Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part D (2025)

One such community, the Dongaria Kandha people, an Indigenous community belonging to the Niyamgiri Hills, Chatikona, Rayagada District of Odisha, India, has accumulated a rich traditional knowledge system as an integral part of their livelihood system. The paper explores the Indigenous educational system of the Dongaria Kandha, focusing on the methods of transmission of knowledge across generations through oral traditions, folk narratives, caste specific rituals, apprenticeship, and association with nature. Unlike mainstream education, which often stresses intellectual regimentation, Dongaria Kandha education is about holistic learning, the ethos of sustainability, understanding the web of life, spirituality, and social responsibilities. They have the knowledge about agriculture, herbal medicine, forest conservation, and artisan way of living on one side, which is one of the major dimensions of deep ecological wisdom and sustainability, around which the study revolves. But due to modernisation, deforestation, and intervention from outside, the Indigenous educational system of the Dongaria Kandha is being threatened. The effects of globalization and modernization are taken into account in the transmission of Indigenous knowledge, including the tribal sustainable practices and the prospects of the future of the practices that will lead to the local tribal community development and sustainable development in general, which inspire academic thought and studies. Modelling upon international comparative models, the research presents policy recommendations at the national and regional levels, sensitive to the significance of Indigenous knowledge in promoting conservation and sustainability. Community involvement, policy backing and making use of digital media for documentation are necessary, the study suggests, in the effort to retain what is being passed on by the Dongaria Kandha. The study calls for an education system where alternative pedagogical traditions of the Indigenous communities are respected and adopted, and thus, the demand for the knowledge of the Dongaria Kandha community remains for posterity.