Two-Eyed Seeing into Environmental Education: Revealing its "Natural" Readiness to Indigenize

Abstract

Recent visions for environmental education now include a foundational acknowledgement that the well-being of humans and the environment are inseparable. This vision of environmental education, with a focus on interconnectedness as well as concepts of transformation, holism, caring, and responsibility, rooted in experiences of nature, community, and land and communicated through story-telling, has been the domain and foundation of Indigenous education models for millennia. It is time for the environmental education field to turn to Indigenous education to enrich, renew, and re-focus its goals and core concepts. Using Two-Eyed Seeing as an integrative framework, this paper argues that current pivotal ideas in environmental education such as systems theory, ecological literacy, biophilia, and place-based education can benefit from and connect to foundational values of Indigenous education.