Embodying Indigenous Relationalities with Mathematics

Mathematical learning—understanding patterns, logic, and space—always carries ethical, relational, and political dimensions, even though these might be routinely muted at school. At the same time, Indigenous relationalities have often driven mathematics inquiry and optimization. In this paper, we highlight the co-constituted nature of Indigenous relationalities and mathematical learning and how these open up possibilities of helping us mature as humans individually and collectively. Mathematics has long been a part of practices of human maturation and the living of Indigenous relationalities. To illustrate the co-constituted nature of relationalities and mathematics, we share four stories of land-based mathematics from two urban Indigenous schools—Sahasatsuksa School in Chiang Rai, Thailand, and Nawayee Center School in Minneapolis, USA. We illuminate opportunities for human maturation and mathematics learning in four interrelated levels: (1) mathematics to cultivate a fierce love of land, (2) mathematics to regenerate unique intergenerational roles and responsibilities, (3) mathematics to learn how we are related, and (4) mathematics to better understand power in places. In conclusion, Land-based mathematics fundamentally recognizes how Land supports the systematic cultivation and transmission of mathematical knowledge and optimizes ethical learning of what it means to be human. Through these stories, we consider the power and possibility of designing mathematics education towards more relational worlds.