Learning with Indigenous wisdom in a time of multiple crises: embodied and emplaced early childhood pedagogies

ABSTRACT

In this position paper we consider the significance of global climate activism by children and young people in the light of ongoing western adult-centric policies and educational practices that largely continue to exclude Indigenous perspectives. Reflecting on the implications of this hegemony in the face of the convergent crises of climate and COVID-19 and concomitant exacerbations of social inequities, we acknowledge the impact of this reality on the emotional wellbeing of children, young people and Indigenous peoples, many of whom may be encountering an overwhelming sense of existential trauma and ecological grief. Drawing on our previous research we provide examples of early childhood pedagogies which resonate Indigenous values of relationality. These include trust in children’s judgement in managing risks, fostering a sense of collective pride and identity, and affirming accountability to the wider collectivity of humans and more-than-human entities. We suggest that such grounding in local Indigenous onto-epistemologies can provide inspiration for educational programmes, including environmental education and education for sustainability, as well as for local governance.

KEYWORDS:

• Adultism
• early childhood education
• climate crises
• embodiment
• Indigenous worldviews

Introduction

We are both education sociologists with teaching backgrounds in early childhood education, who see that the climate crisis requires an urgent response that is both global and intergenerational. Yet we have observed resistance from politicians (see Australian Associated Press, 2018), school leaders (see Thew, 2019), and media commentators (see Meade, 2019) to the climate action leadership shown by young people.

The global youth climate action movement is significant not only in its international reach, but in the youthfulness of the participants. Furthermore, these youth-led protests and lawsuits staggeringly demonstrate child and youth political consciousness and agency. Not since such examples as the 1963 Children’s Crusade for civil rights in Birmingham, USA (Hunter-Gault, 2013) and the 1976 school children’s uprising against compulsory Afrikaans instruction in Soweto (Pohlandt-McCormack, 1999) have we seen such a powerful child and youth-led resistance movement.

This current global youth climate action movement has largely been attributed to Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who at the age of 15 in August 2018, initiated her School Strike for the Climate as a solo protest on the steps of Swedish Parliament (Thunberg, 2019; Witt, 2020). It should, however, be acknowledged that Indigenous youth have long been at the forefront of leadership in the area of climate activism as illustrated in the example of Earth Guardian leader Xiuhtezcatl Martinez. Born in 2000, he has been an environmental activist since he was aged six. He has spoken widely including at the Rio+20 United Nations Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the U.N. General Assembly (Goodman, 2018; Martinez, 2017). Indigenous youth climate activist groups in Australia and New Zealand include SeedMob, the Pacific Climate Warriors, Te Ara Whatu and 4 Tha Kulture, or 4TK (Te Ara Whatu, n.d.; Currie, 2019; Langstone, 2020).

In this position paper we propose listening to Maori and Aboriginal Australian worldviews as a path forward for intergenerational action in response to the current confluence of existential crises. After locating ourselves as Pākehā/white settler activist scholars who focus on social, cultural, and ecological justice, we proceed to critique the hegemony of adultism which reflects the patriarchal, hierarchical, anthropocentric and humanist paradigm that has contributed to the current crises (Salmond, 2017). We consider that Maori and Aboriginal worldviews offer highly salient wisdom regarding intergenerational inter-relationality within ecological milieux as pathways for future human and planetary wellbeing. We provide illustrative examples from previous studies of ways in which Indigenous onto-epistemologies are reflected in embedded, emplaced early childhood pedagogies of collectivity and relationality. Such pedagogies reposition children as agentic and capable of collective action in service of community and planetary wellbeing (Phillips et al., 2020a).

Positioning and contextual considerations

In our research and teaching, we are constantly reminded of the impacts on children and families, particularly those from Indigenous communities, of the hierarchical, stratifying, compartmentalising, patriarchal western modernist project. We acknowledge that Indigenous peoples have been over-researched, and that the vast majority of such research has been done to them in an exploitative manner, whereby Western researchers have “stolen” knowledge from Indigenous groups and then used it solely for their own benefit (Smith, 2012, p. 114). In our own scholarship we have therefore worked collaboratively and respectfully with Indigenous colleagues and co-researchers over extended periods of time, always attentive to the histories of colonisation that continue to impact both individuals and communities (Pihama et al., 2014). We provide some personal background in the following paragraphs:

Jenny: I am a fifth generation Pākehā (people of European descent in Aotearoa) of Jewish, Cornish, Scottish and Irish ancestry. Since studying Māori language, culture, and politics at the University of Waikato, and working as a kindergarten teacher in Māori communities in the 1980s, social and cultural justice have been at the forefront of my work. As I struggled with the racism of the kindergarten world of the 1980s, Rose Pere (1983, 1988, 1991), then a Department of Education Māori school advisor, provided me with insight and support. As a kindergarten teaching student, I joined the anti-apartheid protest movement led by Māori activists such as Ripeka Evans (1994) and Donna Awatere (1984). During the winter of 1981 I joined many others, Pākehā and Māori, as we repeatedly marched against the racist South African Springbok rugby tour, in solidarity with the people of South Africa. After the tour, Māori activists challenged Pākehā New Zealanders to address the racism in our own country. This has been a core plank of my work ever since, which has included collaborating with Māori colleagues to focus on ways of honouring in education the 1840 Tiriti o Waitangi, the treaty whereby Māori allowed British settlement in exchange for British assurances that Māori would retain their rights over their lands and resources.

