Formabiap’s Indigenous educative community, Peru: a biosocial pedagogy

Abstract

This article provides a descriptive account of the workings of an Indigenous-led teacher training initiative in the Peruvian Amazon (Formabiap) and considers the extent of its transdisciplinary pedagogic approach, with a special focus on the ontological and epistemological stakes of intercultural knowledge exchanges in the context of contemporary global challenges. The article evaluates the extent to which Indigenous pedagogical projects can sustain inter-species relationships that promote a good life in which diverse species, including both humans and plants, can flourish. To extol the potential of Formabiap’s 35 year plus Indigenous rights initiative, the authors forward the notion of biosocial pedagogy, a heuristic device that helps value the consubstantial, and relationally entangled epistemologies of Indigenous Life-worlds.