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