Abstract
Colonisation of Hokkaido resulted in a double-faceted outcome is depicted by light and shadow. ‘Light’ means that colonisation modernised the nation through rapid economic growth, which brought prosperity to the majority of Wajin Japanese people and the nation. ‘Shadow’ means that this prosperity was achieved through loss of the land‚ resources and society of the Ainu people. Ongoing assimilation and suffering of the Ainu people still exist unrecognised in the everyday life of Hokkaido‚ while most of the Wajin believe nothing ever happened. This chapter illustrates the process of how the socially-critical ESD was infused into the MSN activities from 2010 to 2013. There‚ community educators were to meet Hatakeyama‚ get to know his struggles for his indigenous rights recovery and commit to developing his efforts into collective and collaborative social actions and learning through taking a socially-critical ESD approach.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Sapporo City council developed the education modules for Ainu education for the schools in Sapporo City. Schools in Sapporo City shows the case practices of the primary and junior high schools in Sapporo which have conducted Ainu lessons about traditional salmon fishing, the traditional life practices around salmon and the Ainu’s spiritual connection with salmon (Sapporo City Council, 2017). Ureshipa Club of Sapporo University, which develops Ainu youth to be Ainu educators, has also provided the visiting lectures by Ainu youths on the Ainu culture, such as traditional dance and songs at schools in Sapporo (Sapporo University, 2017).
- 2.
In April 2016, the Ministry of Education made a modification on the statement in the junior secondary school text book regarding the ex-Aboriginal policy on the Ainu people in 1899. The original draft stated, ‘the government enacted the ex-Aboriginal policy in 1899 and took the lands of Ainu, who mostly engaged in hunting and gathering and forced them to engage in agriculture’. The government changed this statement to ‘the government… gave the land to the Ainu people and tried to change their life into the Agriculture-based life’. This modification has been criticised by the media and the AAH, who see it as ‘distortion of the history’ (Kadota, 2015).
- 3.
The supplementary text books on the Ainu people, which were published with the aim of compliment with what was missing in the curriculum, was first published in the 1984 (Shinada, 2010, p. 68). The side readings for the Ainu education have been published by the four organisations, including Hokkaido Education Board, Sapporo City Education Board, Hokkaido Teachers’ Union and Foundation for the Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture.
- 4.
UNESCO categorises Ainu language as ‘critically endangered’ (UNESCO, 2009).
- 5.
There is no appropriate English word to translate ‘tojisha-ishiki (当事者意識)’. This word is often used to describe the degree of commitment of a person to a social and economic issue from which he/she is not directly affected. The online-based Digital-Daijisen Japanese dictionary (Shogakukan Digital-Daijisen, 2017) explains: ‘An understanding that he/she directly related to a particular issue. An awareness to be a part of connected party’. This world could be translated in English as: a person who sees the other’s problem as if his/her problem and feels ‘responsible’ and ‘committed’ to the solution. There is no single word to describe it in English. Thus, I used the original Japanese word in this book.
- 6.
MSN organised learning activities to link the MSN’s Ainu rights movement to schools in Mombetsu and to the global efforts for sustainable development outside Mombetsu. For the school-community linkage, teachers who participated in the MSN workshop organised special classes with Hatakeyama and Close friend A for year six and year eight students at their schools in Mombetsu in 2010 and 2011. In the classes, Hatakeyama shared his life story, and Close friend A taught the colonisation history of Hokkaido and the on-going Ainu issues. The teacher who invited Hatakeyama and Close friend A said that the year three students were still too young to comprehend the complexity of the Ainu issues and the depth of the problems that they have faced historically. He considerd that the ages over year 5–6 seemed appropriate for Ainu study. He also found, however, that it is not easy to conduct Ainu study for these years, as the current primary and secondary school curriculum guidelines do not support these Ainu studies.
- 7.
These included sustainable fishing and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster debris after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.
- 8.
A group of MSN has checked the water quality at six fixed points at Mombetsu River every four months since 2010. Interviews of the local community stakeholders of Mombetsu Museum and Okhotsk Sea Ice Museum were conducted. The literature on the local Ainu history was reviewed to confirm the ancestral roots of Hatakeyama, who is a descendent of a Mombets Ainu elder, Kikenimpa, in the oldest record of Mombetsu (Hokkaido Prefectural Library, 1731).
- 9.
Some members of the MSN had experienced opposition activism against the treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, and the opposition movement against the Narita (Tokyo) International Airport Construction in 1960–1970s. Others had commented on the Minamata Disease problems, and were concerned the science was used as a political and economic tool to support development in Japan, which caused Minamata Disease. Underlying their comments in MSN, they commonly had strong criticisms of the governmental structure and the modernisation process that resulted in a destructive pattern of development.
- 10.
Participants with expertise in the indigenous rights protection and international human rights issues, organised a petition, which collected 56 signatures from the indigenous people’ organisations overseas in 2010. This petition supported these MSN’s policy advocacies, such as local and municipal governments, and the UN Human Rights Council in 2010 (UNGA, 2010).
- 11.
Japanese idiom. This has the same meaning as ‘wake not a sleeping lion’ in English.
- 12.
MSN handed the petitions of over 300 indigenous organisations and individuals in Japan, and from overseas, to Hokkaido Prefectural Government (HPG) and Mombetsu City Government (MCG) (Takenaka, 2010; Yomiuri Shimbun, 2010) and made statements at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) (UNGA, 2010). Sapporo NGO staff A and I organised workshops and forums in Mombetsu, Sapporo and Tokyo to attract the attention and raise understanding of indigenous rights, sustainable fishing and environment and development issues.
- 13.
In a typical year, the entire country generates about 71 million tonnes of household waste and more than 400 million tonnes of industrial waste, according to the Environment Ministry (Makinen, 2011).
- 14.
Responding to their interests, Sapporo NGO staff A and I organised workshops and meetings for MSN to learn about the radiated debris issues in relation to the impact on the natural environment and human health and the indigenous rights protection (MSN, 2012).
- 15.
The arbitration process at HEDCC has to be concluded in one year after the submission of the application.
- 16.
Greenpeace Japan noted that JPY 650,000,000 (approximately AUD 80,000,000) was gained in 2008 from the trade of the whale meat from scientific research (Greenpeace Japan, 2017).
- 17.
Sakuma (2012) argues that the annual average amount of the whale meat consumption per capita is only 23.7 g, which is ‘virtually the same weight as half of a chocolate bar or a slice of ham’ (p. 1).
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Noguchi, F. (2022). Socially-Critical ESD: Light and Shadow. In: Rethinking Education for Sustainable Development in a Local Community Context. Education for Sustainability, vol 6. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9464-6_3
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