1 Learning How to Inherit in Colonized and Ecologically Challenged Life Worlds in Early Childhood Education: An Introduction Special Issue To be published in Canadian Children Vol. 40 No. 2 http://www.cayc.ca/content/canadian-children-vol-40-no-2 Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Affrica Taylor, Mindy Blaise, and Sandrina de Finney The complex and intensifying ecological challenges of the 21 st century call for new ways of thinking, being, and doing in all sectors of our society, including early childhood education, and the Aboriginal environmental humanities offer alternative ways of being present and acting in the world. Accordingly, in September 2014 we gathered for three days in Victoria, British Columbia, with leading Indigenous and environmental humanities scholars and a group of 40 early childhood scholars, educators, and students to mobilize these perspectives in the early education of young children. This special issue presents eight articles inspired by the conversations that took place at the “Learning How to Inherit in Colonized and Ecologically Challenged Life Worlds” symposium. 1 Like the articles in this special issue, the symposium covered topics such as place and agency in Indigenous cosmologies, Canada’s waste legacies, cohabiting with other species in a time of mass extinctions, and Indigenous modes of inheritance, from new to old in a time of immateriality and precarity. 2 Early childhood scholars and educators (including the authors in this special issue) considered how they might respond to these issues in their work with young children within their local “common world” environments by addressing: ! the responsibility of early childhood education to address intergenerational ecological justice in the Anthropocene (see Ashton; Duncan; Nelson, Coon, & Chadwick; Hamm; and Nxumalo Oh, Hughes, & Bhanji) ! the pedagogical significance of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children’s relations with place, plants, and animals (see Duncan; Hamm; and Nxumalo Oh, Hughes, & Bhanji) ! the pedagogical significance of place and belonging in early childhood education (see Ashton; Yazbeck & Danis; Duncan; Hamm; and Atkinson) ! pedagogical strategies for dealing with waste in early childhood settings (see Hodgins) ! the ethics of young children’s relationships with animals that are threatened and/or not easy to live with (see Atkinson; and Nxumalo Oh, Hughes, & Bhanji) 1 This symposium, organized by the Common World Childhoods Research Collective, was funded by the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the Centre for Global Studies (University of Victoria, BC), and the Centre for Asian and Pacific Research Initiatives (University of Victoria, BC). 2 Keynotes are available on our Common World Childhoods Research Collective website at http://commonworlds.net/