Learning from indigenous values

There are approximately 250 million indigenous people in over seventy countries. In most of these countries, their way of life is threatened. Many of them view nature distinctly differently from conventional perceptions by seeing land not as a commodity to be bought and sold in impersonal markets, but as a substance endowed with sacred meaning, embedded in social relations, and fundamental to the understanding of the group's existence and identity. These views are consistently and fundamentally centred upon sustainability, something that is considered the conventional world necessarily has to learn or relearn in order to achieve global sustainability.

1. Learning

1. Transmitting heritage of indigenous peoples

1. Reducing eurocentrism
2. Promoting values in education
3. Communicating value systems

1. Utilizing traditional indigenous skills
2. Strengthening role of indigenous communities for sustainable development
3. Researching value systems
4. Promoting indigenous development
5. Ensuring local values preservation

1. Romanticizing indigenous cultures

1. Abuse of traditional cultural expressions of peoples

1. Unlearned
2. Learning