Reclaiming Silenced Voices Through Practices of Education and Environmental Popular Knowledge Production

Abstract

To reclaim silenced voices, we must identify the source of our silence, find our voice, construct our stories and share them with others. This paper is the story of a community who with the support of the researcher, endeavoured to peel back the layers of debris, which had muffled their voices. This constructed debris-social, physical, cultural and historical-served to reproduce the power of the "other" through processes of false consciousness. To alter this power relationship-to give a voice to the hitherto silenced-meant supporting the community to perceive themselves not as mere objects of their social conditions but the narrators of their own stories.