New Masters of Arts Degree In Indigenous Mind

The New Master of Arts Degree in Indigenous Mind

The new Master of Arts Degree in Indigenous Mind is the only graduate program we know of that is exclusively dedicated to the experiential study of the primordial wisdom of the Indigenous peoples. Developed by Dr. Apela Colorado, founder of the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network, it derives from the most ancient understandings of earth-based wisdom. In contrast to many of the major religious faiths, which tend to teach enlightenment or salvation as a transcendental state to be striven for and attained, the elders of the indigenous peoples have since time immemorial understood embodied wisdom as constituting what we most essentially are, which is to say, it involves restoring us to a state that they recognize as “normal.”

Philosophy and Mission

The Wisdom University Masters program in Indigenous Mind is a continuation of the work Dr. Colorado has been conducting at the graduate level for several decades, since receiving her PhD from Brandeis University in 1984. The mission of the Indigenous Mind program is to re-educate people socialized in Western cultures in their own cultures of origin, promoting an understanding of indigenous and traditional knowledge that is based in their own cultural background.

Many people in Western societies long for a deeper sense of connectedness to others, to the natural world, and to their own ancestral roots. In the recent past, Westerners have frequently looked towards contemporary tribal peoples for personal healing and a new understanding of current world crises. Romanticism, nostalgia, appropriation of indigenous traditions, and adopting the practices of these traditions have often accompanied this yearning for greater personal and social balance.

The process of recovering indigenous mind engages students in a scholarly and personal process designed to heal the dissociation that is characteristic of contemporary Western consciousness. This dissociation has resulted in a perceived split between body and mind, spirit and matter, human and nature, human and human. The fundamental assumption of the Wisdom University Masters Degree in Indigenous Mind is that indigenous consciousness can be recovered, even when it was last present many generations ago. However, such remembering takes time and requires extensive grounding. The help of traditional peoples will be important in the process. This concentration calls together those who have a deep commitment to the challenging work of grounding their life-ways in indigenous consciousness. It serves as a gathering place where rigorous inquiry is strengthened and supported in a community of learners.

Indigenous people and their precious knowledge are disappearing rapidly. Yet most Western scientists and thinkers do not grasp the scientific depth of indigenous knowledge or the meaning of its loss. In learning about their own indigenous roots, students will become capable of understanding research, education, and healing from an indigenous perspective.

Our current ecological, social, and economic crises make it necessary to broaden and deepen the impact and influence of traditional knowledge, to maintain and strengthen the integrity of traditional life-ways, and to use indigenous scientific knowledge to reverse the destruction of the planet. The mission of the Masters Program is to educate students in the recovery of a type of thinking and inquiry that supports a sustainable way of life and promotes a sense of interdependence.

Global Context

The Earth Summit of 1995 and various UNESCO resolutions have affirmed the validity and significance of indigenous knowledge. These statements make it clear that this knowledge has a central role in the survival of our planet. Our new Masters Program is designed to help students shift their fundamental assumptions and perceptions of the world so that their own indigenous knowledge and that of other peoples can be approached in an appropriate way. To accomplish this shift, students are encouraged to study abroad and to work with surviving shamanic practitioners of their own or related cultural background.

Indigenous scientists play an important role in students’ research activities. These scientists consider all of nature to be intelligent and alive, and they interact with nature itself as an active research partner. Indigenous science has a defined process for ensuring its own integrity and validity. It is a holistic science that draws on all the human senses and ways of knowing. It is a science concerned with the balance of all things. Research and scholarship are designed to help students recover the wisdom traditions of their own Indigenous roots and to move beyond an individualistic sense of self towards the indigenous self which remains a potential for all contemporary people.

For further information on the Master of Arts Degree in Indigenous Mind program, please click here.

 

 

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