Biden has already put regulations in place requiring "Indigenous knowledge" to be included in land use decisions and medical education, so why not this?

stand clear of that bridge!

Decolonizing Math

Davis Strom:

“Math is now racist. 

“At least that is what is being argued at the Australian National University, and they aim to do something about that. It's time we drop the White cisgendered heteronormative numbers-focused math and get down to some witch-doctor driven engineering.”

What constitutes mathematical knowledge? What is included in mathematics? Who gets to decide? These are some of the questions being asked in a growing decolonisation movement.

“Mathematics is a universal human phenomenon, and students of under-represented and minority groups and colonised peoples are starting to be more critical about accepting unquestioningly the cultural hegemony of mainstream European-based mathematics,” says Professor Rowena Ball from the ANU Mathematical Sciences Institute.

Professor Ball leads a research and teaching initiative called Mathematics Without Borders, aimed at broadening and diversifying the cultural base and content of mathematics.

“Mathematics has been gatekept by the West and defined to exclude entire cultures. Almost all mathematics that students have ever come across is European-based,” she explains. “We would like to enrich the discipline through the inclusion of cross-cultural mathematics.”

“Indigenous and First Nations peoples around the world are standing up and saying: ‘Our knowledge is just as good as anybody else's − why can't we teach it to our children in our schools, and in our own way?’

“And this is happening in New Zealand, North and South America, and Africa, and also in a great movement in India to revive traditional Indian mathematics.”

“Do not tell me 2 + 2 equals 4! The winds tells me they are 7 — or maybe 10 — well, we’ll have to ask a kangaroo.”