Weaving Indigenous Mathematics: Bringing Indigenous Ways and Stories into Conversation with Ethnomathematics

In this chapter, we connect with Maya heritage practices alongside Indigenous Elders to show how mathematics, far from being immaterial and disembodied, is deeply experiential, human, and cultural. We draw upon sensory ethnography to explore and analyse alongside Maya Elders’ knowing, sensing, and experiencing through culture-based practices. We are guided by the question: “What can the stories of our Elders tell us about the limitations of our view and treatment of contemporary mathematics, and of teaching and learning?” Observations, conversations, photography, collaborative work, and field notes with Maya Elders over 3 years form our data collection. Two stories of cultural activities are shared: (1) cycles of growing, time, and rotations; and (2) patterns of weaving in scared places. The act of weaving is offered as a metaphor for mathematics, leading us to treat mathematics as a colourful fabric of interlaced historical and cultural fibres that includes woven concepts across space and time, with knowledge preserved within each fibre. This approach to ethnomathematics, we contend, engenders greater awareness of meaningful mathematical heritages and how mathematics is embraced as a living, breathing, sensory, and creative human form of expression through active doing and storywork.