Cultural Contexts

Reflection about cultural Contexts

• How does indigenous knowledge relate to social justice?

   From my point of view, the indigenous knowledge system is an essential part of our social justice. The reason are simple, indigenous people are also part of the the our bigger society. In some point view, we possible can't fully understand their believing and knowledge system, and we think what we believe are correct. but i would say in some bigger view, a lot of their knowledge are correct and an precious part to our modern life. one example is about the relationship in Dr Apirana Mahuika's video, when industrial bring wealth and pollution to our world, we came to talk about ecology and relationship with our environment and belief, are they the exact things those indigenous people had believed for thousands of years? From those point of view, we should acknowledge that the indigenous knowledge is also part of our social knowledge and should guide our social justice as the dominant knowledge system.

• How does this relate to human rights?

  Human rights is a very broad topic. In modern society, human rights includes the rights of education, labor rights, healthy, housing etc. Although those rights had been set in law for hundreds of years in many countries, what those countries and governments did are getting further away from those basic right. such as right of housing, there are so many countries that couples had to spend 20, 30 years or even longer to buy a house to live. If that is the basic human right, shouldn't living be so difficult now. while in indigenous people's view,they had different perception about human right, actually, they see them as guardian of the lands, the air, the water etc. and they appreciate their god letting them use those resources freely. from that point of view, indigenous people put appreciation and respect into those gifts from god.  

• How can you ensure kaitiakitanga or care and protection of indigenous knowledge within teaching practice?

 First, I would like to say, ensuring children from all background and ethics living together is the step stone to make kaitiakitanga happen. Living and learning together will render our children opportunities to learn other people's culture from their view and accept the differences gradually. Secondly, respect and organize activities for each cultures are also very important in my practice. such as in Chinese New Year, We played the lion dancing and talked about difference of eastern dragon and western dragon. and in Dawali day we celebrated Indian's festival with Indian dancing. So does to Maori culture, we put Maori Haka dancing, face painting, all black ruby into our daily activities so that our children can feel the beauty of indigenous culture.

• Why is this a responsibility within Your context of practice?

 As a teacher, I need to show role model to respect all cultures from different backgrounds. Another important part is: to promote diversity of different cultures, I need to help children to experience different culture at right time. This need a lot of observation and communication with children, my workmates and even online communities.