The Kinship Worldview: Unschooling and Indigenous Spirituality

Introduction

Indians had a staunch belief that the Creator made the world according to a divine plan that gave power from the animal world to our ancestors and now to us… Children, at the early age of six or seven, were continually sent out each night to hunt for a guardian spirit. The child was always instructed never to run away from any animal form or apparition that chose to speak to him or her while on these expeditions hunting for knowledge. A child might find these supernatural powers almost any place: water, cliffs, forest, mountains, remains of lightning- struck trees, animal carcasses, old campfires, or a sacred sweat lodge. The spirits were supposed to appear when they were impressed by the dedication and purity of the persistent seeker (Mourning Dove, 2014, p. 16). 

Spirituality, as defined by Google (Oxford Languages), is “the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.” Although there are other definitions more aligned with the ideas of humans perceiving “something greater than oneself,” the many diverse Indigenous Peoples who have managed to hold on to their traditional worldview would notice the human-centeredness of both definitions. Indigeneity recognizes that we are intricately part of nature. Indigenous spirituality is simply the sacred recognition of oneness. It stems from a “kinship worldview” (Four Arrows & Narvaez, 2022) that understands humans are part of nature. This understanding contrasts with widely accepted ideas in the dominant worldview as reflected in the Cambridge online Dictionary: “Nature refers to all the animals, plants, rocks, etc. in the world and all the features, forces, and processes that happen or exist independently of people, such as the weather, the sea, mountains, the production of young animals or plants.” Our mainstream schools tend to operate according to such a separation of humans from nature.

We use the term “worldview” to refer to how we see and feel about our relationships with nature, metaphysics, and ourselves. Indigenous spirituality is foundational to a nature-based or kinship worldview and feels the world as interconnected, significant, and with sacred energies. Everything from trees and rivers to birds and humans possess a unique reason for being. Each possesses sentience and soul. A kinship exists that calls for responsible interdependence. Prior to formal Western education, which we claim is largely hegemonic, such a spiritual outlook called for holistic knowledge about plant medicine, star knowledge, waterways, and lessons about how to live from local creatures of every kind. It honors one’s territory because it lives and conveys knowledge. The land holds the spiritual energy of ancestors. Being in tune with all this spiritual energy and entering into dialogue with it through praying, singing, music, art, vision questing, ceremony, personal vitality, and generosity defined a way of being in the world.

In the text, Teaching Virtues: Building Character Across the Curriculum (Jacobs & Jacobs-Spencer, 2001), we attempted to bring virtues like generosity, patience, courage, fortitude, humility, and honesty into all subject areas. We knew then that what we were asking teachers to do would be challenging within the state-structured curricula requirements. Today, we feel that “unschooling” has more potential for cultivating the spiritual realizations that make children whole. Many families choose to unschool their children, allowing children to spend their days playing, connecting deeply to nature, reading, tinkering, making art, participating in sport, and writing; all directed by their own quest for knowledge and, ultimately, better preparing them for college compared to their mainstream schooled peers. “Unschooling, also known as autonomous, child-led or delight-directed learning, has spread across the world from its inception in the counterculture of 1970s America” (Parks, 2016, p.1).

It is important to note that unschooling differs from homeschool, which is often just mainstream school done at home. Unschooling is natural learning, often experienced based. It is also known as self-directed or independent learning. The theory of unschooling is rooted in the idea that children learn naturally until they are forced to “learn” and then they often turn off to school. Sir Ken Robison explains,