Mainstreaming Underutilized Indigenous and Traditional Crops into Food Systems: A South African Perspective

Business as usual or transformative change? While the global agro-industrial food system is credited with increasing food production, availability and accessibility, it is also credited with giving birth to ‘new’ challenges such as malnutrition, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation. We reviewed the potential of underutilized indigenous and traditional crops to bring about a transformative change to South Africa’s food system. South Africa has a dichotomous food system, characterized by a distinct, dominant agro-industrial, and, alternative, informal food system. This dichotomous food system has inadvertently undermined the development of smallholder producers. While the dominant agro-industrial food system has led to improvements in food supply, it has also resulted in significant trade-offs with agro-biodiversity, dietary diversity, environmental sustainability, and socio-economic stability, especially amongst the rural poor. This challenges South Africa’s ability to deliver on sustainable and healthy food systems under environmental change. The review proposes a transdisciplinary approach to mainstreaming underutilized indigenous and traditional crops into the food system, which offers real opportunities for developing a sustainable and healthy food system, while, at the same time, achieving societal goals such as employment creation, wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. This process can be initiated by researchers translating existing evidence for informing policy-makers. Similarly, policy-makers need to acknowledge the divergence in the existing policies, and bring about policy convergence in pursuit of a food system which includes smallholder famers, and where underutilized indigenous and traditional crops are mainstreamed into the South African food system

Sustainability of Education: An Ecopedagogical Approach

This article is a call to action and further research. It also suggests that it is important to move from education about sustainability to the sustainability of education. In the tradition of Freire and Giroux, this article examines the commodification of education stakeholders and the impact this has on education. This article also explores how critical theory and ecopedagogy can change how the conversation is occurring within the field of education

The 2020 Washington University in St. Louis Pow Wow Committee COVID-19 Report and Resource Guide

Every year since 1990, Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis students and the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies organizes an annual Pow Wow. A Pow Wow is an event where both Native American and non‐Native American people meet to dance, sing, socialize, and honor American Indian history and culture. The 30th annual event was scheduled to occur on April 11, 2020 with the theme of “Steps to Sovereignty: Decolonize, Indigenize, Revitalize.” The Washington University Pow Wow is critical in bringing the St. Louis community together to honor and celebrate Native traditions. As coronavirus spread in early 2020, Washington University in St. Louis was closely monitoring the global outbreak of this disease. In commitment to the health and safety of our community, the Buder Center and Washington University made the difficult decision on March 11, 2020 to cancel the Washington University Pow Wow. The decision was made with the health and safety of our relatives, elders and attendees in mind. To honor our commitment to our communities, the Pow Wow Committee acted fast and they interviewed each Head Staff member plus one vendor. Interviewees were generous with their time, stories and knowledge. Students conducted interviews on April 11 and April 15 and created the following stories and resources to share

Camosun Showcase 2020: Professional, Scholarly & Creative Activity

Camosun College values lifelong learning and faculty development. The faculty stories in this report highlight how the college enables development through scheduled development time, professional development funds, innovation and creativity grants and the supports provided by the Centre of Excellence for Teaching and Learning.Published in 2021 and released at the Showcase and Journeys (virtual) Launch Celebration February 18, 2021. Faculty profiled in this report include: SCHOOL OF ACCESS Beth Konomoto; Lisa Robertson and Laura Hadwin THE CENTRE FOR INDIGENOUS EDUCATION & COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS Ruth Lyall and Sandee Mitchell SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCE Chris Ayles; John G. Boehme; Annette Dehalt; Micaela Maftei; Melissa Mills; Nancy Yakimoski SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Mary-Anne Neal; SCHOOL OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES Mary Harber and Asha Rao SCHOOL OF TRADES & TECHNOLOGY Steve Ferguson and Sean McConkey LEARNING SERVICES Mavis Smith and Jacquie Conway; Sybil Harrison and Robbyn Lanning INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION Vivian Fayowski and Dustin Van Gerven; Margie Clarke and Marina Jaffey; Jennifer Stein, Meghan Campbell and Marina Jaffey INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION AND INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS Ian Warrender and Cuma Yilmaz ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Elizabeth West and Deidre Murphy Messages from Sherri Bell, Camosun President and Sybil Harrison, Director of Learning Services are also featured. Cover art, "Mt. Baker," by Melissa Mills, Communications

Regaining Ground: Montana tribes exercise sovereignty for more than land, 2023

An annual publication that is reported, photographed, edited, and designed by students in the University of Montana’s School of Journalism.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/nativenews/1030/thumbnail.jp

