Our sacred Earth, our beautiful Earth: A comparative study of indigenous agricultural traditions and community education in Wanka and Pueblo Indian communities.

摘要

This dissertation presents a comparative study of nonformal community education in Hatun Shonko, a Wanka Indigenous community in central Peru, and in the Pueblo de Cochiti, a southern Pueblo of New Mexico. This work begins by reviewing colonial and governmental policies impacting Indigenous people in Peru and the U.S., focusing on historical national trends that mirror each other in many ways. Because Indigenous education, or rather the education of Indigenous people in the formal school, has historically excluded Indigenous participation in the construction of education programs, this study probes the Indigenous community as a primary context of learning outside of a typical classroom and largely removed from government education and language policies. The community space as learning context and Indigenous family and community members as teachers and learners is examined through qualitative ethnographic fieldwork. The specific point of entry that this study engages is that of agricultural traditions and ecological knowledge communicated within the Indigenous community and inclusive of Indigenous youth. Central to these traditions and knowledge is a discussion on Indigenous languages, including language shift, revitalization and maintenance. In addition, agricultural traditions and ecological knowledge are complicated by global issues, and so presented in this research is also an exploration of the intersections between education, language, governance, health, the environment, economics, technology and globalization.