Louise: I am a fifth generation white Australian of English, Irish and German convict, and settler ancestry. Since travelling to India at 18, I questioned the making of Australia as a nation. I have sought to know Aboriginal Australian experiences of colonisation and precolonisation, by majoring in Aboriginal Australian studies in my undergraduate degree, working and researching with Aboriginal Australian communities, co-authoring with Aboriginal colleagues, and teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education in teacher education programmes. I have advocated for children’s rights since the UNCRC was ratified in 1989, introducing the international legal instrument to the School of Early Childhood where I was studying. How children’s rights and citizenship may be better enabled has been the central focus of my research across the last 15 years. I recall reference to global warming permeating the media from the early 2000s, when my eldest son was six, the overwhelming sense of doom horrified him, manifesting severe anxiety which still immobilises him nearly twenty years later.

In recognising the onslaughts of the various overlapping waves of colonisation, industrialisation, capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalisation, we now see the manifestation of many complexly inter-related “wicked problems” (Kameniar et al., 2010). Unfortunately, the hegemonic externalising of “nature” by the anthropocentric, humanist western paradigm deters analysis of the interconnectedness and human complicity in these problems. A key task for education scholars committed to addressing these problems is therefore to illuminate pathways for “unlearning” such hegemonies (Adam et al., 2020). We focus here on three aspects of such: the hegemony of adultism, compounded by the current overlapping anthropogenic dual crises of the climate emergency and COVID-19, and the impacts of these on young people’s emotional wellbeing.

The hegemony of adultism

In the face of the global climate emergency we seek to explore ways to resolve the Western-centric binary divides between childhood and adulthood in political consciousness and agency generally, and also between humans and “nature” (Adam et al., 2020), with a particular focus on climate action. The assumed right of dominance of humans over the earth is epitomised in the long-standing trope of the “Great Chain of Being” (Rigato & Minelli, 2013; Salmond, 2017). This positions God at the pinnacle, followed by divine beings at the next level down, then successive ranks of humans (civilised white people down to “savages”), and lastly by “animals, plants and minerals and the earth in descending order” (Salmond, 2017, p. 35). Those at the top of this hierarchy, white men, were considered to have the right to exercise power over “women and children, free men over slaves, and ‘civilised’ people over ‘barbarians’ and ‘savages’” (p. 35–6). Here then is a pervasive source of the Western presumption of white male dominion over others, including women, children and Indigenous peoples.

“Childhood” is a relatively recent western construct and is generally agreed to have developed along with the establishment of schooling for children (Postman, 1982–1994; Luke, 1989). With regard to politics, the default perception of children is to position them as learner “citizens in waiting”, or to disregard children altogether (e.g. see Bühler-Niederberger, 2010; Qvortrup, 2003). Western and neo-liberal societies tend to shield or protect children from participation in the “outside world” (DeWinter, 1997; Keddell, 2017). Such perceptions of children stem from Enlightenment thinking. This is evidenced in the work of scholars such as Rousseau, Locke and Goethe, who argued for children to “be exempted from adult duties and responsibilities for a prolonged period of time” (DeWinter, 1997, p. 48) to better focus on their education. The legacy of this imposed age divide still lingers, as do vulnerability discourses that disempower children and young people (Robinson, 2013; Robinson & Davies, 2018: Smith, 2010). Such discourses continue to be perpetuated, as seen in the reluctance of adult decision-makers to lower the voting age in both Australia and New Zealand (Miragliotta et al., 2021).

Despite the pervasiveness of discourses and policies that exclude children and young people from political discourse, in their climate activism they loudly and clearly seek to alert adults to the urgency of the required transition away from fossil fuels, and the need to drastically change our exploitative attitudes to Earth, before she is irrevocably damaged to the detriment of all who depend upon her. The recent success of a federal court case brought by Australian youth against fossil fuel extraction, demonstrates the courage and determination of young people to take action to preserve their futures (Princi, 2021; Readfearn, 2021). Yet this rare win was immediately appealed by the Australian government.

Children and young people clearly face challenges in shifting adult perceptions of children in order to support their activism. A prime example of this is seen in the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s patronising response to the 26 November 2018 student strike, when he told student strikers to go back to school with assertions that “we do not support our schools being turned into parliaments”, and “what we want is more learning in schools and less activism in schools” (Australian Associated Press, 2018). Morrison, like many neoliberal Western conservative politicians and decision-makers refuse to accept their and all other entities’ vulnerability to climate change (to the weather, to the pollutants, to the oceans) and thus perpetuate the vulnerability of the young by keeping them closeted in schools. As Faulkner states, “A refusal of one’s own vulnerability to others leads to investing that vulnerability to the other” (p. 150).

