what does "gikinawaabiwin" mean?

Hello frens. The title of this post includes the word "gikinawaabiwin," which means "learning by seeing" (as a noun) in Ojibwe. This is the title I came up with for a poem I wrote recently. I won't share the whole poem, only the first few stanzas here. If you guys remember my post on knowledge acquisition, it's basically a poetic version of the themes I discussed in it. Here is the post I'm referring to: https://freyathefrypan.blogspot.com/2024/09/when-you-want-to-acquire-more-knowledge.html

Here are the first three stanzas of my poem :) and honestly, since the rest of the stanzas suck I think I'm just going to leave it at this and say this is the final version:

I met disciples in an ashram on the edge of the jungle 

who said they sought moksha and spent their days 

fasting, praying, meditating, 

But in twenty-five years of abnegation 

they still had not received a vision, 

Their souls had not been liberated 

and they seemed to live in fear of the world. 

I met black-robed scholars who thought that Knowledge 

was something one could conquer, 

It was what they sought to master, 

They thought Nature’s secrets could be wrested from her 

that Wisdom would visit them during their candle-lit study in their stone towers, 

But She never came 

And they did not feel the Sun’s warmth in a year. 

In Mikinaakominis, Knowledge surrounded me 

in a land where the branches of evergreen trees 

looked like peacock feathers to me when I first beheld them, 

In Anishinaabewaki, the land is a teacher 

if one is willing to learn by seeing.

--

I am quite happy with this, especially with the second stanza which I consider to be a banger. 

When you want to acquire more knowledge

This is really random but I find it interesting how attitudes toward knowledge acquisition vary across cultures. You have scientists from Renaissance Europe saying things like "poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master" (Leonardo da Vinci) and "science had to torture nature's secrets out of her" (Francis Bacon). The first one sounds pretty based and epic and motivated me throughout my masters degree if I'm going to be honest. The second one sounds very extractive, like it is making the earth submit to your will and curiosity. 

"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master" is very different from something that my mom would always quote to me in Hindi. This was गुरु गोविन्द दोऊ खड़े काको लागूं पायं। बलिहारी गुरु आपने जिन गोविन्द दियो बताय | The speaker of this line is wondering if he should touch the feet of Govind first (a name of the god Krishna) or his guru's (his teacher). Touching someone's feet is a sign of respect in Indian culture. He touches his teacher's feet because he was the one who told him about the god. The teacher is above the god here.

Also I have been reading about Anishinaabe culture and they believe learning can not happen without humility. There is no such thing as an "expert" on anything because we all have so much to learn, and this rejects the European concept that we can have mastery over something. We also can not learn without experiencing the world, interacting with nature and maintaining our holistic well-being. This is different from the European idea of a scholar who stays inside and reads all day and never touches grass. Native people touch more grass than Europeans do. There is also a retelling of a traditional story by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson where she says that the Anishinaabe learned about maple syrup (ninaatigo-ziiwaamigide in Anishinaabemowin I think, idk I am still learning it and I will never master it) from a child and that child learned it from observing a chipmunk. It really shows humility if you believe you can learn something from a child and from nature!! 

Anyway I think someone smarter than me should write about pedagogical approaches in different cultures. Also, the British patterned education is probably terrible for learning outcomes and the well-being of students.