01.Wellbeing & Nature
Understand how Indigenous women in Oaxaca define, experience, and sustain wellbeing through their lived relationship with the natural environment.
Wisdom Weaving
“We need both ways of knowing: the sharpness of Western science, with its empirical rigor and measurement, and the depth of Indigenous wisdom, which teaches us meaning, relationship, and responsibility. It is the marriage of indigenous teachings of gratitude and reciprocity with the methods of science that will allow us to find a way forward.”
The Core Objective of WONDER
The primary aim of the WONDER project is to explore and weave Western and Indigenous worldviews by co-creating an open, reciprocal space for learning about and with Oaxacan Cosmovisions on personal wellbeing and its deep relationship to the natural world. By engaging directly with Mazateca and Nahua women in Oaxaca, Mexico, this research bridges Indigenous Knowledge Systems with educational and psychological sciences to foster deeper mutual understanding, sustainable care, and community flourishing.
Specific Project Aims & Inquiry
02.Indicators of Quality of Life
Identify community-defined criteria and holistic indicators of what constitutes a flourishing, meaningful life beyond material economic indices.
03.Beliefs, Values & Practices
Examine the narratives, ancestral stories, self-care practices, and ecological rituals that nurture daily psychological and communal health.
04.Learning Spaces & Transmission
Investigate where and how this ancestral knowledge is passed down and preserved in the face of formal schooling that often silences Indigenous ways of knowing.
05.Alternative Sustainability Paradigms
Explore how Indigenous Knowledge Systems challenge extractive development models to offer regenerative perspectives on ecological care.
06.Dialogue with Western Science
Draw lessons from Indigenous wisdom to inform Western educational psychology, mental health policies, and environmental sustainability agendas.
Indigenous Wisdom, Nature and Psychological Wellbeing—One Living System
When you look at Indigenous wisdom, nature and psychological wellbeing aren’t treated as separate concepts—they exist as an interconnected, living whole.
Relational Ontologies (Kinship over Extraction)
You aren’t merely in nature; you are of nature. Many Indigenous worldviews frame non-human elements—rivers, mountains, forests—as family members. Your mental health is therefore deeply tied to the health of the ecosystem. When the land is disrupted, psychological and community disharmony follow.
Reciprocity and Stewardship
Psychological wellbeing comes from balance and shared responsibility, not consumption. Giving back—through rituals, sustainable harvest and ethical land stewardship—creates purpose and belonging, which directly buffers against existential distress and isolation.
Holistic Health Systems
Healing traditions treat psychological suffering as an imbalance in relationships: with oneself, the community, the ancestors and the more-than-human world. Communal practices, storytelling and plant medicines help to realign these relational ties.
Decolonial Resilience and Cultural Continuity
For many Indigenous communities, reconnecting with ancestral land and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is a primary pathway for addressing intergenerational trauma. Cultural continuity—speaking the language that describes the local ecology and practicing traditional food systems—serves as a protective factor against mental illness.
A Global Opportunity
Translating to Global Policy and Science
Bridging this knowledge with modern psychological science offers vital solutions for global crises:
Eco-Anxiety and Solastalgia
Where modern approaches struggle to resolve distress related to climate change, Indigenous models offer frameworks of agency, active grief processing and stewardship.
Planetary Health Frameworks
Global organizations (such as the WHO and UN) increasingly recognize that human mental health cannot be sustained without ecological preservation, echoing what Indigenous knowledge systems have maintained for millennia.
Healthy peopleHealthy communitiesA thriving planet