In 2016, in recognition of the scarcity of robust survey data available to gauge the degree of support for children’s political participation, we commissioned a question within the Australian and New Zealand iterations of the International Social Survey Programme which canvasses adult respondents on social science topics (Phillips et al., 2017, 2019). The question sought to identify the degree of support for children and youth having opportunities to influence government, across these age groups: 3 to 5 years, 6 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, and 15 to 18 years. The data sample of 1,146 in the 2016 AuSSA and 1,264 in the 2016 ISSPNZ indicated that the greatest support was for the 15–18-year-old age group, with 71% of respondents strongly agreeing or agreeing in Australia and 63% in NZ. The degree of support progressively diminished for each younger age group. Interestingly, Māori respondents showed a higher percentage of support for young children’s involvement, with less distinction across the different age-group bands. Unfortunately, there were insufficient Aboriginal Australian or Torres Strait Islander respondents to assess a similar pattern of Indigenous support for child political participation. From our experience in collaborating (and deeply listening) with Aboriginal Australian and Māori co-author/researchers, teachers, families, and children, our sense is that the child/adult divide is not so present, nor does it fuel barriers for child and youth participation.

Convergent crises

In the year 2020, humanity experienced the convergence of the dual anthropogenic crises of climate and COVID-19 (Watts et al., 2020). The Lancet editorialised that “The climate emergency and COVID-19, a zoonotic disease, are both borne of human activity that has led to environmental degradation” (Lancet, 2021, p. 71). The COVID-19 pandemic has been described as the result of “the poisonous way in which humans interact with the natural world” seen in habitat reduction, mining, and industrialised meat production (Biorklund Belliveau, 2020, para. 2). The COVID-19 crisis has also highlighted and contributed to increasing socio-economic and health disparities that disproportionately negatively impact Indigenous people. Furthermore, as reported in the Lancet, “the health of Indigenous populations also has a greater vulnerability to the decline of the planet’s natural resources, as their way of life is so intimately connected to waters, lands, and forests” (Curtice & Choo, 2020, p. 1753).

A recent WHO-UNICEF-Lancet report, A future for the world’s children (Clark et al., 2020), highlights that “Children are also the most vulnerable to the lifelong environmental effects caused by climate change arising from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and from industry-linked pollution of the air, water, and land” (p. 609). Despite such international declarations of the dire impacts of these crises on children and the necessity for their political participation, children and youth have been largely side-lined in national and international climate and COVID-19 management decision-making.

This exclusion of children was illustrated in responses to a recent international qualitative online survey on Teaching and Learning in COVID-19 times (Phillips et al., 2020b), in responses given by teachers to the question: “What do you think your students have learnt broadly about these changes (such as about humanity, about themselves as learners)?” A teacher from Nigeria replied: “that they don’t count”, whilst a teacher from the USA responded, “Many of my students feel oppressed by our government”. A Singaporean teacher wrote: “I think in these times children’s voices are less heard. Did anyone ask them what they thought, what they wanted, what they needed in these COVID times? … children’s voices and agency need to be heard and shared and expressed more in our society”. A teacher from Aotearoa (New Zealand) noted: “I really wish there was more student agency”. The United Nations affirms that it is only by engaging and working with children and youth that the international community will “be able to achieve peace, security, justice, climate resilience, and sustainable development for all” (Clark et al., 2020, pp. 616–617). The UNESCO Futures of Education further confirms the expectation of children and young people’s participation rights, in its objective to “Promote student, youth and children’s participation and rights. Intergenerational justice and democratic principles should compel us to prioritize the participation of students and young people broadly in the co-construction of desirable change” (International Commission on the Futures of Education, 2021, p. 6)

Recognising and responding to ecological grief

Recent research shows that many children and young adults are experiencing a sense of existential dread, due to the climate crisis (Menzies et al., 2020) likely compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic (OECD, 2020). In the New Zealand Youth19 survey, young people identified the following as the most important issues they are facing: (1) social media and technology, (2) bleak futures, (3) climate change, and (4) risky choices. The survey highlights the compounding impacts of a complex interplay of contextual determinants including sociocultural, socioeconomic and historical factors, as well as personal-behavioural aspects such as one’s capacity for emotional regulation, the foundational dispositions of which are established in early childhood (Moffitt et al., 2011, 2013). For Indigenous young people, these determinants are likely to be exacerbated by the impacts of intergenerational trauma as well as cultural and socioeconomic dislocation due to histories of colonisation. In New Zealand:

Unfortunately, these determinants, which are highly fluid and not well understood, become increasingly complex when intergenerational trauma, marginalisation and disadvantage is at play in the lives of Indigenous and other minority groups, as is the case for many Māori and Pasifika [Pacific Islands] youth. (Menzies et al., 2020, p. 4)

A similar situation exists for Aboriginal Australian youth (e.g. see Atkinson, 2002; Tighe et al., 2015).

