Environmental Activism for “Common Home”: Through the Documentary “My Octopus Teacher”

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of knowledge processes interconnected with two main perspectives, the so-called Euro-American scientific way and the indigenous ways. Taking these two different perspectives, we will revisit the concept of environmental education. We explore how environmental education can benefit from indigenous ways of knowing. While doing so, we will draw on a documentary film-based example, “My Octopus Teacher,” to articulate activism for environmental education. Here, activism could be enhanced and interpreted from the critical thinking dispositions perspective. Activism is then considered a stimulus for environmental education and education for sustainable development issues. This documentary exemplifies by viewing how “to know,” as verb-based knowledge integral to indigenous ways of being, as particular ways of living with nature, can provide deeper meanings to activism in education for sustainability.