The colonizers are undermining indigenous knowledge in educational settings, marginalizing the knowledge created by indigenous communities

Akena 12 Akena Adyanga (PhD.) is a Senior Lecturer at Kabale University and also, the Dean Faculty of Education. He obtained his PhD. from the University of Toronto in 2014. In 2015, he taught at the University of Toronto and was later a postdoctoral fellow at the College of Education, University of South Africa (UNISA) Pretoria in 2016/2017. He has been a teacher with the York Region District School Board (YRDSB) in Toronto from 2011 – 2016. (Francis., “Critical Analysis of the Production of Western Knowledge and Its Implications for Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonization”, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 43, No. 6, September 2012, pp. 599-619, DOI: 1 0. 1 1 77/002 1 9347 1 2440448, Accessed on JSTOR via University of Michigan Library System, DOA: 6/27/24)//LFS – LMH

Implications of Western Knowledge Production on Indigenous Knowledge The discussions related to Western knowledge production and its implications to indigenous knowledge are so crucial since we commonly view formal education as sites in which knowledge is produced and transmitted to learners from teachers, academic literatures, and other materials. Wotherspoon (2004) elaborates that we must recognize that knowledge is not only disseminated, but also produced, in educational settings. Participants at all levels of the educational system contribute to knowledge production in a variety of ways through discussions, problem solving, and engagement in everyday activities. Knowledge is shaped not only as it is continuously interpreted, processed, and reinterpreted in the interactions among instructors and learners in educational settings but also through the experiences and understandings brought in from outside schooling. When knowledge is produced by an external actor and imposed on an educational system or society, it becomes biased and negatively influences the indigenous knowledge of a people; this external imposition is disempowering and colonizing. In a similar vein, "the production of knowledge, new knowledge and transformed 'old' knowledge by the colonizers" becomes a commodity of colonial exploitation (Smith, 1999, p. 59). This negative interaction between Western knowledge imposed on an indigenous cosmology tends to undermine the norms, values, and gendered contexts that maintain morality and harmony. Unfortunately, in the contemporary education system, Western knowledge does not give indigenous knowledge any considerable credibility, thus intellectually marginalizing it. This is because individual knowledge reproducers in society impose their project on other societies and educational systems by reproducing subjective, repressive knowledge. The imposition by individual knowledge producers detrimentally affects the society by ignoring the basic principles of indigenous knowledge, which are the foundation of indigenous societies. To remedy this apparent oversight in African societies, Shockley and Frederick (2010) identify seven fundamental constructs or principles of Afrocentric education thus: Identity - the importance of identifying the Black child as an African; Pan-Africanism - the idea that all Black people in the world are Africans; African culture - the long standing tradition of Blacks using African culture to sustain themselves and bring order to their lives and communities; African values adoption and transmission - inclusion of an African ethos into educational process for Black children; Black nationalism - the idea that Blacks, regardless of their specific location, constitute a "nation"; community control with institution building - the ability to make important decisions about the institutions that exist in one's community; and education as opposed to schooling - education is the process of imparting on children all things they need to provide leadership within their communities and within their nation, while schooling is a training process, (p. 1214) To understand how deeply a system of knowledge may be influenced by the individual and the society, I will illuminate how Western knowledge was entrenched through formal education in Uganda. Also, the implications of Western knowledge production on indigenous knowledge during colonial times in Uganda are examined.