Abstract: The United Nations and other international bodies now pay growing attention to the disproportionate impact of climate change on Indigenous Peoples, and their role in adaptation and mitigation efforts. Yet despite growing recognition of Indigenous knowledge, there are few specific methodological frameworks to guide the design of community-based programs that weave together Indigenous and Western paradigms of thought. Focusing on the case of the Maya-Achí milpa farmers in Guatemala’s dry corridor, I present methodological principles for such epistemic interweaving, alongside lessons gained from implementation. This methodological framework holds broad relevance to practitioners who seek to ground participatory program design in Indigenous cosmologies.
Speaker's Bio: Michael Bakal is a visiting scholar at UC Santa Cruz and the co-founder of Voces y Manos por el Buen Vivir, a youth empowerment and environmental justice NGO based in the Maya-Achí region of Guatemala. Michael has 18 years of experience working in Guatemala on community-based agroecology, action-research, youth-development, and health promotion projects. Since 2024, Michael has worked with Groundswell International to support the creation of the Maya-Achí Agroecology Network, which aims to scale agroecology throughout the Maya-Achí territory. Trained as a learning scientist, Michael studies teaching and learning processes involved in the campesino-to-campesino model of agroecology promotion. His academic work has been published in Health Promotion International, NPJ-Climate Action, and Mind, Culture, and Activity, and his op-eds have appeared in the Sacramento Bee, Truthout, and the San Francisco Chronicle.