Building Environmental Literacy through Holistic Storytelling

Today, technology delivers information related to our environment, but not the skills of how to form knowledge and wisdom when too much data is available due to technology. Therefore, many environmental problems persist for decades as researchers explore one narrow aspect of the problem, and do not recognize problem interconnectivities. This fosters environmental illiteracy in the environmental decision process. In contrast, the holistic knowledge-forming process of Indigenous People teach their youth to form holistic knowledge of nature and to realize that their decisions may impact 7 generations of their tribe. This prepares each tribal member to be part of the community-level decision process. Therefore, the concept of STEM science learning should be expanded to include Indigenous STEAM (iSTEAM) to help build environmental literacy.

Keywords:Too much environmental information; Decontextualized management; Indigenous and Local knowledge; Holistic stories; Wisdom deprivation; Indigenous STEAM