northwest Indian College

April 29, 2010

Healthy CommunityComing Home , Cheryl Charles & Bob Samples

• Healthy Communities are cultural and natural systems where life and learning are nourished by the actions of members.

• This enables peaceful and sustainable futures.

• We begin with one core community but become members of many other kinds of communities through our life time.

Foundations of Indigenous Knowledge

• Traditional Knowledge: Handed down, based on stories and experiences of a people through time.

• Empirical Knowledge: Gained through careful observation and practice over time.

• Revealed Knowledge: Gained through vision, ritual and ceremony.

• Contemporary Knowledge: Gain through experience and problem solving.

Metaphors for Life

Biological metaphors are aliveMechanical metaphors are dead.

Metaphors influence how we think,and the ways in which we affect others.

Compelling Need

• People today are searching for meaning. We lack a sense of the communal good.

• We struggle without recognizing the need for communal virtue and ethical action.

• A health society can only come from healthy communities comprised of self determining individuals acting and taking responsibility for their actions for all.

COMMUNITY:• The essence of community, it very heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value ; things we do

and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place …It arises from a deep, intuitive, often subconscious understanding that self interest is inseparably connected with community interest.

Dee Hock , Birth of the Chaordic Age

Community Requires:

• A perception of belonging and supports a sense of identity.

• Place our identity in context.• Participation and commitment.• The support of individuals and in turn

supports individuals. • Synergy through which it attains

coherence.

First Salmon Ceremony

Re-Creating Indigenous Education

•Teaching and learning which is transformative and anticipates change and innovation.

•Indigenous Education can integrate and apply principles of sustainability along with appropriatetraditional environmental nowledge.

•Indigenous Education forms a foundation for communityrenewal and revitalization.

Taking a Look at Our Complicity

• As concerned people we have to take a long, hard and honest look at the current educational, economic, governmental and community development policies, planning and processes which many times make us complicit with the status quo.

Human Communities Reflect:

• A Sense of Purpose.• Agreement on Core Values.• Participation, Communication,

Commitment, Collaboration and Trust.• Conscious Choice, Shared Responsibility.• Acceptance, Accountability, Respect.• Reciprocity, Accountability, Efficacy.

Characteristics of Indigenous Sustainability Education

• Educate for the re-creation of cultural economies around an Indigenous paradigm.• Begin by learning the history and principles of (your) Indigenous Way of Sustainability a explore ways to “translate” into the present.• Research the practica ways to apply these Indigenous Principles/Knowledge Bases

A New Generation of Native Studies

• A new kind of Native education predicated on guiding Native students toward this vision of health, renewed and revitalized, sustainable and economically viable Indigenous communities.

• Ecological Integrity (Start from the premise that what you do has integrity and

honors life giving relationship).

• Sustainable Orientation (Build in a process which sustains community, culture and

place).

• Vision and Purpose (See what you can do in the light of revitalization of

community).

Culture, Community, Resources

• Cultural Integration (Actions originate through spiritual agency that stems from connections to a cultural way of being).

• Respect for All (Actions stem from respect for and celebration of community)

• Engaging Participation of Community (The community is both the medium and the beneficiary of activities)

Spiritual Purpose

Relationship • Building upon and extending relationships are an essential process of development.

• Restoring and extending the health of the community is a key goal. • The initiative should generate dynamic and creative

process.

Commitment

• Commitment to developing the necessary skills.

• Commitment to community renewal and re vitalization

• Commitment to mutual reciprocal action and transformative change.

Basic Shared Indigenous Principles• Place based (TEK), Complex Adaptive Systems

• Resourceful / Industrious.

• Collaboration and Cooperation. • Integrating difference in political organization.

• Alliances and Confederation Building.

• Trade and Exchange

Challenges to Indigenous Sustainability

• Establishing Political Self-determination.

• Decolonization and Culturally Responsive Education.

• Economic Exploitation, Diverse/Competing Ideologies, Political Restructuring.

• Individual Diversity, Identity Redefinition, Creating Formal/Informal Institutions.

Challenges Continued….• Cultural, Social, Political and Spiritual Fragmentation.

• Creation of Formal and Informal Institutions which advance Sustainability.

• Flowing with Heterogeneity, Complexity and Differentiation.

• Political Restructuring (when necessary).

Configurations for Sustainability

• The Extended Family, Clan and Tribe.

• The Community, Place or Region.

• Political, Social, Professional or Trade Organizations.

• Coop’s, Federations, Societies, etc.

• Even the Corporation ( can support sustainability if founded on principles of sustainability).