Indigenous Voices and Decolonising Lifelong Education

Indigenousness is about long-term occupancy of a place and the knowledge and consciousness that arises from place. In this edited volume, global Indigenous voices engage in truth-telling about 500+ years of colonisation, including loss of population, language, culture, spirituality, and land. Education has been central in facilitating colonialism. To decolonize lifelong education and learning is to redress the persistent inequities in education for Indigenous Peoples. It is to recover and revitalize cultural and place-based knowledge, practices, and identities. To this end, Indigenous voices from Uganda, India, Mongolia, Mexico, Japan, and numerous voices from the Blackfoot, Metis, and Cree in Canada speak to: the five steps of colonisation, self-decolonization, resurgence in Indigenous knowledge systems, the African Renaissance, cognitive justice, holistic learning, the process of intended extinction and resulting resilience, the vitality of intergenerational transmission, reconstituting tribal pedagogical frameworks, symbolic violence and the rebuilding of pride and identity, the importance of blood memory for restoring ancestral knowledge, the ancient tradition of hospitality, healing individualism, and elevating the rich plurality of self-determining grassroots communities and their regeneration of what it means to be human and an intact community.

This book is for scholars, researchers, policy makers, educators and students across multiple fields including Indigenous studies, decolonial studies, education, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Lifelong Education.

Apooyak’ii, Tiffany Hind Bull-Prete is a member of the Kainai (Blood Tribe) of the Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy), located in the Treaty 7 area, Canada. She is a Canadian Research Chair Tier II in Indigenous resiliency, as well as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. Dr. Hind Bull-Prete’s background is in educational policy studies, specialising in Indigenous Peoples education. Her programme of work is comprised of implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action on the Blood Reserve.

Elizabeth A. Lange is a Visiting Graduate Professor at Athabasca University, Canada and Honorary and Adjunct Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Futures of the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Of Germanic heritage, she was born on Treaty 6 on largely Plains Cree territory in Canada and has served three Canadian universities as an adult and lifelong education specialist. She now has the privilege of residing on Coast Salish and Nuu-Chah-Nulth Traditional territory on Vancouver Island. She can be found at https://elizabethlange.ca. Her latest book can be found at https://www.routledge.com/Transformative-Sustainability-Education-Reimagining-Our-Future/Lange/p/book/9780367747060.