Education plays a key role in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, not only by transmitting knowledge, but by grounding learning in lived practice, place, and relationships. Intangible cultural heritage provides context-specific content through which learners can engage meaningfully with history, ecology, ethics, and community values, while ICH-based pedagogy enhances the relevance and quality of education and strengthens learning outcomes. The 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage explicitly recognizes “transmission, particularly through formal and non-formal education,” as a core safeguarding measure. Building on this framework, our Chairship explores the relationship between ICH-based pedagogies and learning outcomes and promotes learning and teaching with and about intangible heritage across disciplines and educational levels through experiential learning, active pedagogy, research, and praxis.
A central feature of this approach is hands-on, experiential learning developed in close collaboration with Elders, knowledge-holders, and community organizations. One example is the Moosehide Tanning class, which intentionally combined theoretical foundations of ICH safeguarding with the embodied practice of tanning moose and deer hides in the Dakelh way, guided by several Elders. Students learned not only technical skills, but also protocols, language, intergenerational ethics, and relationships to land and animals, demonstrating how heritage knowledge is carried in practice rather than abstract instruction alone. Similarly, an experiential course on Food Systems examined global challenges related to foodways alongside culinary heritage and boreal food systems. Learning activities included smoking fish in the Dakelh style, gardening at Le Cercle des Canadiens Français de Prince George, hunting rabbits, and identifying early-spring foods in boreal forest ecosystems—linking sustainability, food sovereignty, and cultural continuity.
These experiences are complemented by classroom-based courses such as Folklore and Cultural Heritage, where students engage with ICH theory and diverse international case studies through interdisciplinary and cross-cultural lenses, and a course on Heritage Languages that provides a multidisciplinary overview of linguicide, assimilation, linguistic diversity, safeguarding, revitalization, and intergenerational transmission. Together, these courses emphasize education in heritage languages, multilingual learning, and ICH-inspired technical and vocational training. Through this integrated model, young people and adults are supported in drawing on the heritage of their own communities to develop skills for sustainable livelihoods while strengthening the transmission of intangible cultural heritage across generations.
