Dendrel in Everyday Tibetan Life as a Process of Critical Indigenous Education

The ways of recognizing, witnessing, and celebrating moments of dendrel in Tibetan everyday life can be understood as a process of Land education, which entails active engagement with the natural world and being deeply informed by systems of intergenerational place-based relationships and knowledge. The natural or the more- than-human world, including animals, plants, stars, and rainbows, participates in delivering the signs of dendrel, while Indigenous knowledge teaches us the ways to attend to and understand such moments of tendrel alignment. In this paper, I explore examples of everyday Tibetan practices (songs and ceremonies) of dendrel to argue how such ways make for a process of critical Indigenous education. This can refocus Tibetan attention to their Land and traditions as active and dynamic encounters with the living world. I understand such ways of observing dendrel and living by its logics as contributing to educational freedom and community empowerment.