Cash Ahenakew

Epistemological Pluralism: Ethical and Pedagogical Challenges in Higher Education

This paper offers a brief analysis of aspects related to the significance and the complexities of introducing “different” epistemologies in higher education teaching and learning. We start by introducing the metaphors of abyssal thinking, epistemic blindness and ecologies of knowledge in the work of Boaventura de Souza Santos. In the second part of the paper we use Santos’ metaphors to engage with the tensions of translating aboriginal epistemologies into non-aboriginal languages, categories and technologies. In the third part, we offer a situated illustration of an attempt to introduce epistemological pluralism in addressing central concepts in teaching in higher education. In our conclusion we emphasize that political, ontological and metaphysical questions need to be considered very carefully in the process of introducing different epistemologies into higher education.

Between the nation and the globe: education for global mindedness in Finland

This article explores some of the tensions at the interface of nationalist and global orientations in ideals of global mindedness and global citizenship looking specifically at the Finnish context. We engage with discussions related to the social–political and historical context of national identity in Finland and outline the conceptual framework of an educational initiative related to the development of global mindedness through experiences of international mobility and partnerships. This conceptual outline presents a set of theoretical distinctions through which we seek to challenge humanist and universalist approaches to the question of (the formation of) global mindedness by arguing that the issue is neither about cognition or understanding nor about empathy and relationships but ultimately has to do with modes of existence and exposure. Similar to discussions in other small states, the historical trajectory in Finland illustrates how the encounter between the nation and the globe poses particular challenges for education as it runs the risk of reverting to ethnocentric rather than globally minded forms of national identity building. We argue that this risk cannot be addressed with the promotion of a mere understanding of or mere empathy for the other as an educational or political antidote but rather requires an existential approach.

Beyond epistemic provincialism: De-provincializing Indigenous resistance

This article is part of a transnational collaboration between Indigenous scholars concerned about the provincialization of Indigenous struggles within modern metaphysics. This can be seen at work in notions of land as property, tribe as (modern) nation, and sovereignty as anthropocentric agency grounded on rational choice. Drawing on critiques of modernity articulated by Latin American scholars, as well as Indigenous scholars exploring the limits of current forms of political resistance, we argue that this modern metaphysics generates a form of politics that neglects an important existential dimension of Indigenous heritages. We use Indigenous education as an example to affirm that epistemic provincialization has been both necessary and problematic in the current context. We argue that the limitations of strategies for recognition, representation and redistribution need to be complemented by existential insights that can revitalize possibilities of existence based on ancestral wisdom and on the urgency of considering our shared fate in a finite planet facing unprecedented challenges.

Mapping and Complicating Conversations about Indigenous Education.

ABSTRACT In this article I offer a series of critical reflections about existing efforts and achievements in Indigenous Education, with particular emphasis on the risks, tensions, and paradoxes that arise where different knowledge systems meet, and when Indigenous peoples ourselves hold contradictory educational desires. I focus on the idea of the land as first teacher and on the difficulties of enabling institutional educational processes that conceptualize it as a living entity, rather than an object, a resource a property. I seek to complicate our conversations to take account of the ways that colonial interests, competing investments, and structures of schooling shape the education that Indigenous youth today receive, and how this circumscribes the kinds of education it is possible for us to imagine. I conclude by offering a cartography that enables us to map how Indigenous youth encounter different ideologies of education and schooling, I also offer some thoughts about pedagogical possibilities that emerged from a course in which students were invited by Elders to witness a Sun Dance ceremony in Turtle Island.

Cognition, affect and relationality: experiences of student teachers in a course on multiculturalism in primary teacher education in Aotearoa/New Zealand

This article presents an analysis of journal entries of student teachers in a course on multicultural and language studies in primary education in Aotearoa/New Zealand, which was informed by a discursive strand of postcolonial theory, in particular Gayatri C. Spivak’s ideas of education ‘to-come’ as an ‘un-coercive rearrangement of desires’ towards an ethical imperative towards the Other, ‘before will’. We start this article with a contextualization of the course and an outline the theoretical background that informed the course aims and strategies. Next, we selectively use affect theory to analyse the learning journals of eight students in the course. Our conclusion raises questions related to the relationship between structures of cognition, affect and relationality and highlights the role of crisis in learning processes that intend to equip learners to reconfigure their imaginaries and their capacity to relate to difference.