Epistemological Elitism the Power of Perspective

i hated my history class in high school

which is ironic because i stand here

today as a head of a high school

humanities department

i have this distinct memory of flipping

through my ap us history textbook

looking for the section on the vietnam

war a war that my uncle was drafted to

and that my parents had told me stories

about from almost as young as i can

remember

growing up in california i was reminded

of the legacy of the war

every time i walked by someone holding a

homeless veteran cardboard sign

when i got a bit older i watched films

like full metal jacket

apocalypse now and listen to songs like

blown in the wind

fortunate sun and masters of war it was

clear to me that this was a significant

historical event

so naturally i was both curious and

excited to learn more

to my disappointment we spent all of one

class period talking about the war

and the textbook had less than two

columns now i know things have changed

in education since the 90s

and i truly strive to be an educator

who’s a part of that change

i feel i owe it to my amazing

undergraduate professors who completely

changed my perspective

on what a history class could be and

made me absolutely fall in love with the

social sciences

in spite of my rocky start with the

humanities studying ethnic studies is

one of the best decisions that i’ve ever

made

it made me it forced me to reconsider my

perspective on almost everything

and read and listen to experiences of

people who had very different life

experiences than my own

it also really helped me learn how to

think critically

i ended up focusing on indigenous and

black studies and over the course of

four years i started to fill in some of

those gaping holes in my history

textbook from high school

in a lot of ways i had to hit the ctrl z

button on my understanding

of history and open my mind to

perspectives that were far more nuanced

and complex

than what i had previously thought so

today i teach a class called

theory of knowledge it is essentially

about what we know

and how we know it it has its roots in

epistemology

but over the years the curriculum has

widened to incorporate wider

perspectives on what knowledge and

knowers can look like in an effort to

combat what i like to refer to as

epistemological elitism or the idea that

one perspective

area of knowledge or discipline is more

important than another

for example i believe in in science

because

hashtag facts now don’t worry i believe

in science

but i’m also aware that there’s a range

in certainty and scientific knowledge

from anything from a scientific law

to theoretical physics and any scientist

would tell you that there’s still

a lot of unanswered questions and a lot

to prove in the discipline

okay so back to my class one of the more

recently added perspectives although far

from new

is that of indigenous knowledge so you

can imagine my initial excitement when i

realized that i could share some of my

some of my knowledge that i had acquired

in undergrad with my students

teaching indigenous knowledge is my

all-time favorite unit to teach

but it’s also one of the most

challenging so what makes it so

challenging

i have a fair amount of background

knowledge on the topic i have a master’s

in education

i’m really interested in the topic what

am i complaining about this should

literally be

a teacher’s dream let me see if i can

try to explain

actually before i even start on how huge

the scope is

i must present my biggest challenge of

all you may have already noticed this

but i am not native to north america i

am a descendant of settlers

i try my absolute best to incorporate

perspectives and resources created by

indigenous people

in my class and share them with my

students but at the end of the day an

indigenous person would do a much better

job than i ever could at teaching this

unit

that said because i do teach this course

i feel that it’s my responsibility to do

it as accurately as i possibly can

okay so back to scope the scope of

indigenous knowledge is

huge take where i’m standing today for

example

in contemporary mexico there are over 6

million indigenous language speakers

61 officially recognized languages 350

dialects and 21.5 percent of the

population identifies as indigenous

there are indigenous people with rich

cultural cultures and traditions

languages and histories on every corner

of the globe

it would literally be impossible to

incorporate all of those perspectives in

a unit that lasts approximately six

weeks

so i try to focus on some of the big

conceptual differences

in world view perspective

and overall philosophies also in the way

that knowledge is transferred

so a current a current educational

setting tends to focus on some

assumptions like the fact that humans

have

insatiable wants and needs are

intrinsically competitive

and individualistic whereas an

indigenous worldview tends to focus more

on the cooperative the collective and

the relational

one of the most striking differences is

the relationship between man in the

natural world the current hegemonic

worldview that we teach in high school

is very anthropocentric with man on top

and it’s very hierarchical

so we tend to place man on top of nature

and plants and resources and we feel

that we have the right to extract

resources

whereas an indigenous worldview is much

more interdependent with natural

plants animals food systems and promotes

promotes biodiversity and also has a

more circular

perspective on time and economy

one of my biggest challenges when

teaching the historical development of

indigenous knowledge

is that when i start this unit my

students have little to no prior

knowledge

aside from knowing that the aztecs

