Decolonising Environmental Education: Forest Narratives in Sheela Tomy’s Valli (2022)

Abstract

The discourse on decolonising environmental education necessitates a critical engagement with Indigenous epistemologies and narratives that challenge dominant, Eurocentric paradigms of ecological knowledge. Sheela Tomy’s Valli (2022) offers a compelling literary intervention in this context, concentrating forest narratives and subverting colonial legacies of environmental exploitation. The analysis positions Valli as a narrative intervention that centres the Adivasi communities of Kerala’s Wayanad district. The fiction portrays the forest as a sentient, sovereign entity, challenging colonial and post-colonial forest policies that commodified nature through timber extraction and plantations, leading to ecological ruin and displacement. Guided by the insights of decolonial theorists such as Walter Mignolo, Arturo Escobar and Vandana Shiva, the article demonstrates how the fiction leverages folklore and testimony to validate oral histories, presenting them as crucial for understanding ecological crises. Valli enacts a pedagogical project that recentres Indigenous knowledge, aligning with environmental justice movements. The article concludes that decolonising environmental education requires fundamental ontological shift from human domination to coexistence. It advocates for a pedagogical model, exemplified by the fictional Kadoram school, which integrates Indigenous knowledge, advances multispecies empathy and recognises the land as a co-instructor. This approach thereby fosters pluriversality and a sustainable environmental ethic.