New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

Indigenous (place-based, culturally-integrated) geoscience education has drawn increasing interest from educators and institutions serving Native American communities, where a sense of connectedness with natural features and phenomena is central to their cultures and lifeways. At Dine College, the college of the Navajo (Dine) people, indigenous content and teaching enhance the interest of geoscience majors and nonmajors alike.

Our indigenous geoscience curricula include: (1) respect for the sacred: understanding and heed of the spiritual value of nature for many Dine, tempered by epistemological separation of empirical and revealed (ceremonial) knowledge; (2) case studies: specific examples of how the physiography, climate, geology, and resources of the Colorado Plateau have influenced Dine history and lifeways; (3) ethnogeology: study and integration of scientific concepts derived from traditional Dine knowledge, such as an understanding of Earth as a dynamic system, and the role of coupled endogenicexogenic (Earth-Sky) and constructive-destructive (female-male) processes in the evolution of Earth materials and features; and (4) emphasis on field studies in the Four Comers area, to enhance students' sense of place.

While many of the specific examples employed are uniquely Navajo, the four general themes underlying their use are not. These constitute a template that can be adapted to develop innovative, indigenous geoscience curricula and activities for other types of student communities.