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Mémoire

Places of Knowing, Places of Learning: Indigenous Place-based Education in Canada.

This thesis reviews the literature on indigenous place-based environmental education in Canada. The concept of place is considered a starting point to localize, decolonize and integrate indigenous and non-indigenous knowledges (the culturally-situated subjective and intersubjective ways of knowing and meaning-making) in mainstream environmental education. Following a discussion of how a critical pedagogy of place can be situated in indigenous contexts, this thesis explores how indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and their knowledges can contribute to a place-based environmental education. While mainstream environmental education is conventionally considered the domain of Western sciences, knowledges of all cultural groups are needed to address the environmental challenges of the 21st century and enrich sustainability education. The inclusion of indigenous and other knowledges in mainstream curricula can foster intercultural understanding between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. This can help to heal the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in Canada after centuries of colonialism, assimilation, and discrimination against indigenous peoples. Transdisciplinarity and social learning theory can provide epistemological and methodological frameworks for the integration of indigenous and other knowledges in mainstream environmental education for an inclusive, place-based education.