Decolonizing Educational Innovation, Lessons for Equity from Indigenous and Peasant Rights

Introduction

While writing this entry, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 73) in New York adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas on the 17th of December 2018. Only a decade before, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on the 13th of September 2007. Why are these two recent historical events so important in transforming predominant views of innovation and education?

The mass production of goods for food, clothing, transportation, and communication are supported by innovation and creative processes. All these goods require natural resources. However, the exploitation of minerals, oil, and monoculture unleashes profound territorial and social environmental impacts in many diverse regions of the world, inhabited by rural communities and indigenous people. Today’s transnational extractive economy continues the aggressive model of colonialist relationships that characterized...