ABSTRACT
This chapter explores outdoor recreation and education in this spirit from a North American perspective grounded in understandings of European colonialism worldwide. G. Cajete has called for healing the 'split head' of North American society, working to heal the physical and existential fissures between Indigenous and Western communities, and between humanity and ecology. Dominant Western outdoor recreation and education are haunted by various forms and impulses related to Western colonial understandings of Indigenous people and the environment. Shared interests in education through experience, as well as environmental learning, and knowledge of place suggest outdoor recreation and education potentially provide collaborative ground for Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, managers and educators. Practical application or embodiment is a highly valued element of Indigenous knowledge. Indigenous knowledge is relational because it develops through and exists within experiences that are always-already social, spiritual and ecological: a communal approach very different from Western individually centred understanding of intelligence and creativity.
