The Science dept at Australia's most prestigious university, is now offering a course in "Indigenous Mathematics," in an effort to "decolonise maths."
"Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics."https://t.co/hw4DLFy0nt
— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) April 16, 2024
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From the article:
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?’
Answers on a postcard please.
Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics.
“In fact, as most mathematicians know, mathematics is primarily the science of patterns and periodicities and symmetries − and recognising and classifying those patterns.”
Indigenous societies often excel at non-numerical mathematics, she says.
Aka, non-mathematical mathematics.
Mick Hartley 
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