Language, Geography Education, and Critical Placemaking: View From an Indigenous Scholar

In converging geographic knowledge, words matter because they contribute to placemaking. Language primes how people learn from and interact with their surroundings. Indigenous groups tend to be particularly aware of how words help, harm, preserve, erase, empower, or undermine a culture’s connection to the land. The present commentary weaves together the lived experience of an Indigenous scholar, reflecting on how critical theory and Indigenous ways of knowing can inform strategies for geography educators to investigate, interpret, and teach about people-place relations. Thoughts and resources outlined in this paper may be channeled into lesson plan development, research agendas, scholarly dialogues, and actions that work to advance human dignity. Concluding the discussion is an overview of big questions for geography education, from an Indigenous scholar’s point of view.