Full Issue

Abstract

The complex and intensifying ecological challenges of the 21 st century call for new ways of thinking, being, and doing in all sectors of our society, including early childhood education, and the Aboriginal environmental humanities offer alternative ways of being present and acting in the world. Accordingly, in September 2014 we gathered for three days in Victoria, British Columbia, with leading Indigenous and environmental humanities scholars and a group of 40 early childhood scholars, educators, and students to mobilize these perspectives in the early education of young children. This special issue presents eight articles inspired by the conversations that took place at the "Learning How to Inherit in Colonized and Ecologically Challenged Life Worlds" symposium. 1 Like the articles in this special issue, the symposium covered topics such as place and agency in Indigenous cosmologies, Canada's waste legacies, cohabiting with other species in a time of mass extinctions, and Indigenous modes of inheritance, from new to old in a time of immateriality and precarity. 2 Early childhood scholars and educators (including the authors in this special issue) considered how they might respond to these issues in their work with young children within their local "common world" environments by addressing: