Since 1995 when the first Conference of the Parties (COP) was held in Berlin, CO2 emissions have increased by 60%. One way to make sense of this irony is that we have focused mainly on technology, as opposed to changing cultural ideologies, and thus individual behaviors/collective practices. Additionally, the areas of emphasis for university research, including those listed for this edited volume (such as “carbon storage” or “using artificial intelligence to support climate forecasts”), are in STEM. In fact, when it comes to research funding from 1990 to 2018, only 0.12% was spent on the social science of climate mitigation (Overland and Savacool, Energy Res Soc Sci 62:101349, 2020). This is even more ironic given that the essential role of indigenous knowledge (IK) (Hernandez et al., PLoS Clim 1(5):e0000032, 2022), combined with other cultural shifts (Lazrus et al., PLoS Clim 1(2):e0000005, 2022), are being increasingly recognized. This chapter therefore critically analyzes ways I, Phoebe, an environmental sociologist, teach and practice aspects of IK (Jacobs, Teaching truly: a curriculum to indigenize mainstream education. Peter Lang, New York, 2013), mindfulness (Berila, Integrating mindfulness into anti-oppression pedagogy: social justice in higher education, 2nd ed. Routledge, London, 2023), radical compassion (Brach 2019), and what I have referred to as intersectional compassionate pedagogy (ICP) (Godfrey et al., J Perspect Appl Acad Pract 6(3):57–65, 2018), as well as several works by other authors as a point of comparison. Exploring the concept of the pluriverse, through collaboration with students and their (our) plura-voices, we place universities within their hierarchical social, political, and economic contexts, while nevertheless offering insights into how radical cultural change, as well as institutional and personal transformation, is happening and can happen in university classrooms.