Indigenous knowledge andnavigating the rising tides of climate change and other existential threats

Existential threats to Indigenous People’s lands, cultures, and languages are exacerbated and intensified by climate change and its effects, particularly to those groups deeply connected to natural systems. Through five case vignettes situated in Alaska, Yap State, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands, this paper describes adaptive responses at the intersection of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and climate change. Though their locations, history, and customs vary, they share an underlying similarity in the urgency expressed for their Traditional Ecological Knowledge to be part of a response that leads to sustainability. Navigating these rising and turbulent waters requires new ways of thinking, political will, governmental leadership, and values commensurate with harmonious living. To write this paper required a significant change in a paradigm that guided my work in ethnomathematics from the school context to the larger social-cultural-ecological systems