IKS in Curriculum Development
One of the major challenges facing IKS development in the lack of critical mass of human capital conversant with IKS worldviews (ontology), ways of knowing (epistemology), research methodologies and value systems (axiology).
Indigenous peoples and communities throughout the world have for millennia sustained their unique worldviews and associated knowledge systems in relation to the environment, even while undergoing major social upheavals because of transformative forces beyond their control. The depth of these knowledge systems rooted in the long inhabitation of a particular ecosystem offers lessons that can benefit everyone, from educator to scientist, as we search for a more satisfying and sustainable way to live on this planet.
Therefore, the CIKS has since its inception recognized that one strategy of building a critical mass of IKS human capital and ensuring the transformative sustainability of IKS is to integrate it in the educational system at all levels. CIKS recognizes that a significant –paradigm shift” is under way in which indigenous knowledge is recognized as constituting complex knowledge systems with an adaptive integrity of their own.