Ecological grief has been defined as a response to “experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change” (Cunsolo & Ellis, 2018, p. 275). Indigenous people may feel particularly intense ecological grief due to their sense of kinship with their ancestral lands, flora and fauna (Rose, 2008, 2009). Previous research by Ojala (2012, 2013) in Sweden has indicated the significance of engaging with the affective domain and fostering a sense of hope as key to empowering children to act on environmental concerns. Whilst existential anxiety and grief increase a sense of vulnerability, children and young people have identified that taking action provides a sense of empowerment and hope (Davis, 2010; Ritchie, 2021). In a recent US study Trott (2020) describes how empowering pedagogical spaces generated hands-on, critical, and creative child-led local sustainability projects. Indeed, engendering a sense of hope and collective agency is recognised by Māori education scholars as key in decolonising education, many of whom have been inspired by the visionary work of Paulo Freire (2015, 1972), as these Māori scholars demonstrate:

In the face of settler-colonial denial, historical amnesia and epistemological ignorance the task of indigenous educators has been to create new forms of social contract that directly engage with the past and clear the way for a more hopeful future … Indeed, Paulo Freire, suggests that it is an “ontological need” (Freire, 2015, p. 2) … especially for peoples with a history of violent dispossession from land, culture, language and ways of life. (Kidman et al., 2018, p. 235)

Drawing from these understandings we take the view that western educational models that privilege risk-averse cognitivist approaches are insufficient in addressing either young people’s anxieties about climate change, nor in generating the sense of collectivist empowerment or skills for activist engagement which include the capacity to take risks in challenging and reaching beyond conventional boundaries (Wilks et al., 2020). The contemporary neo-liberal practice of over-protection of children and young people (see Howard-Wagner, 2017; Keddell, 2017) does little to build their capacity for emotional self-regulation nor for negotiating risky choices and challenges that they may face during their childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. It also raises questions as to the degree of trust implicit in western relationships between adults and children and adult expectations regarding the capacity of children and young people to make wise judgements (Wilks et al., 2020). Recent research from a commonworlds theoretical perspective has identified post-humanist theorising of ways in which young children can explore intra-actively within their locales, demonstrating their receptivity to such encounters (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al., 2020).

Māori and Aboriginal Australian worldviews

In contrast to the western paradigm that has ravaged the planet and generated the current multiple ecological crises (Celermajer et al., 2021), Indigenous peoples continue to serve and protect the lands over which they have managed to retain guardianship, such as the Wangan and Jagalingou people’s campaign (led by Adrian Burragubba) to protect their traditional lands (of central Queensland, Australia) from the Adani coal mine development (Wangan & Jagalingou Family Council, n.d.).

In te ao Māori, the Māori worldview, the wider kinship collective extends from the originary parents, Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) and Sky Father (Ranginui), including human and more-than-human kin. For Maori, as with other Indigenous peoples, wellbeing is sourced via maintaining the balance of spiritual inter-connection with ancestors and with the land, rivers, mountains, oceans, forests and creatures who reside therein. Furthermore, from an Indigenous worldview, “it is the body’s knowing or perceiving that informs other levels of consciousness” (Williams et al., 2018, p. 45). This form of multi-sensorial, embodied knowing is not often a strong feature of Western pedagogies which are often predominately cognitivist in orientation.

The source of Māori identity lies in one’s whakapapa, the vertical and horizontal layering of intergenerational connections that emanate from the Māori cosmology that links humans to ancestral bodies such as oceans, lakes, mountains, and rivers. As Rameka explains:

Māori are part of the environment, connected to everything in it; therefore it requires respect … Under this system, humans are related to both animate and inanimate objects, including animals, fish, plants and the physical environment (land, rocks, water, air and stars). Thus there is no separation between the physical and spiritual worlds; in the holistic Māori worldview they are continuous. (Rameka, 2016, p. 389)

We therefore can be seen to share collective responsibility to care for the community of life that is sustained within the embrace of Papatūānuku and Ranginui. This recognition of the necessity of solidarity and collectivity are expressed in Māori values such as whanaungatanga (kin relationships), kotahitanga (unity), kaitiakitanga (caring for the environment), rangatiratanga (leadership in service of the collective) and mahi tahi (collaboration). It is also reinforced in whakataukī (wisdom sayings) such as ‘He waka eke noa’ (we are all in this together), and ‘Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini’ (my success is not mine alone, it is instead the strength of many). Children are positioned as an integral part of this network and are thus treated with respect:

Māori children (mokopuna, tamariki, tuakana, teina) were positioned alongside adults in an inseparable pattern of relationships between the gods, ancestors, elders, and wide family members … . Traditionally children were born into much more dynamic systems of whakapapa (kinship and genealogical ties) and were positioned as representative of all their whakapapa ties, in all facets of their lives in traditional Māori society. (Skerrett & Ritchie, 2018, pp. 5–6)

Young children often accompanied elders in their various every day and strategic undertakings and were thus apprenticed into specific knowledges, rituals, and ceremonies that were also integrally tied to ecologically interdependent survival. The late Māori Queen, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu was noted for her recognition of the wisdom of listening to children (Kirkwood, 2001).