sacrifice people or that the mayas had

an early concept of the zero

they know next to nothing or can only

reference stories of indigenous

people as people of the past this is

further complicated

by the one-dimensional and stereotypical

portrayals in hollywood and literature

i sometimes start the class with a

challenge to find one piece of

literature or film

directed or written by a non-native

person that accurately portrays their

history or culture

and i have yet to receive a submission

this is one of those gaps in the history

to textbooks that urgently urgently

needs filling in

i often get frustrated with the

resources when i’m trying to teach this

particular part of the unit

i spent four and a half years studying

the conquest colonization and genocide

that occurred in the americas alone

in this particular example we can see

the colonization of all indigenous

peoples of the world reduced to four

paragraphs

maybe things haven’t changed as much as

i had hoped

from outright physical genocide

to force removals to boarding schools to

the near extermination of the buffalo

to programs of assimilation relocation

and termination

there is literally too much to cover

every indigenous group on the planet has

their own story

of force removal genocide or

assimilation i tried to make a list of

all of the events that were relevant to

united states history alone

and i ran out of room on my whiteboard

the big takeaway at the end of this unit

is the very fact that indigenous people

and their knowledge

remains here today is a testament to

their strength survival resilience

and deep understanding of their natural

environments

teaching a native american perspective

on north american history provides a

more contextualized and meaningful

discussion around current ethical

situations

i purposely teach the unit in this order

so that students can understand some of

the nuances and complexities

around debates around cultural

appropriation

it is always unethical to take things

without asking but in the historical

context of what has already been taken

the impetus on

non-native people becomes more clear

from land

to recipes to designs

to customs it becomes fairly evident

that we have taken

enough and we should seek out more

respectable and

consensual exchanges moving forward

aside from the obvious ethical concerns

of denying people’s historical

perspective and taking things constantly

without asking

we non-native people are also majorly

missing out

indigenous knowledge is and always has

been vital

today more than ever it’s apparent that

business as usual is not going to cut it

from the striking decline in

biodiversity to global pandemics to

broken food systems and economies

to raging wildfires and problems in

health care systems

we are missing out on a wealth of

perspective

due to centuries of bad policy towards

indigenous people

the outright dismissal of indigenous

knowledge and the epistemological

elitism of the way that we teach

i truly believe that we have overlooked

a perspective that could help us

solve most of our contemporary problems

we tend to think of experts as people

with a lot of degrees

and don’t get me wrong there are lots of

brilliant indigenous scholars

but the notion that you have to study in

a university to become an expert is

inherently flawed

i often think about the past and what

would have happened if if

ecologists and natural scientists had

collaborated more openly with indigenous

experts

how much more we would know today

or if we had given indigenous knowledge

its rightful place in academia

how much deeper understanding and wider

our perspectives would be on almost

everything

but unfortunately we can’t undo the past

and i always teach my students that

hypothetical

evidence makes for a very weak argument

so what can be done

this takes me to the final and my

absolute favorite part of this unit

where my students address the question

how can indigenous knowledge solve a

contemporary problem

they do some research from indigenous

experts and scholars and they do an

elevator pitch and create

infographics and look at new

perspectives or old perspectives

on things like breaking the gender

binary how we can break our dependence

on non-renewable energy

or how we could even rethink our

relationship with private land ownership

all the way to things like the vital

vital importance of protecting wild

salmon and how crucial they are to their

to the biodiversity of their natural

environments

at the end of this unit i truly hope

that my students have a deeper

understanding of history

reconsider the ethical and moral issues

around stereotypes broken treaties

cultural appropriation that they

understand the vital importance

of indigenous language preservation and

reacculturation efforts

and more than anything that they

understand what we as non-native people

are missing out on by not listening and

collaborating with indigenous experts

and knowers

i try to end this unit on a positive

note because the complexity of the

problems that we’re facing today can

seem very overwhelming

so ending this on the solutions and

positive oriented note

tends to be more optimistic i’ve often

heard in class at the end of this unit

it’s incredible that we’ve always had

the answers to these problems we just

weren’t listening

now i must obviously note that i would

never argue that the impetus is on

indigenous people to

solve all of our problems or fix climate

change it’s up to us to start getting

informed

and seek out collaborative seek out

consensual

and and collaborations with indigenous

people

my ted wish today is that we listen and

are more open to new perspectives

here are some of the solutions to the

problems that i presented

thank you