All relations: Decolonizing Environmental Education for Greater Impacts on Societies

Knowledge from Indigenous peoples across the world has been marginalized with past colonization and removal of their rights for their own learning and education systems. In recent years, a resurgence of many Indigenous groups has started in the wake of a planetwide movement regarding the state of the global environment and the lack of responses and solutions from decision makers. To face the current environmental multiple crises, mainly climate change and biodiversity loss, organizations such as the IPCC, UNESCO and some governments have called on the importance of harnessing Indigenous knowledge systems in the service of global sustainability. But what does really mean? Regaining their education systems and, at the same time, trying to “re-educate” non-indigenous people about the Natural Law may be a challenge, but may also be our best way to solve our current environmental crisis. Three UNESCO chairs from Canada and Malaysia will give their perspective on how this must be approached in a respectful manner.