ABSTRACT
Davenport’s chapter is a deeply sensitive account of young children engaging in ecological literacy opportunities in an orchard. The complexity of life, both plant and animal, and of the roles of young observers and their teachers helps us gain insights into the ways in which young children are taught by the context of an environment. Young children are also taught by the cultural contexts into which they are born as they interact with their families and communities who acculturate them into language(s), rites, histories, and traditions. Over the last year, Christine observed with much interest and some trepidation as her grandson, age 5, made the transition from a pre-school day care program to kindergarten. As an American Indian educator, Christine’s concern was not so much whether her grandson was ready for school, but rather whether school was ready for him. Were the teachers ready to receive and accept his rich experiences of learning drawn from his first years of growing up in a Pueblo Indian family and community environment? Or would the hegemony of mainstream education curricula snuff out the unique understandings and emerging cultural literacy he and other Indigenous children were beginning to learn from a Pueblo Indian context?
