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Indigenous knowledge is approached as an adaptive and responsive sphere of Mother Tongue meaningmaking and innovation, an indigenous epistemic capital that has been marginalised by continuing colonial modernity and an associated urbanisation in Africa. The exclusionary and epistemicidal impacts of colonialisation and the hegemony of meanings imposed in a westernised curriculum have played out as a double blow impeding many learners from relating knowledge to the world they live in and achieving their potential in the sciences. Research on indigenous knowledge and schooling is reviewed to critically explore this premise. A dissonance between prevailing theory, changing socio-cultural realities and diversity in urban classroom contexts is also probed. This enabled us to contemplate a Mother Tongue re-appropriation of heritage practices amongst teachers, their learners and parents as urban custodians of indigenous knowledge and to work with this as situated heritage practices for working with the modern scientific knowledge in the school curriculum to contemplate future sustainability. Mother Tongue re-appropriation is thus proposed as a starting point for a research collaboration to enhance epistemological access to decontextualised scientific knowledge in the curriculum and for exploring how this might be achieved in ways that open up a ‘third space’ of empowering socio-cultural innovation through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Orientating background Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) are seldom reflected as a dynamic outcome of situated processes of continuing knowledge generation and innovation in response to changing sociocultural and ecological conditions (Mavuru & Ramnarain, 2017). According to Mavuru and Ramnarain (2017), incorporation of learners’ socio-cultural background creates authentic learning opportunities. It is recognised, however, that many intellectual discourses tend to represent IKS as situated systems that stand opposed to the ongoing hegemony of westernised science. The dialectical relationship here is commonly informed by the dialectic of critical theory and reflects a history of colonial conflict where westernised science appropriated indigenous knowledge, giving rise to global epistemicide (Barreto, 2014; Fataar, 2018). Critical realism, as a recent expansion of the 20th century critical project (Lotz-Sisitka, 2015) notes how different cultures can operate in the same space within a plural knowledge environment. We believe that the plurality of knowledges allows continuing critical projects to represent subjugated knowledges, reflect on epistemicide and contemplate learning across plural epistemic dispositions in a changing world. Plurality also promotes inter-epistemological dialogue, thereby creating epistemological access for indigenous learners and enabling reciprocal valorisation among the different epistemes in areas of resonance (Shava, 2016). 2 Southern African Journal of Environmental Education | VOLUME 35 (2019) ISSN 2411-5959 | DOI 10.4314/sajee.v35i1.9 Contemplating a third space In exploring these insights, we have drawn on Homi Bhabha (1994), who notes that subjugated knowledges can engage western cultural domination in post-modernity in a ‘third space’. Following an extensive review of indigenous knowledge practices and social innovations, an open-ended ‘third space’ became apparent within dialectical processes of social innovation across indigenous knowledge practices and scientific knowledge in complex constellations of risk (O’Donoghue, Shava & Zazu, 2013). Figure 1 below reflects this as an open-ended dialogical process where Mother Tongue participants work together to ‘bring out’ and explore situated heritage practices. Working with these, they can also ‘bring-in’ modern institutional knowledge in a bridging process to open up a ‘third space’ within which to ‘bring about’ change for the common good (Lotz-Sisitka, 2017). Figure 1. Adaptive transformation in indigenous knowledge practices Source: Adapted from O’Donoghue (2015) Social innovation work in a collaborative sustainability commons project provided insight into the adaptive knowledge systems of indigenous peoples in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Here it was observed that, within modernist change and despite processes of appropriating marginalisation, many indigenous knowledge practices continue to be dynamic and responsive in changing times. Shava (2000) and Asafo-Adjei (2004) have noted how imifino (traditional leafy vegetables) have come to include numerous globally distributed naturalised plant migrants but with an unfortunate reduction in the use of indigenous species (Mtshali, 1994). The same innovative cultural processes are true of most indigenous knowledge practices related to fermentation (Hanisi, 2006; Kota, 2006; Mutanho, 2016), along with traditional composting (Izala – Zulu; Ethuthwini – Xhosa), as well as similar ways adaptations to climate variability (as in the Xhosa cultivation practice of