ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we question the settled nature of Eurocentric epistemologies and Western science by centralizing Indigenous cultural practices, epistemologies, and ontologies. We do so by describing learning and becoming in and through the Young Hunters Program, an 8-week program that engages youth and young adults with the land and Inuit ways of knowing and doing. Through interactions with Elders and the delivery of workshops in which hunting tools are created, next to land trips, participants are exposed to harvesting respectfully, while building the capacity and skills to become keen observers and stewards of their environment. Community consultation drove program goals, resulting in a focus on the revitalization of traditional food practices while simultaneously rebuilding youths’ relationships with the land, each other, and the community. Through a dialogue among the authors, we show what rebuilding relations entails in this program and discuss their implications for the Learning Sciences and transcending disciplinary boundaries. It led us to question the common practices in the Learning Sciences and in educational research in general, which tend to limit research and innovation to a set of epistemologies and ontologies that too often nurture dispossession and epistemic violence, instead of critical engagement with diversity while centering possibility.