For Aboriginal Australians, all entities are deeply connected through spirituality, lore, story and a complex kinship system (Yeo, 2003). The kinship system is not only about human relationships, but also with land, water, flora and fauna, and spiritual beings, understood through totemic and skin systems. Children learn their kinship relations, behaviours, rights and responsibilities progressively from a very young age (Daylight & Johnstone, 1986). As Arrernte Elder Aunty Margaret Kemarre Turner describes “We as Aboriginal people, we always relate to other people, connect with them, no matter who we are. If I see an Aboriginal person … I’ll always say ‘that person is one of us, he’s part of us’” (Turner, 2010, p. 7). Spiritual connection to country, Bunurong man, Bruce Pascoe, explains, runs deep through all actions: “there is no separation between the sacred and non-sacred” (Pascoe, 2014, p. 127).

Through such an ontology “Aboriginal people constructed a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity” (Pascoe, 2014, p. 129) for tens of thousands of years. Perhaps it is the complex system of kinship that enabled peaceful co-existence with others. With kin classifications, as “the very basis of social structure” (Yengyoyan, 1987, p. 212), complex genealogical and status relationships to others are known and enacted. Aboriginal kinship rules are laws spiritually ascribed by sacred ancestors and are extraordinarily more sophisticated than European kinship systems, with most defining 28 kinship roles (Langton, 2018). The kinship system, and shared values determine how Aboriginal people work together (Lohoar et al., 2014). For example, Aboriginal people worked in partnership with dolphins in bays to drive fish in to catch (Pascoe, 2014, p. 143), supporting an ethos of living with all living beings sustainably: only take what you need. As Uncle Bob Anderson (1998) shares “All living things, be they mammals, birds, reptiles, insects or trees are our sisters and brothers and therefore we must protect them. We are their custodians. We not only share with them; we also guard them” (p. 8).

As white/Pākehā/settler academics we gain insight from these Maori and Aboriginal Australian worldviews towards enabling and supporting intergenerational action for Earth rescue. Our advocacy for listening to the wisdom of Maori and Aboriginal Australian worldviews on deep relationality with all entities and collective responsibility is not an act of essentialisation or romanticisation of their worldviews. We know that colonisation has severely impacted Indigenous peoples and their capacity to sustain their worldviews. From the children, educators, and Elders with whom we have had the privilege of spending time, we see the resilience of Indigenous values which offer a powerful alternative modality to exploitative, hierarchical western paradigms. In the following section we provide some examples from our research within early childhood education settings.

Some illustrations of embodied and emplaced pedagogies

In this section we draw upon several previous ethnographic studies to illustrate aspects of Indigenous onto-epistemologies reflected in early childhood care and education settings. In particular, we draw from research from the Young Children’s Community Building study (Phillips et al., 2020a). This study was conducted in two early childhood care and education services, one in an Indigenous community in Queensland Australia and the other a kindergarten in Porirua, New Zealand. As Pākehā/white/settler researchers we were invited into the communities and spent time building trusting reciprocal relationships with Elders, educators and children, before data collection commenced. The work from Australia is co-authored by Kerryn Moroney, an Aboriginal research consultant and Lavina Dynevor an Aboriginal Educator, who have trusted us and consented to share the work. An earlier study of ten early childhood care and education settings in Aotearoa considered ways in which early childhood teachers could foster a sense of “caring for ourselves, others and the environment” reflecting Māori worldviews (Ritchie, 2013; Ritchie et al., 2010). We now provide some narrative examples of observed enactment of Indigenous values of relationality, trusting children’s judgment and collective pride, as fostered and modelled by the teachers and reflected in the engagement of children with each other.

Relationality

Indigenous wisdom foregrounds relationality with all entities “with an ontological starting point of oneness” (Burman, 2012, p. 184) as opposed to the Western tendency towards binaries and othering. Kinship is at the core of Aboriginal lore. At any meeting, there is the acknowledgement of one blackfella to another – as community. Knowing each other is nurtured from birth, relationality is welcomed and nurtured across different ages and generations as illustrated in this vignette from the Young Children’s Community Building study depicting teacher Bena amongst the children in her care at an early learning centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in a regional Queensland Aboriginal community:

Bena sits in the middle of the room with Tallara and Dheran leaning and climbing on her, whilst Teddy and Jarrah walked around the room and Latayla lay in a cot drinking her bottle. Jarrah (1) sat in chair next to cot and patted her. Latayla reached out to him through the bars of cot. Then Jarrah stood up on the chair. Bena calmly said “sit down Jarrah” and he followed. Teddy stands on the edge of a foam mattress bouncing. Bena offers: “jump Teddy jump” he steps off with a big smile. He enthusiastically repeated this a few times. Bardo (Bena’s 9-year old son) is visiting and lying on another mattress. He calls to Teddy who toddles over arms wide over falling warmly into an embrace. Coco (an educator from neighbouring room) visits to cuddle her daughter, earlier her brother had also visited.

