Sustainable Education should Include Indigenous Knowledge

Formal education systems often exclude, neglect, or devalue the traditional ecological knowledge and skills of Indigenous societies; this can lead to cultural erosion and knowledge decline. This article describes how these dynamics affect hunter-gatherer groups, small scale societies whose traditional livelihood depends primarily on non-domesticated resources obtained directly from their natural environments. Although they are only a tiny fraction of the global population, their languages, knowledge systems, and traditional educative practices are highly sophisticated and contain the keys to elaborate collective memory and important environmental understanding. Unfortunately, these knowledge systems, the environments in which they occur, and their modes of transmission, are under threat from many factors. We examine the role of education in this process, and argue that for education to be sustainable and aligned with SDG4, Indigenous hunter-gatherer knowledge and educative practices should be recognized and valued.

Read full article: https://rdcu.be/eI1vt

Published in Nature Human Behaviour on 01 October 2025 at 10:00 (London time).