Wahkohtowin is a Cree concept, presented here through the work of Dwayne Donald, a Papaschase Cree scholar at the University of Alberta, in ‘Homo Economicus and Forgetful Curriculum: Remembering Other Ways to Be a Human Being’ (2012).
It teaches that, as human beings, we are enmeshed in a series of relationships — human and more-than-human — that give us life.
“The model of a real human being that wahkohtowin provides is one who acknowledges those relationships daily and strives to live in ways that sustains them. To do otherwise is to act against life and the survival of those relational networks.”
— Dwayne Donald
Donald’s argument is that curriculum built on homo economicus — the self-interested individual of economic theory — actively forgets this, and that remembering it is an educational and ethical task rather than a metaphorical one.
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