As Bena explains: “It’s about love and doing everything out of love and with love. And it is not just love for other blackfellas but love for country“ (not nationhood country but land, water, all living entities).

In this early learning centre, children connecting with animals, insects and rocks was part of the everyday. As Luritja woman Kerry Moroney (co-author/researcher) explains in relation to Ezra, one of the child participants in the study:

Ezra shows respect for insects as living beings and displays responsibilities for living beings that inhabit [here], from catching bees that are swarming a flowering tree on the fence line, to chasing and catching small moths in his hands that have just hatched in the grass from overnight rains and now to a catch and release a stick insect. During these experiences Ezra displays interest in the details of these beings and makes close observations and is then happy for them to be on their way. He is connecting and caring for country; knowing the beings on the country we walk. He showed a real sense of responsibility and empowerment in the knowing and doing. (Phillips et al., 2020a, p. 96)

In a prior study in Aotearoa (Ritchie et al., 2010), teachers’ intentionality in relation to offering te ao Māori worldviews as frameworks within their programmes enabled children to resonate an empathic relationality that was inclusive of Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) and Ranginui (Sky Father). In Māori cosmology, Papatūānuku and Ranginui, originally in a tight embrace, are forced apart by one of their children, the demi-God Tāne Mahuta. From here, Tāne went on to create trees, birds and insects, and the first woman, and from this union came people. Considering the original “parents” as portrayed in this narrative, children resonated a profound empathy and concern. At Richard Hudson Kindergarten in Dunedin, four-year-old Lily was very moved by their enforced separation. She wrote her own story to accompany her painting portraying the pain of Rangi and Papa’s separation: “Rangi is at the top. He is really, really close to the children. You can’t see the baby because he’s in the ground with his mother. They pushed them apart. The earth mother wasn’t close to Rangi anymore. So. So. So. So. Sad” (as cited in Ritchie et al., 2010, p. 96).

In a similar vein, the mother of another child at this kindergarten wrote a note to teachers explaining how her daughter Petra’s concerns for Ranginui and Papatūānuku were being translated into actions of care for the biosphere:

Petra has used the information given to her at mat times to add depth and concern to what she knows of the world. She has spontaneously decided to pick up rubbish in her neighbourhood because of her concern for the earth mother. The personification has allowed her to deduce that the smoke from chimneys would not be beneficial to Rangi’s lungs, making it hard for him to breathe. Petra is thinking further afield too. She wants to go to the beach and do a clean-up with her family. She has thought a lot about these things. She has also talked about “Sad Wrap” at kindergarten recently, [saying as she considered her lunch wrapping] “I have sadwrap. This is not good for Mother Earth”. (as cited in Ritchie et al., 2010, p. 95)

An example from this same kindergarten is seen in the occasion of the children returning to the kindergarten after a visit to the school they were due to soon attend, expressing their concern that there were no recycling bins at the school, and thereby determining to write a letter to the school to ask them to establish a recycling process. In this study there were many similar examples of ways in which the fostering of children’s concern for others including the environment led to the children taking their concerns home to their families, and in some instances into the community.

Trusting children’s judgment (autonomy, independence and freedom, along with collective responsibility)

In Indigenous communities, we see that children are trusted to explore and take on family and community responsibilities from early childhood. Independence, assertiveness and responsibility for decision-making and self-regulation of behaviour are foregrounded from a young age in Aboriginal Australian communities (Perso & Hayward, 2015). Louise has witnessed such in the communities she has worked with, where primary school children take younger family members to the neighbourhood childcare centre. In contrast, white-middle class families are much more consumed by protectionist discourses in their child-rearing in present times (e.g. see Malone, 2007), as seen for example, in the chaperoning of children to early childhood and school settings (e.g. see Mayall, 2000; Woolley, 2006). White society (including schooling) tends to be authoritarian and controlling. Aboriginality as persistence (sustaining culture) and resistance (cultural practices that inform interaction with white society) are ways that Aboriginal students manage white authority in schooling (Gillan, 2008 cited in Perso & Hayward, 2015). Aboriginal families and communities equip their children and young people to know their mob, their country and culture, and to “go with your people, your family … getting your strength from each other and support” (Sylvia, Community Elder) (Phillips et al., 2020a, p. 87).