A Call to Action: Indigenizing Curriculum through Adaptive Leadership

Since the release of the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2015, the post-secondary sector has focused their attention on the indigenization of programming and practices with mixed results. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) presents a possible solution to embed Indigenous knowledge and culture in a program offered at a large urban college in Canada. Both decolonization theory and Schein’s cultural assessment (2017) are used to identify current values and structures that are barriers to the effective integration of Indigenous knowledge in course curriculum and teaching. Utilizing an adaptive leadership framework (Hefeitz, 1994, Northouse, 2016) this OIP works to overcome identified obstacles by emphasizing collaboration, learning, and a safe environment that supports faculty in adopting new ways of thinking and working. This OIP focuses on the creation of a collaborative partnership with Indigenous communities (Guenette & Marshall, 2008; Hongyan, 2012; Pete, 2016; Young, Zubrzycki, Green, Jones, Stratton & Bessarab, 2013), mandatory faculty training (Pidgeon, 2016), and the development of a community of practice (CoP) (Ledoux, 2006; Ottmann, 2013) to facilitate a transparent and effective process for the indigenization of courses and teaching. This OIP may provide a model for other institutions working toward the goal of indigenization within their programming

RIKA RESILIENCE: INFORMING SUSTAINABILITY IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

The consensus in systems science is that environmental sustainability ensues from resilience, i.e., underlying capacity for preservation of core functions through adaptation in changed circumstances; and resilience itself is only sustainable when built from internal attributes of the system. Impalpability of internal resilience to external agents contributes to failures of global development in Africa, calling for analysis informed from within. This work proposes that African resilience is founded in Rika. Within Rika, ecological stewardship is integrated with noncompetitive elected representative governance and achieved through scaled modulation of systemic diversities. Eroded at macro level, Rika continues to drive grassroots enterprise. Causal attributes are, therefore, key to understanding sustainability and effecting structural reform of governance at all levels in Africa. Documented international usage of Rika concepts and terminologies has significance for research linking global expansion of Homo sapiens to the development of conceptual thinking in East Africa. Findings are based in research with the Mbeere of Kenya, East Africa, a community of 195,000, whose name Mbeere, means First Peoples. Data extracted regionally from 750,000 social media users informs context. From an indigenist method-as-theory stance (Indigenist Maths), we leverage qualitative and quantitative tools, bolstering capacity of research and practice to serve indigenous goals at the intersection of social media and Place. A dynamic indigenous information world (iWorld) ensues through community interactions interconnecting local knowledge with global information to foster economic enterprise and social ecological stewardship. We term this iWorld, Rikamedia. Examples of resilience attributes emerging from the data include: the Rika ideal of non-competitive governance, potentially impactful of conflicting democratic ideals centered in competitive governance; transcendence of natural hierarchies through unambiguous reciprocated interactions from micro to macro levels of society; design for participatory diversity, equality and inclusion with impacts on systemic divides of gender, age, and access, etc.; and lastly, a learning modality aligns governance with participatory process, emboldens risk tolerance; nurtures diversities and fosters innovation. An entrepreneurial micropilot Bamboo project ensues from community-researcher interactions, with recommendations for agroforestry citizen science, technology, funding, and diaspora capacitation. Findings are scalable in Africa South of the Sahara, and may have significance for resilience when projects incorporate Rika attributes in sustainability planning

Centering Indigenous Knowledge: Reimagining Research Methods, Pedagogies, and Sustainability With Niitsitapi Awaaáhsskataiksi (Blackfoot Elders)

My research sought to better engage with Indigenous ways of knowing and being (IWKB). Specifically, I collaborated with Blackfoot Elders (and Hawaiian Kupuna) to better understand 1) their perspectives towards land, 2) what factors instigate and perpetuate these perspectives, 3) how these perspectives play out in terms of identity; well being; daily life; education; environmental concern, behavior, and stewardship, and 4) ways that these perspectives towards land can inform and transform Western perspectives on land and perhaps lead to better and more equitable social-ecological outcomes. I approached this from three angles. First, I described a method for braiding Indigenous and Western scientific approaches to broaden the ways we might think about the human-environment relationship. Then I explored how IWKB (Blackfoot and Native Hawaiian) regarding nature are disrupted by recreation use, to the detriment of both Indigenous experience of their native lands and of the land itself. Finally, I described how K-12 science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) educators may be able to effectively accommodate both Western and IWKB in their teaching and how this broader perspective could lead non-Indigenous persons to treat the land differently as well as create greater continuity for Indigenous learners