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Inheriting Struggle and Forming the Future: Indigenous Education-Creation Centres in Highland Ecuador

By Tristan Partridge

This article relates experiences with two informal education centres established in indigenous communities in Ecuador’s central highlands to the dynamics and ideas of ‘ecopedagogy’, suggesting that the critical, reflective and cooperative actions undertaken in these centres speak constructively to the liberatory and justice-focused practices of ‘Earth pedagogy,’ and to the development those practices foster of skills for a just and sustainable way-of-life. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork in the region that focused on indigenous struggle, land-related conflicts and water justice, and develops the idea of ‘to inherit/intend’ to capture the emergent qualities of ‘place’ as experienced in these two particular locales. Both ‘Centros de Formación’ – Education-Creation Centres – pursue conscious attempts to direct education toward a reflective engagement with place, position and struggles for social justice. In the process, they offer insights for processes of cooperation and resistance that counteract domination and marginalization.

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