Environmental justice must include the rights of all species to life and respect: integrating indigenous knowledge into education

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the relationships between social justice, environmental justice, and sustainability from the local to global levels. We envision social and environmental justice as involving not only human beings, but also the rights of all species to life and respect. We advocate an ecological justice approach based on the equality and intrinsic value of all existence. This standpoint also forefronts core values and world views of marginalized people and epistemologies, such as Indigenous knowledge systems. With the understanding that there is much heterogeneity among Indigenous communities and individuals, we delve into core commonalities which embrace the perspective that humanity’s relation to the cosmos is ever-salient, that the Earth is a living being, and all species, as interconnected co-habitants of Earth, are intelligent, equal, and divine.

KEYWORDS:

• Equality of all species
• ecological justice
• capitalist metaphors
• indigenous knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jing Lin

Jing Lin is Harold R. W. Benjamin Professor of International Education Policy at University of Maryland, College Park. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Michigan. Lin has published more than a dozen books, from educational reform in China, to women teachers in Africa, to peace and sustainability education, and spirituality, religion and education.

Genevieve Hiltebrand

Genevieve Hiltebrand is a Ph.D. student in International Education Policy at the University of Maryland. Previous to her work at UMD, Genevieve was a middle and high school math teacher in the USA, UK and Spain. She has also spent time volunteering on organic farms and designing interdisciplinary, project-based learning units that emphasize sustainability and care for the environment.

Angela Stoltz

Angela Stoltz is Assistant Clinical Faculty in the Center for Mathematics Education in the Division of Teaching, Learning, Policy, and Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research and teaching focus on access and equity in STEM through the integration of non-Eurocentric people and perspectives.

Annie Rappeport

Annie Rappeport is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. She worked for over 5 years in various roles with the Institute for Shipboard Education which administers the Semester at Sea program. Rappeport is a 2021 Ann C. Wylie Fellow Dissertation Recipient for her dissertational work which focuses on memory construction as a means for reconciliation and positive peacebuilding in post-genocide Cambodia.