**1. Introduction**

In many Indigenous communities, efforts are underway to find sustainable and culturally responsive community-based models that help to strengthen Indigenous communities and do not perpetuate their long-standing social or cultural issues. Over the last three decades, various Native initiatives in the United States have evolved which attempt to rebuild Indigenous nations from the inside out. Their intent is to build infrastructures that serve a broader spectrum of the community, explore local resources and solutions, advocate for local rather than governmental control of community development, and most importantly evolve from the cultural and practical knowledge foundations of the communities themselves. These efforts represent an indigenized approach to applying sustainable

environmental education for community resilience and revitalization. This kind of process-oriented strategy for community education and action can form a contemporary context for the application, creative expression, and evolution of Indigenous science.

This essay explores strands of thought and previous writing of the author leading to the articulation of a general framework for contemporary Indigenous community building. It begins with the philosophy of Indigenous science, followed by the challenges of climate change, and issues with Western models of development. These strands set a context for understanding why learning about community is important, the importance of creating relevant community building models, and the need for a new generation of Indigenous studies that prioritizes sustaining healthy Indigenous community.

#### **2. The Principles of Indigenous Science**

First it is important to understand what is meant by "Indigenous science" and why Indigenous science is important to consider as a cornerstone for creating an authentic Indigenous approach to the contemporary and future building of Indigenous communities. The development of knowledge through Indigenous science is guided by spirituality, ethical relationship, mutualism, reciprocity, respect, restraint, a focus on harmony, and acknowledgment of interdependence. This knowledge is integrated with reference to a particular people and "place" toward the goal of sustainability and perpetuation of culturally distinct ways of life through generations. Indigenous science perceives from a holistic, "high context," and relational worldview that includes all relational connections in interdependent dynamic balance in its essential considerations and activity. In contrast, Western science perceives from a "low-context" view, reducing context to a minimum with a focus on material objectivity, either-or logic, and reproducibility [1,2].

#### *Indigenous Science*

A working definition of "Indigenous science" is "that body of traditional environmental and cultural knowledge unique to a group of people which has served to sustain that people through generations of living within a distinct bioregion". All of this is founded on a body of practical environmental knowledge which is learned and transferred through generations of a people through a form of environmental and cultural education unique to them. Indigenous science is really Indigenous knowledge and may also be termed "traditional ecological knowledge" (TEK) since a large proportion of this knowledge served to sustain Indigenous communities and ensure their survivability within in the environmental contexts in which Indigenous communities were situated [3].

Indigenous science may also be defined as a "multi-contextual" system of thought, action, and orientation applied by an Indigenous people through which they interpret how nature works in "their place." Indigenous knowledge may be defined as a "high-context" body of knowledge built up over generations by culturally distinct people living in close contact with a "place", its plants, animals, waters, mountains, deserts, plains, etc. Indigenous science is learned through oral transmission; based on observation over generations; relies on cyclic time orientation; applies quantification at a macro level; incorporates a specific cultural/literary style and represents ideas through symbolism; focuses on knowledge that is contextually specific to tribal culture and place; and knowledge that is conserved through time and generations through oral and visual traditions.

There are four challenges to doing sustainable education. These are: (1) creating better, more integrated science and accounting tools to measure biophysical wealth; (2) getting people involved; (3) transforming societal value systems through "empathic education"; and (4) improving knowledge transfer around sustainability [4]. Tied to these challenges is addressing associated issues revolving around human health, social justice, equity, economic development, ethics, and governance. The context of relationship in which this occurs must bring about the balanced and ethical interaction of three interacting contexts of relationship between individuals, community, and the environment. In these understandings and relationships, the aim must be to maintain cultural diversity, protect

human health, create sustainable economic relationships, reconcile social issues non-violently, and most essentially protect the environmental life support system.

Culturally responsive sustainability education for Indigenous peoples also requires the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge on an equal par with modern Western science. This is a relatively new and radical idea for Western science and education which has been met with much debate. Proponents of inclusion of Indigenous science argue that all cultures have developed a form of science which is important to the overall diversity of human knowledge related to the biosphere. However, for some, only Western science is "true science" and all other forms of knowledge must be subordinate. Despite such attitudes, teaching for sustainability provides a context for the inclusion of Indigenous science in all aspects of science education [5]. Indigenous science in its expression as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) integrated with appropriate insights and models from the evolving field of "sustainability" provides possibilities for creative models for Indigenous communities to sustain themselves and their cultural ways of life in the 21st century and beyond.
