EENET asia Newsletters : Fourth issue June 2007 Contents

Indigenous Education and Knowledge Transmission

This is one of the main concerns voiced by Indigenous Practitioners during a recent Regional Conference on Indigenous Education in Maehongson, Thailand. It was also one of the main challenges voiced in the various working groups; Rotational Farming, Healing and Herbal Medicine, Indigenous Seeds, facilitated by the IKAP Network (Indigenous Knowledge And People).

More than 40 Indigenous Practitioners from the 6 network countries met for the first time and shared their own Indigenous Knowledge Transmission Systems with each other. They also discussed their experiences in revitalizing the traditional institutions and finding ways how to include Indigenous Knowledge (IK) into the modern school curriculum. Many of the partnerships with the national education systems go beyond being involved in mother-tongue based bilingual education initiatives. It also includes transmission of indigenous belief systems, history, livelihood skills, arts and crafts.

UNESCO-Bangkok shared its toolkit for ‘Inclusive Education’ and ‘Multilingual Education’ and Maehongson Provincial Education Office their ‘Alternative School for Disadvantaged Children’ project.

The participants agreed that the most common obstacles for the transmission of IK were often that their own communities (especially young people) give less and less value to IK and that attitudes, policies and laws from the national government and ethnic majority group were not supportive.

Indigenous Education is not necessarily restricted to ‘traditional’ knowledge, but should also be understood as Indigenous Ways of transmitting ‘new’ knowledge

An important component of the conference was to visit Indigenous Education activities in local Karen and Lua communities. The field trips gave the participants the opportunity to learn other aspects from the life of local indigenous people as well as to form new alliances..

Main voices from the participants were:

• Indigenous People do not know enough about the existing government policies, laws and programs
• Low interest in IK among children and young adults
• Limited time allocation and importance of IK in the school curriculum makes teachers decide to leave out this part of the curriculum
• Lack of teachers speaking indigenous languages
• Many organizations are supportive to promote IK in- and outside of the national education systems, however best practices are almost not known to interested Indigenous People

On the last day participant’s shared their needs and ideas on IK transmission systems:

• Document and share best practices in-between Indigenous People in the Region
• Handbook on Indigenous Education Revitalization for Indigenous People
• Carry out regional advocacy campaigns for Indigenous Education
• Provide funding opportunities and technical support to Indigenous People interested in launching their own initiatives
• More collaboration with the government to enforce the existing laws and policies
• Use modern IT for the promotion of IK in children and youth
• Recognize community rights to manage education
• Set up a data base and website for learning materials and information on resource persons with links to related websites
• All communities do have indigenous resource persons however they need technical support in new pedagogical methodologies
• Translate existing publications and manuals into indigenous languages
• Create opportunities like internship for learning and sharing

IKAP will organize a 5-day Regional Conference on ‘Inter-Generational Transmission of Indigenous Knowledge and Skills’. More information on this event and on IKAP can be found under www.ikap-mmsea.org or by contacting secretariat@ikap-mmsea.org.

For further information contact Mr. Marc Wetz [marcwetz@yahoo.com]. He is working in the Region on Quality Basic Education and Child Friendly Communities and is involved in IKAP.

EENET asia Newsletters : Fourth issue June 2007 Contents