BEYOND ANTHROPOCENTRIC EDUCATION: INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND POSTHUMAN PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING

Abstract

Modern education has largely been organized around an anthropocentric model in which the human learner is positioned as the primary knower, while land, animals, plants, technologies, materials and ecological systems are treated as objects, resources or contexts. Indigenous knowledge traditions and posthuman educational thought offer important, though historically distinct, ways of questioning this arrangement. Indigenous knowledge is embedded in particular communities, languages, places, histories and responsibilities, while posthumanism challenges human exceptionalism and the separation of human subjects from more-than-human worlds. This conceptual paper examines the potential dialogue between these perspectives and argues that their encounter can support a relational reconstruction of education. Five dimensions are developed: relationality, place-based knowledge, more-than-human agency, embodied learning and reciprocal responsibility. The paper proposes a Relational Indigenous-Posthuman Educational Framework centred on epistemic plurality, place-consciousness, material engagement, intergenerational learning, ecological responsibility and Indigenous epistemic sovereignty. The argument is not that Indigenous knowledge is simply an example of posthuman theory. Rather, Indigenous knowledge possesses its own intellectual authority and should enter educational dialogue without appropriation or reduction. The paper concludes that an ethically grounded dialogue can help education move from knowledge transmission toward relational learning, from individual achievement toward collective responsibility, and from anthropocentric education toward more ecologically responsive educational futures.