Embodied Local Knowledge and the Rights Recovery of the Ainu

A fisherman, Satoshi Hatakeyama, of Mombetsu, Hokkaido, Japan, professed as Ainu at the age of fifty. Ever since, he has continued the indigenous right recovery activism, in particular, seeking the right that enables him to live as an Ainu fisherman for over twenty years.His thoughts have attracted both Ainu and non-Ainu in/outside of Mombetsu, and they established Mopet Sanctuary Network (MSN) in 2010, which aims to recover the indigenous right in the context of sustainable community development. I have committed to MSN from the perspectives of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). This chapter focuses on the opposition movement by MSN against the construction plan for the final industrial waste treatment facility in Moto-Mombetsu that MSN had poured the energy mostly. In particular, it provides in-depth analysis on the process of the internal conflicts in MSN, by closely looking at what happened internally in Hatakeyama, as a socially marginalised, in terms of knowledge and learning. Finally, the chapter discusses 'structural violence of knowledge paradigms', caused from conflict between two different paradigms, 'embodied local knowledge' and 'modern knowledge', as an introduction of rethinking ESD for the empowerment of socially marginalised, which is essential to achieving sustainable development.