Conference Program

In contexts of settler colonial domination, where formal institutions are restricted, controlled, or undermined, education often emerges through informal and community-based practices. This paper explores how sumud (steadfastness) operates as a form of informal and non-formal educational practice within rural Palestinian communities in Area C of the occupied West Bank. Under conditions of full Israeli military control, these communities face ongoing threats of forcible displacement, land confiscation, and the systematic erasure of their historical presence and ways of life.

Drawing on ten years of participatory research conducted through the On Our Land project, which focuses on protecting intangible cultural heritage in rural Palestinian communities, the paper examines how intangable cultural heritage practices function as intergenerational forms of knowledge transmission. Practices such as traditional farming, storytelling, land stewardship, communal labour, and local ecological knowledge serve as everyday pedagogies through which communities teach younger generations their relationship to land, identity, and collective resilience (Soliman, et al 2022).

Rather than viewing education solely through formal schooling systems, this research highlights how intangible cultural heritage constitutes a living educational infrastructure that sustains belonging and resistance. These practices cultivate historical consciousness, environmental knowledge, and communal responsibility while reinforcing attachment to land as a central element of Palestinian identity (Soliman et al 2024) .

By situating these practices within the framework of settler colonialism, the paper argues that the preservation and transmission of intangible cultural heritage represent both educational processes and acts of everyday resistance. In this sense, sumud functions not only as a political stance but also as a pedagogical framework through which communities reproduce cultural memory, sustain social cohesion, and resist displacement.

This paper contributes to debates on informal education, decolonial pedagogy, and cultural resilience by demonstrating how community-based heritage practices operate as alternative educational systems in contexts of protracted colonial domination.