Indigenous knowledge recovery is Indigenous empowerment

In privileging writings about current work in Indigenous knowledge recovery, we are challenging the powerful institutions of colonization that have routinely dismissed alternative knowledges and ways of being as irrelevant to the modern world. Because Indigenous Peoples and other advocates of Indigenous knowledge have typically been denied access to the academic power structures that legitimize such knowledge, this special issue of American Indian Quarterly offers us a rare scholarly opportunity to validate it. [...]many of us even go so far as to suggest that eventually these ways may resolve some of the global crises facing all populations today.5 Before knowledge of these ways of being and interacting with the world can be shared, however, as Indigenous Peoples we must first work on recovering these traditions among our own populations. Indigenous knowledge has rarely, if at all, impacted educational institutions responsible for teaching our children even today. [...]rather than facilitating a liberatory educational experience, the schools are designed to indoctrinate new generations of children with the beliefs and values of the colonizing society, and Indigenous ways continue to be denigrated. [...]this special edition closes with Michael Doxtater's article, "Indigenous Knowledge in the Decolonial Era."