How Forest School Principles Open the Doorway to Indigenous Communal Living and Learning

In an age shaped by standardised testing, performance metrics, and linear developmental theories, Forest School pedagogy offers a quiet but radical alternative. At its heart, Forest School is not simply about outdoor learning, it’s about reimagining how we grow, relate, and thrive. It reflects principles long lived by Indigenous communities: communal care, deep autonomy, and sacred connection to land.

Forest School invites us to question many of the developmental models we take for granted, including one of the most influential psychological frameworks of the 20th century: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs- but what if Maslow had it all wrong?

Maslow’s Hierarchy: What He Missed After Visiting the Blackfoot Nation

While researching Indigenous perspectives on development and learning, I came across a revelatory article exploring Abraham Maslow’s visit to the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi) people in Alberta, Canada in the 1930s. Having previously engaged with Maslow’s theory in Forest School contexts — especially around behaviour and motivation — I found this new understanding both eye-opening and humbling.

Maslow’s 'Hierarchy of Needs' is often presented as a universal model of human motivation, placing basic survival needs at the base and 'self-actualisation', the realisation of one’s full potential, at the top. But the story behind the model is far more complex.

According to Tanaka (2016), Maslow developed key aspects of his theory while spending time with the Blackfoot. However, he may have misinterpreted or reframed what he observed. In Blackfoot worldview, self-actualisation was not the peak of a life’s journey — it was the foundation. It was nurtured from birth, embedded in community life, and sustained by reciprocal relationships with others and the land.

Whereas Maslow's hierarchy reflects a linear, individualistic ascent, the Blackfoot philosophy emphasises wholeness and collective wellbeing from the start. Children are seen as inherently wise, autonomous beings. Community and spirituality aren't luxuries that come later, they are the ground on which life unfolds. As researchers Sherman, Nave, and Funder (2020) argue, Maslow’s eventual model aligns more with Western capitalist values than the Indigenous insights that initially inspired him.

Indigenous Wisdom and the Challenge to Western Developmental Thinking

What if we restructured Maslow’s pyramid altogether? What if, instead of climbing toward worth, we began life with an understanding that we are already whole — and that community is the vessel that sustains that wholeness?

This is the reality in many Indigenous cultures, where children are not seen as empty vessels to be filled, but as knowledge keepers — deeply connected to land, spirit, and ancestry. Their development is not measured by external achievement, but by their ability to stay in right relationship, with others, with the earth, and with themselves.

Leroy Little Bear (2000), Blackfoot scholar and educator, describes Indigenous worldviews as cyclical and relational, not hierarchical or linear. Learning is not a ladder but a rhythm, guided by balance, renewal, and reciprocity.

This contrasts sharply with the Western assumption that children must first secure safety and order before they can express creativity, agency, or moral insight. In many Indigenous cultures, children are spiritually and socially valued from birth, entrusted with responsibilities and treated with deep respect.

Peter Gray and the Wisdom of Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods

These insights are echoed in the work of psychologist Peter Gray, who has extensively studied how children learn in hunter-gatherer societies. In Free to Learn (2013), Gray describes cultures in which children:

• Are granted complete freedom to explore their interests.

• Are trusted as autonomous and capable.

• Learn in multi-age, collaborative groups.

• Are supported by non-punitive, modelling adults.

  
  

Among groups like the Hadza of Tanzania and the Kung of the Kalahari, Gray found no concept of childhood as deficiency or immaturity. Children are already whole, already participating. Development is not something done to them, but something that unfolds through relationship, freedom, and play.

This aligns beautifully with good Forest School practice, where children are not managed or moulded but supported and honoured. Gray’s research reinforces the idea that children, when given trust, space, and communal belonging, naturally move toward wellbeing, not because they climb a hierarchy, but because they are immersed in one of care.

Forest School: A Modern Path to Ancient Wisdom?

This is where Forest School pedagogy becomes truly transformative. It can offer a contemporary path back to ancestral knowing, a way of being that modern Western systems have largely forgotten. In Forest School:

• Children lead their own learning, guided by curiosity.

• Emotional safety comes from non-judgmental community, not compliance.

• Connection to land, risk, and play cultivates resilience, empathy, and joy.

• Adults act not as authorities, but as facilitators and co-learners.

  
  

As a Forest School leader I have seen this in practice: in muddy boots and wild laughter, in the quiet confidence of a child choosing when and how to climb, play, question, or rest. Forest School provides a space where children begin as self-actualised, and are simply held there, lovingly and patiently, by the rhythms of the forest and the warmth of community. This is not just an educational alternative. It is a cultural remembering.

Returning to What We Already Knew

As we navigate modern crises in mental health, education, and nature disconnection, perhaps the answers don’t lie in revising hierarchies or climbing faster. Perhaps they lie in the realisation that there is no ladder to climb, only a circle to return to, a web of care, a forest clearing where we are already enough.

Forest School invites us to remember what Indigenous cultures have never forgotten: that growth is communal, that children are whole, and that learning is life, not preparation for it. As we move together with the rythms of nature may we listen to the land, honour the children we hold space for and most importantly let us be reminded of the wisdom of those who never stopped knowing.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to join the conversation in the comments below—your questions, stories, and perspectives are always welcome. Whether we agree or not, every discussion adds depth to these conversations, and respectful dialogue is what makes this space truly valuable.

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Key References

• Gray, Peter. Free to Learn. Basic Books, 2013.

• Tanaka, M. T. (2016). “Maslow and the Blackfoot: Revisiting Indigenous Influences on Humanistic Psychology.”

• Sherman, R. A., Nave, C. S., & Funder, D. C. (2020). “Reflections on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” Frontiers in Psychology.

• Little Bear, L. (2000). “Jagged Worldviews Colliding.” In Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. M. Battiste.

• Donald, Dwayne. (2012). “Indigenous Métissage.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society.