Decolonising Educational Leadership in Nepal: An Advocacy for Revisiting Eurocentric Legacy and Promoting Epistemic Indigeneity

Colonisation has profoundly shaped education globally, establishing power imbalances, reshaping systems that replace indigenous cultural epistemologies, and contesting local ancestral values that impose imperialist ideologies. This chapter introduces a conceptual framework to decolonise educational leadership and foster inclusivity in Nepal, advocating for epistemic indigeneity through three decolonial approaches: an ecological-emergent approach, an embodied wisdom-based approach, and a self-initiated, agentic approach. Positioned as a cornerstone in the Nepali educational leadership landscape, the proposed framework challenges ingrained beliefs and practices, aiming to preserve and promote indigenous worldviews in school leadership. It suggests a reimagination and restructuring of educational practices, emphasising the preservation of cultural knowledge and local cosmologies, applicable to similar third-world contexts.