What is the Indigenous Learning Company?
Tell me, and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand.
The Indigenous Learning Company – ILC – is a different kind of educational publishing company.
How?Almost 70% of the educational materials in North American classrooms are published by five huge companies, with little if any Minority representation on their boards or among their senior management. ILC is an innovative competitor to the big boys. ILC and all our affiliated companies are owned and controlled by Native North Americans.
It’s the Age of Google. Of Skype and Yahoo and YouTube. And yet almost 95% of our kids’ learning materials are still textbooks. Expensive, often out of date, and just as often culturally inappropriate textbooks. ILC publishes all its material on the web. This makes it possible to pay attention to specific languages and cultures and curricula without breaking the bank. Keeping things current is easy. So is capturing the attention of kids who are growing up in a digital, connected world.
Most publishing companies are highly centralized. ILC, like the web itself, is distributed. We provide publishing expertise and strategic market development with and for our partners. As affiliated ILC companies develop their own capacities, they take on these functions themselves. What will emerge is a global, well, web of affiliated companies operating independently, yet connected through common goals and interests, interconnected ownership, and a constantly morphing and expanding ILC network.
Education is a huge market, in North America and abroad. Educational publishing is worth tens of billions of dollars annually. Learning materials play a direct role in shaping the minds, dreams, and hopes of our kids. Until now, Native people have been forced to use learning materials published by someone else. We’ve never had our own publisher.
Until now!