Indigenous Sustainabilities: Decolonization, Education, and Collaboration at the Ojibwe Winter Games

Lac du Flambeau Public School students prepare to throw snowsnakes. Feb. 2015. Photo: C. Connors
Cederström, B. Marcus, Tim Frandy, and Colin Gioia Connors. 2018. "Indigenous Sustainabilities: Decolonization, Education, and Collaboration at the Ojibwe Winter Games." Journal of Sustainability Education 18(March): online.

In this article, we examine the collaborative efforts of university-employed folklorists with Waaswaaganing Anishinaabe (Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe) teachers and community leaders in what is currently known as northern Wisconsin. Focusing on the Ojibwe Winter Games—an annual weeklong event in February for middle school students that aims to revitalize traditional competitive games—we suggest that decolonizing sustainability education requires recognition that sustainability is pluralistic and culturally specific. Educators must facilitate a restorative systemic shift towards Indigenous sustainabilities through Indigenous-centered pedagogies and methods of knowledge production. In order to accomplish such a shift, our responsibility as academics and public folklorists must always be to the Indigenous communities with whom we work. We explore the role of non-Indigenous collaborators in Indigenous-led decolonization efforts, in developing educational systems that support and sustain Indigenous knowledge systems, and in the repatriation and rematriation of land, language, and culture.

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