Prior to colonisation in Australia, movement of Aboriginal peoples was largely unrestrained and conducted with respect for tribal rights and responsibilities for country (Pascoe, 2014). Aboriginal educators provide children with time, space and freedom to explore place in ways that they prefer. Children have independence and freedom to explore and experiment while educators discreetly monitor their play at a distance (Sumsion et al., 2018). The educators’ presence provides reassurance to children for their explorations. Such practice sustains traditional Aboriginal cultural values to ensure Aboriginal children are bestowed with freedom to explore their surrounds and to learn caring and protection responsibilities for one another (Daylight & Johnstone, 1986). Community members look out for each other and their whereabouts. Children are trusted in their explorations with the environment and told of cautions and responsibilities of living with country in accordance with Aboriginal lore. As Aboriginal Education Consultant Denise Proud explains, environmental relatedness enables “a process of experiencing, absorbing and sharing ways of coming to know” (in Proud et al., 2017, p. 85).

In pre-colonial times, tamariki Māori (Māori children) had considerable freedom, were greatly respected, and often accompanied their elders, learning traditional practices such as food gathering and preparation by observation and participation (Edwards, 1990; Makereti [Maggie Papakura], 1938; Pere, 1983). At Katoa kindergarten during the Young Children’s Community Building study, Jenny observed numerous instances whereby the teachers stood alongside children without intervening and sometimes even encouraging them in what might be termed in a western risk-averse educational context as unsafe “risky” play (Wilks et al., 2020), such as jumping from and across large outdoor equipment. On one occasion, a group of boys were using the metal spades as axes, taking turns at strongly chopping at a tree root that they were determined to sever. This could potentially have resulted in a serious injury from one of the sharp blades on the edge of the spades encountering another child’s head or face, for example, however the children seemed to read the movements of one another in an embodied collective manner, whilst communicating and negotiating their movements safely, and no teacher intervention was offered or sought. This collective noticing and understanding occurred in another similar child-initiated challenge which involved a group of children repeatedly throwing and retrieving large toy trucks into and from a large, deep, muddy puddle. The hazard which was (mostly) avoided in this instance was, obviously, getting splashed top to toe by the muddy water.

Despite the constraints of urbanisation and the despoliation of bush and rivers, many Māori families continue to observe values such as kaitiakitanga (obligation to care for the environment). In a further recent New Zealand study (Ritchie & Lambert, 2018) the programme at Paparārangi Kindergarten had a strong focus on integrating te ao Māori conceptualisations and, as an enviroschool,¹ a particular focus on kaitiakitanga. The teachers and children made regular visits to the nearby bush, observing birds, insects, and various creatures that reside in the forest and waterways. Children were briefed beforehand with regard to safety considerations, and then allowed considerable freedom to carefully observe and respectfully explore. Such pedagogies, infused with te ao Māori conceptualisations such as kaitiakitanga, enable young children to feel a sense of interconnectedness and of mutual responsibility for the wellbeing of one another and the environment.

Collective identity

In many Indigenous communities, the predominate unit of being is the collective rather than the individual, and individuals, including children, are valued for their contributions to the community. There is a sense of shared pride generated from this contribution. The Māori construct of mana is defined as a supernatural force that confers prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status, spiritual power, and charisma (Moorfield, 2020). Children are recognised as being born with intrinsic mana, which links them to the spiritual realm, to their ancestors, to living people and to places as well as to other entities in their environment (Rameka, 2015).

Many Aboriginal Elders, educators, and parents see it as their responsibility “to teach [children] that they are active citizens with rights” as Aboriginal Educator Bena explains. “It’s important to raise children to have that confidence to be heard … We teach them about who they are and their real name and that they are part of a family and a community who want them”. Knowing your identity and that you have a community in which you belong are foundations for pride and strength. Community gatherings communicate “we are here with you”.

At the Aboriginal early learning centre, we witnessed the practice of identity pride and strength, using Aboriginal English, and local languages (Wakka Wakka and Gubbi Gubbi), and sharing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s picture books, play materials, displays, staff shirts with Aboriginal art designs and celebrating key Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander events with community. As an Aboriginal governed service in an Aboriginal community, the centre is very much a community hub and gathering site for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander events. Key annual events include National Sorry Day (to acknowledge and recognise members of Stolen Generation), NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islander Day Observance Committee) week, and National Aboriginal and Islander Children’s Day. These events have emerged during the past century from the counter-colonial movement to assert Aboriginal rights, mourn the devastating struggles and grief inflicted by colonisation, and celebrate Aboriginal culture.

Bena: We have Sorry day, and in this room, we have family who are members of the stolen generation. It’s something big for our parents and my Dad passed away at this time and same thing stolen generation and stolen wages and sorry times [a time of grieving for loss]. We are giving children this understanding - why we do these things. I think it helps them know who they are. It teaches you to think differently along the way because being an Aboriginal person and being distinguished because you’re black. There’s things that come with it and the turmoil our Elders went through and it affects us and our children. I feel our children have to be made aware of what happened back then.