gelesha) (O’Donoghue, Shava & Zazu, 2013). RESEARCH PAPER 3 ESD at the problem-posing nexus of re-appropriated heritage practices and the science curriculum Epistemicide and lack of epistemological and ontological access as barriers to learning Alongside this evidence of adaptive knowledge transformation, most indigenous knowledge practices have receded in rural areas and have in many cases been lost to urban indigenous populations due to exposure to western livelihood systems and practices. In this way, current urban indigenous generations have suffered a double blow as a result of the lack of exposure to their knowledge heritage along with the experiential cultural capital to be able to successfully access the abstractions of modern scientific curriculum knowledge. Odora-Hoppers pointed to these intertwined processes of exclusion flowing from colonialism, when she noted to us1 that one of the major barriers to indigenous students’ success in science is their inability to recognise the knowledge as belonging to their socio-cultural and contextual heritage (Mavuru & Ramanarain, 2017; Odora-Hoppers, 2002; Webb, 2013). This invariably points to indigenous students’ lack of epistemological access to westernised and decontextualised scientific concepts in formal education processes. Breidlid (2012:7) expands the scope of the problem with reference to the Xhosa by noting that: Since Xhosa pupils originate in an environment where knowledge is linked to spirituality, the encounter with modern schooling and the rationality of western epistemic hegemony2 is often problematic. The potential lack of recognition of their own epistemological and spiritual background impedes the development of the pupils’ full potential. In support of these assertions, it is evident that much of the current ecological and botanical knowledge in the sciences was appropriated by early scientists within early western hegemonic trajectories of knowledge generation in interactions with indigenous peoples’ knowledge and practices (Shava, 2008). Most of this epistemicidal appropriation developed with little (if any) acknowledgement and much without a full grasp of important contextual detail (Fataar, 2018). In this way, the full value of indigenous knowledges has been lost to indigenous peoples and the modern sciences, sometimes with an attendant lack of insight that results in a poor grasp of factors that are contributing to some of the current environmental problems that we face in a modern world. For example, gelesha (the practice of winter ploughing) was overlooked and reflected as a mystical practice associated with the rise of the Orion Belt rather than being exemplified as a water conservation practice to buffer the late onset of the summer rains. Emerging dissonance between theory and the modern classroom context In his study of the Xhosa in the context of the South African curriculum, Breidlid (2012:4) cautious against essentialism and in summary he notes that there are certain basic features of Xhosa cultural values, indigenous knowledges and identity construction which reoccur and which seem to cut across location, age group and gender. 4 Southern African Journal of Environmental Education | VOLUME 35 (2019) ISSN 2411-5959 | DOI 10.4314/sajee.v35i1.9 He also states that the findings of his study ‘fit well with the literature in the field’ (2012:4), so it was notable that his analytical inscriptions did not resonate with being Xhosa for student teachers reading his dialectical analysis of the South African curriculum context since 1994. The dissonance in the student responses surfaced contradictions and tensions across the academic theory and the life and work experiences of young Xhosa students in a changing world. A key point to emerge was that the Xhosa are diverse, that there are notable differences between rural and urban areas, with the latter being most diverse and reflecting change with young people aspiring to be modern and not seeing this in conflict with being Xhosa (Webb, 2013). The Breidlid discourse was useful for provoking deliberation on a wide number of curriculum and cultural propositions. Here the theory did not fit with the student teacher experiences of schooling or with the challenges of accommodating cultural diversity within complex and changing socio-cultural contexts of their classrooms (Cocks, Alexander & Dold, 2012; Mavuru & Ramnarain, 2017; O’Donoghue, Lotz-Sisitka, Asofo-Adjei, Kota & Hanisi, 2007). To this end, Cocks et al. (2012) propose that there is a need for cultural revitalisation. Masuku van Damme and Neluvhalani (2004) point to the westernised education system creating schizophrenic citizens due to its separation of indigenous learners’ lived world and the decontextualised formal learning world processes. This is also alluded to by Lizop (in Ki-Zerbo, Kane, Archibald, Lizop & Rahnema, 1997) and Odora-Hoppers (2001) who describe how the western education system alienates learners f

Education for Sustainable Development at the problem-posing nexus of re-appropriated heritage practices and the science curriculum