Indigenous Knowledge across the curriculum: An epistemic and cognitive shifting process

Abstract

This chapter, partly informed by the author’s experiences, argues for the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the higher education curriculum in institutions of the Global South. It points out that despite robust debates on it, it has hardly been made part of the curricula in most institutions of the Global South; remaining more of a borderline case. The chapter further asserts that there is lip-service to the cultural diversity of humanity because as relates to knowledge generation and dissemination, the epistemologies of the formerly colonized are peripherized; in most cases not even accepted and acknowledged. One would ask why the world celebrates the diversity of human cultures but fails to embrace the diversity of the globe’s knowledges yet the same cultures in their plurality are products of varied epistemologies. The chapter is therefore a call to all across the disciplines to embrace an epistemic and cognitive or thought shift by accepting that IK is important to curriculum development. It consequently has to be included through curriculum review as part of the academic diet of both instructors and learners. It further asserts that a cognitive shift is possible if there is a deliberate policy to empower faculty and students to appreciate the value of IK that is overshadowed by the epistemic lancer of the Global North that was bequeathed to the former colonies and has up to this day been retained and promoted as the only and real universal knowledge. The chapter concludes that an epistemic and thought shift is only possible if IK itself is made part of the research agenda as well as one of the research methods and methodologies