| Philosophical Principle | Institution of Knowledge | Teaching from Shoal Lake Elders (Teaching represented by core statements) |
| Knowledge resides in the land | Revelation | People are gifted for different things. Beings reveal knowledge to people through visions and dreams (Ella Dawn Greene). |
| Place-based | When traveling, the person who knows the land the best always leads the way (Walter Redsky). | |
| Holistic | When I am healing a person, a plant will reveal itself in a dream and then I know I should use it for that person (Ella Dawn Green). | |
| Embedded Subjects | A powerful person has learned to show respect to other beings and has developed a finely tuned awareness of his land. Other beings begin to reveal themselves so he becomes a better hunter, fisherman, or healer (Robin Greene). | |
| Knowledge is progressively revealed through experience on the land | Direct Coupling | You should know where everything is on the land with which you are familiar. My father, in the middle of winter, could go to the exact place, thrust his hand through the snow and dig up the root he needed for healing (Walter Redsky). |
| Empirical Observation | When you are on the land with someone, you should always be watching where you are and what the other person is doing (Walter Redsky). | |
| Personal and Collective Ceremonies | You can do ceremonies by yourself or as part of a group. Ceremonies are necessary to show respect to others for what you are about to undertake (Robin Greene). | |
| Social Gatherings | We used to always get together as a group in the summer to harvest fish, blueberries, and wild rice (Walter Redsky). | |
| Self-awareness | After harvesting a lot of something, like birch bark, you should go back and leave cloth and tobacco. Let the birch trees know that you respect them by giving them something for what you were given (Ella Dawn Green). | |
| Mentoring | The right way to be taught is not from a book. It is from your aunties, uncles, mom, dad, and other people who know the land (Jimmy Redsky). | |
| Language | Our language is very descriptive. It tells us things like how one thing might be related to another. Or the way that things look like on the land (Dan Green). | |
| Narrative | Our people never wrote anything down. We know our land and our history from the stories we tell (Jimmy Redsky). | |