| Abstract: | In this essay Justin Pack responds to Vine Deloria, Jr., and Daniel Wildcat's call to “indigenize education” by exploring what that entails both in his own life and for his teaching. Recognizing the power of place in Native American metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics is essential to the project of indigenizing education, according to Pack. He recounts how reading Deloria and Wildcat's Power and Place: Indian Education in America as a graduate student radically changed his perception of and relation to place, instilling in him the insight that knowing the history of a place is key to gaining a sense of one's connection to place. This realization, in turn, influenced Pack's approach to teaching. He came to understand that passing his changed perception and experience of place along to his students helped their development of critical thinking skills by exposing them to a metaphysics radically different from Western epistemology and ethics and by opening a path for them to recover a deeper sense of what it means to be in a place. Ultimately, Pack's aim in the essay is to demonstrate the potential for teaching Native American philosophy to function as a disruptive force in the classroom. |
