We want our children to survive: An interview with Sharon Nelson-Barber

Abstract

Sharon Nelson-Barber, a sociolinguist, directs Culture & Language in STEM Education within WestEd’s Science and Engineering content area. She is co-founder of POLARIS—Pacific/Polar Opportunities to Learn, Advance and Research Indigenous Systems—a research and development network that supports healthy communities by integrating Indigenous perspectives with new frontiers of knowledge that strengthen educational transformation. In this interview, we talk to Nelson-Barber about the Indigenous communities she works with and is a part of in the Pacific and Polar regions and the pressing climate change stories that illustrate the seriousness and urgency of adaptation. In the context of climate-induced displacement of Indigenous homelands, Nelson-Barber emphasizes the importance of engaging multiple knowledge systems when thinking and strategizing around climate change education. Thinking within the tension between standardization and localization, Nelson-Barber underscores how careful collaboration with Indigenous elders, Knowledge Keepers, and communities is vital for adaptation knowledge to be passed down within communities and for education systems to be responsive to local contexts.

Keywords:

• Indigenous knowledge
• culture-focused
• context adaptive
• land-based science education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The late, noted Kupuna and educator, Dr. Verlie Ann Kapule Malina-Wright, earned her doctorate from UCLA. She had over 42 years of teaching and administrative experience in the Hawaii public education system, University of Hawai’i, and Kamehameha Schools. Former President of the Pacific American Foundation, former Chair of the Native Hawaiian Education Council, and former President of the National Indian Education Association. Board participation: Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the World Indigenous Nations-Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) conducting worldwide accreditation of Indigenous educational institutions, Native Hawaiian Evaluation Group, Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) Hawaii, Hawaii Maoli, Indigenous Education Institute, the Prince Jonah Kuhio Hawaiian Civic Club, The Native Hawaiian Education Association, and many more. She established a statewide Hawaiian Culture Lecture series for traditional cultural practitioners and scholars to teach Hawaiian culture, tradition, language, music, dance, and philosophy to the general public.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sharon Nelson-Barber

Sharon Nelson-Barber, a sociolinguist, directs Culture & Language in STEM Education within WestEd’s Science and Engineering content area. Her research centers on understanding how the sociocultural contexts in which students live influence the ways in which they make sense of STEM schooling. She also studies how aspects of cultural knowledge can become visible within the formats of large-scale testing in order to ensure assessment is equitable for all students.

Nelson-Barber has published extensively and most recently as editor and contributor to the two-volume compendium, Indigenous STEM Education: Perspectives from the Pacific Islands, the Americas, and Asia, available in 2021. She also has a chapter forthcoming in Handbook of Multicultural Science Education and wrote the prologue to the 2020 book, Living Culturally Responsive Mathematics Education with/in Indigenous Communities. She is co-founder of POLARIS—Pacific/Polar Opportunities to Learn, Advance and Research Indigenous Systems—a research and development network that supports healthy communities by integrating Indigenous perspectives with new frontiers of knowledge that strengthen educational transformation. An ongoing project convenes Indigenous elders and scientists to document technical solutions to climate change from both Indigenous and western academic perspectives, and heighten international attention to the need to preserve cultures and societies amidst rising waters and melting ice.

Diane Hill

Diane Hill is a first year PhD student in the department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She is a proud member of the Oneida Nation of the Thames. Her research interests broadly include Indigenous food sovereignty, Indigenous self-determination and land-based education.

Preeti Nayak

Preeti Nayak is a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research examines how racialized high school teachers and community educators across Southern Ontario engage youth on issues of climate justice. Broadly, she is interested in how educators enact local climate justice pedagogies that make sense of epistemic diversity and racial justice, in the context of the climate crisis.

Fikile Nxumalo

Fikile Nxumalo is Assistant Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, where she directs the Childhood Place Pedagogy Lab. She is also affiliated faculty in the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on anti-colonial place-based and environmental education.