across much of the circumpolar north indigenous peoples had common experiences within education systems based on western ways of teaching learning and knowledge and operating with the intent of assimilation now across the north and elsewhere such as new zealand and hawaii indigenous peoples are working to create indigenouscontrolled education systems based not on the western form of schooling imposed on them for the past century or longer but rather based on indigenous epistemologies and worldviews in some circumpolar regions these efforts are happening alongside the dominant western education system while in others the western systems are being replaced entirely