Finding Face, Finding Heart, and Finding Foundation: Life Writing and the Transformation of Educational Practice

Abstract

Indigenous epistemologies acknowledge the individual journey of lifelong learning as a pathway, a sacred way of moving toward completeness or fully becoming one’s potential and gifting this essence to the multitude of unique essences which make up our world. In this process one is poised between an environmental ecology and a spiritual ecology (Cajete, 1994). The implicit goal of Finding Face (identity), Finding Heart (passion) and Finding Foundation (vocation) is the destination to which the various pathways of indigenous education ultimately lead (Cajete, 1994). This paper explores autobiographical inquiry in relation to teacher/researcher’s lived experiences of life writing, visual art activities, and action research in the context of indigenous epistemologies.