Program
Collaborative Indigenous Programs
Supporting communities in building culturally grounded, academically strong, land-based education programs on their own terms.
What
Indigenous-led land-based learning support
Grow WILDE partners with Indigenous communities, schools, and organizations to support the development of place-based learning environments rooted in local land, language, culture, knowledge, and community priorities.
We do not arrive with a finished curriculum and ask communities to adopt it. We provide tools, training, planning support, infrastructure guidance, and education systems that help communities design, document, assess, and strengthen their own programs while meeting and exceeding regional curriculum expectations.
Vision
Community-led. Place-based. Whole-child. Academically strong.
Indigenous communities already hold the knowledge that matters most: the relationship to place, the stories, the seasonal rhythms, the language, the cultural protocols, the ecological understanding, the values, and the vision for their children.
For many Nations, education is not only intellectual. It is mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. It is connected to family, community, land, identity, responsibility, healing, and future generations.
Our role is to support that work with practical capacity. That may include teacher training, curriculum design support, outdoor school implementation, infrastructure planning, and software that helps educators connect land-based learning to clear academic outcomes, assessment records, and reporting.
The goal is not to standardize Indigenous education. The goal is to help community-led, land-based learning become easier to build, easier to sustain, and easier to recognize within existing school systems and beyond.
Purpose
Our approach
This work begins with relationship, consent, and humility.
We are not consultants arriving with a prescribed model. We aim to build long-term partnerships that support community capacity, growth, and success over time. Each partnership is guided by the community's priorities, leadership, cultural protocols, and definition of success.
Elders, Knowledge Keepers, educators, families, and community leaders determine what knowledge is shared, how it is shared, and what remains protected.
Grow WILDE's role is to provide educational infrastructure, technical tools, training, and implementation support so that Indigenous-led, land-based education can thrive without being forced to choose between cultural depth, holistic development, and academic recognition.
Plan
Why this matters more than ever
Many land-based and culturally grounded programs already offer deep learning. Students are developing identity, confidence, ecological understanding, responsibility, practical skills, language connections, cultural knowledge, emotional strength, physical competence, spiritual grounding, and a stronger relationship to place.
But schools are often still asked to prove that this learning "counts" within provincial or regional systems.
Grow WILDE helps make that learning visible.
By connecting community-led learning to curriculum expectations, assessment evidence, and clear reporting, we help communities demonstrate the academic strength of land-based education without reducing it to conventional classroom models.
The result is education that can be deeply rooted, developmentally whole, and formally recognized.
What we provide
How we support communities
We support educators in designing experiential, land-based learning that connects local knowledge, student development, whole-child growth, and regional curriculum expectations.
Training can include outdoor classroom practice, risk management, assessment, documentation, interdisciplinary planning, and the use of land as a living learning environment.
It can also support educators in designing programs that honour the whole student: mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Each Nation will define these dimensions in its own way, according to its own teachings, language, cultural frameworks, and protocols.
This is not about replacing local ways of teaching. It is about assisting educators to build the confidence, structure, and tools to bring community-led, place-based learning into a school program with academic strength, cultural grounding, and developmental depth.
We support educators in designing experiential, land-based learning that connects local knowledge, student development, whole-child growth, and regional curriculum expectations.
Training can include outdoor classroom practice, risk management, assessment, documentation, interdisciplinary planning, and the use of land as a living learning environment.
It can also support educators in designing programs that honour the whole student: mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Each Nation will define these dimensions in its own way, according to its own teachings, language, cultural frameworks, and protocols.
This is not about replacing local ways of teaching. It is about assisting educators to build the confidence, structure, and tools to bring community-led, place-based learning into a school program with academic strength, cultural grounding, and developmental depth.
Partnership
A partnership model
We work with Indigenous communities, schools, education authorities, and organizations that are interested in developing or strengthening land-based education. A partnership may include the supports below — each one shaped by the community's goals, timelines, protocols, and capacity.
- Teacher training and professional learning
- Curriculum design and planning support
- AI-supported curriculum generation tools
- Regional curriculum alignment
- Assessment and reporting systems
- Whole-child development frameworks
- Outdoor school implementation support
- Risk management and operational planning
- Infrastructure and campus development guidance
- Program design, budgeting, and phased implementation
Knowledge sovereignty
Community knowledge and data governance
Community knowledge remains under community authority. The software does not replace Elders, Knowledge Keepers, teachers, families, or local protocols — it is a planning, alignment, documentation, and assessment tool.
Any cultural materials, language, stories, place-based knowledge, community histories, or teachings entered into the system remain governed by the community's own agreements and protocols. Grow WILDE does not claim ownership over Indigenous knowledge, and community-specific content is never used to build curriculum for other communities without explicit permission.
Any use, storage, adaptation, or publication of community-specific content is guided by written agreements, local protocols, and the direction of the community.
Our commitment
Our commitment
We are here to support communities in building the tools, systems, spaces, and educational capacity to teach what matters most, in ways that honour place, culture, students, families, and academic strength.
Indigenous-led land-based education should not have to sit outside the formal education system to remain authentic. And it should not have to become conventional schooling to be taken seriously.
Grow WILDE helps build the bridge.
Get involved
Ways to support Collaborative Indigenous Programs
Indigenous partners
Guide and co-create programs that strengthen land-based learning for your community's young people.
Co-create with usSchools
Engage respectfully in collaborative partnerships that bring Indigenous ways of knowing into learning.
Learn moreDonors
Support Indigenous-led education initiatives and help reduce barriers to land-based learning.
Support the work