The Indigenous Mind Program at Wisdom University is founded on the belief in, and wisdom of, traditional ways of knowing. For Native people who live within their tribal culture on the ancestral lands of their people, the program offers an opportunity to strengthen the connection and discern new global applications of their traditional knowledge. For students who have grown up steeped in the modern world, the Indigenous Mind program inspires a new way of seeing and being in the world, grounded in recovery of one’s origins and tribal wisdom.
Earth-based indigenous knowledge and ways of life are disappearing rapidly, yet most Western thinkers do not grasp the scientific depth of this knowledge nor the meaning of its loss. Recovering indigenous roots enables students to understand and research the environment and healing from an indigenous perspective. Our vision is to help students recover a way of thinking and being that supports sustainability and promotes interdependence. We hold that indigenous consciousness can be recovered, even after many generations. Our scholarly, personal process is designed to heal the dissociation that is characteristic of contemporary Western consciousness — a perceived
split between body and mind, spirit and matter, human and nature, human and human. Such remembering takes time and requires extensive grounding.
The Earth Summit and various UNESCO resolutions have affirmed the validity and global significance of indigenous knowledge, yet few people understand its depth and application and fewer still are trained in indigenous science.
This concentration helps students to shift their basic assumptions and perceptions to embrace indigenous knowledge–to stand in the mindset of one’s tribal ancestors and to keep hold of that vantage point in today’s time.
Indigenous science is a holistic discipline that draws on human senses and ways of knowing to reveal the balance of all things. Indigenous scientists, Elders and scholars consider nature to be alive and intelligent, interacting with it as an active research partner. They guide students beyond an individualistic sense of self, restoring a sense of their interconnectedness to the web of all being through their indigenous wisdom traditions.