Towards a Forest-based relational curriculum: Kaiowá memory, care, and more-than-human justice in Brazil

This article develops a forest-based relational (FBRC) curriculum co-created with Kaiowá elders and educators in Brazil. Grounded in collaborative ethnography across Indigenous territory and schools, we weave environmental education, Indigenous science, and more-than-human justice to show how memory and care organise learning as reciprocal obligations among people, forests, and spirit-kin. Methodologically, we combine dialogical fieldwork (participant observation, oral-history walks, and interpretation circles) with a participant-led analytic pathway that links evidence to curricular propositions. Two meta-themes structure the findings—biodiversity as reciprocity and knowledges of care—and orient concrete practices (walking-with, ritual permissions, seed/soil work in kokuê gardens, water stewardship, language-as-habitat, intergenerational induction). We clarify our positionality and the timeline of engagement, emphasising accountability to Kaiowá governance. The article contributes: (i) a conceptual model of a FBRC; (ii) design heuristics for teacher education and classroom/extra-class activities; and (iii) relational evaluation anchors that align with Brazil’s Law 11.645/08. We argue that environmental learning is most transformative when accountable to place, the living forest, and Indigenous self-determination, offering educators situated pathways for reparative, multispecies environmental education.