At Katoa Kindergarten the teachers had a strong focus on fostering children’s rangatiratanga, their sense of acting as leaders within the kindergarten community (Phillips et al., 2020a; Ritchie & Lambert, 2018). This promotion of rangatiratanga was integrally connected within a range of other key Māori values that were also prominently upheld. As Charles Te Ahukaramū Royal explains:

Rangatiratanga is concerned with leadership and defines leadership as the ability to bind (ranga) groups (tira) together. A rangatira binds groups together and a person who does not, cannot be said to be a rangatira. Manaakitanga points to the mutual elevation of mana [power, prestige, esteem] in an encounter scenario. As one person or group encounters another, they go through some kind of process. If the outcome of that process sees the elevation of mana of both parties, then it can be said that manaakitanga has been expressed. Whanaungatanga denotes the interconnectedness of all things and this is shown in whakapapa [genealogical connectedness]. Tohungatanga concerns expertise and skill, particularly with symbols, with interpreting them, with creating new symbols, with preserving old symbols. Ukaipo are those spaces and places where one is nourished. These spaces and places are likened to the mother’s breast. Finally, Kotahitanga denotes the unity of all things in the world. (Royal, 1998, p. 5)

The teachers incorporated these values throughout the programme, and this approach was reflected in their pedagogical documentation which highlighted instances where tamariki (children) demonstrated their rangatiratanga, manaakitanga and whanaungatanga. When Jenny was doing fieldwork conducting weekly visits to Katoa kindergarten, one of the four-year-old children asked on several occasions something along the lines of “Where you was?” Jenny felt that the sub-text may have been something along the lines of, “you aren’t always here, so do you really belong?” A questioning of the degree of commitment to the collective perhaps? When facing the same circumstance at the Aboriginal early learning centre, Louise had a different sense. She interpreted the child’s question as a sign that the children accepted her and co-researcher Kerryn as part of the community and had missed them and were wondering why they hadn’t been there for a while. Either way, children were aware of our presence and absence from the collective. The collective is a source of pride, identity, and cohesion, to which one is accountable.

Conclusion

We wonder if there might be more hope for the planet’s future if more of us listen to the wisdom of Indigenous peoples founded on principles of deeply entangled relations with all entities enacted through such principles as relationality, trust, and collective responsibility. As has been recently noted:

For tens of thousands of years, Indigenous philosophies have, in myriad ways, posited the world, human and non-human alike, as animated, agential, knowing, feeling, and relational. While western posthumanists struggle for credibility within more mainstream scholarship, Indigenous peoples have well-developed “posthumanist” philosophies unconstrained by Western dualisms and hierarchies. (Celermajer et al., 2021, pp. 6–7)

We see the greatest hope in these troubled times in listening to the wisdom of those who have lived sustainably for thousands of years, sustaining intergenerational and interspecies relations. Climate action requires awareness of our inter-relatedness to all others, “facing our responsibility to the infinitude of the other, welcoming the stranger whose very existence is the possibility of touching and being touched, who gifts us with both the ability to respond and the longing for justice-to-come” (Barad, 2012, p. 219). We recognise both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand are still embroiled in ongoing settler colonialism, with, as Faulkner (2019) so pertinently argues, “the child as a figure for reconciliation and as a target of ongoing colonisation” (p. 150) with the western construct and demarcation of the “innocent” child imposed on Aboriginal Australian and Māori peoples and used to define and justify ongoing paternalistic colonialism, as seen in the removals of Māori babies from their families (Office of the Children’s Commissioner, 2020). To counter the ongoing colonialism, as allies we are advocating for the importance of listening to local Indigenous onto-epistemologies to inform educational programmes, and local governance.

We are not proposing cultural appropriation, nor are we aiming to “do good” to solve an “Indigenous problem” as Kowal (2015) and Land and Foley (2015) discuss; rather we are attending to a global problem in which there is deafening whitefella noise. We see the challenge as being the need for western decision-makers, including educators and researchers, to listen to Indigenous wisdoms of intergenerational relationality, trusting children, and collective responsibility as offering hope for moving forward. Whilst post-humanist and new materialist discourses have provided significant challenges to anthropocentric humanism, it is our contention that ignoring Indigenous onto-epistemologies serves as an ongoing colonialist invisibilisation of inter-relationality paradigms that not only served Indigenous peoples well for many centuries prior to the impacts of colonisation but can also provide hope for the future (Ravenscroft, 2018). If only those who hold the power and decision-making roles would listen to Indigenous Peoples and children and accept their own vulnerability, instead of perpetuating discourses of Indigenous peoples’ and children’s vulnerability in order to justify power over them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Enviroschools progamme in Aotearoa aims to foster sustainability through “the regeneration of resilient, connected communities in which people care for each other and the environment [which involves] valuing indigenous knowledge and celebrating diversity” (Enviroschools, n.d.)