Native Knowledge

In order to understand, monitor, and prepare for changes in their environment, students must develop a deep understanding of the place in which they live. They must also be able to compare their own contemporary observations with historic information about that same environoment. And they must develop a sense of the cyclic, inter-related and non-linear nature of earth system processes and human interaction. Elders and other expert observers can often provide just such knowledge because they have a very detailed and highly refined awareness of their environment gained from years of living on the land. Such knowledge has enormous power to enhance environmentnal study in schools. It also has the potential to connect the often-disparate perspectives and domains of school and community, and of science and traditional ecological knowledge.

Teachers are therefore encouraged and guided to work with local experts on their climate change studies by focusing on locally significant observations to begin with, and by continued collaboration with local experts throughout the work.

The following might assist in this process.

• Investigating local change
• Project Jukebox Climate Change Interviews
• Integrating traditional knowledge and science
• Working with Elders and local experts
• Sample Interview Questions for Grades K-12
• Student Led Weather Interview for Grades 7-12
• Comprehensive Environmental Monitoring Interview
• Northern Climate Change Schools (scroll down to either)
  • Anecdotal Cloud Survey, pdf
  • Inuktitute Names for Clouds, pdf
• Culturally Responsive Science Links