Research Question and Objectives: Addressing Epistemic Violence Current Ainu education policies in Japan are fundamentally limited by a framework of "domestic cultural preservation," which perpetuates epistemic violence against Indigenous people. As critical analyses indicate, the "Ainu Culture Promotion Act" depoliticizes Ainu identity, confining it to a safe cultural sphere while severing connections to historical land stewardship and political rights (Okuda, 2001; Sato, 2012). This "domestic containment" functions as a colonial mechanism that denies the Ainu people their epistemic sovereignty—the right to define their own relationship with the land. Consequently, education fails to address the structural injustices of dispossession, treating Ainu heritage as a museum artifact rather than a living system of Indigenous rights.

This research asks: How can language education be transformed into a practice of social justice that reclaims Indigenous land rights and ecological sovereignty? The objective is to shift the educational paradigm from "cultural appreciation" to "epistemological restoration." We propose a pedagogical framework that utilizes toponymy (place names) not merely for linguistic preservation, but as a tool for restorative justice, challenging the colonial erasure of Indigenous geography and asserting trans-border Indigenous rights.

Theoretical Framework: Ecological Semantics for Justice To operationalize this shift, this study employs Ecological Semantics within a Social Justice framework. We posit that the colonial renaming of the land (using Japanese Kanji) was an act of injustice that obscured the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) embedded in Ainu place names. By analyzing place names through Langacker’s (1993) "reference-point structure," we demonstrate that these names encode sophisticated systems of resource management and "affordances" (Gibson, 1979). Reclaiming these names is an act of Environmental Justice, proving that the Ainu people possess a distinct, scientifically valid stewardship over the northern ecosystem that predates the modern nation-state.

European and International Dimension This study addresses the urgent European and global challenge of decolonising education to achieve social equity. The struggle against "domestic containment" resonates with the experiences of the Sámi in Scandinavia and other marginalized groups in Europe, where national education systems often fail to accommodate trans-border Indigenous rights. By offering a model that links toponymy directly to human rights and epistemic justice, this research contributes to the European discourse on Critical Intercultural Education. It provides a transferable framework for educators working to dismantle structural inequalities and empower marginalized communities through the restoration of their ecological and cultural heritage.

Toponymic Database as Counter-Narrative The primary instrument for this study is a comprehensive database containing approximately 15,000 Ainu place names (Inoue, 2025). This database serves as empirical evidence to construct a counter-narrative against the dominant colonial history. Unlike previous state-centric studies, this dataset spans the full historical Ainu cultural sphere, including Northern Honshu, the southern half of Sakhalin (Russia), and the Kuril Islands. This wide geographical scope physically evidences a transnational Indigenous territory that transcends modern borders, exposing the injustice of confining Ainu rights solely within Japanese domestic law. Analytical Method: Cognitive Linguistics for Rights Assertion We employ a qualitative analysis based on Cognitive Linguistics to decode the "silenced knowledge" embedded in these names. We categorize toponyms based on their semantic reference points: Resource Sovereignty: Names indicating specific rights to food and water (e.g., "The river owned by our community"). Habitation and Stewardship: Names indicating historical occupancy and land management (e.g., "The place for processing fish"). Ecological Warnings: Names serving as intergenerational safety knowledge. This analysis reveals that Ainu place names are not just labels but legal and ecological archives of land use. Analyzing them makes visible the structural erasure committed by the Japanese state and provides linguistic evidence to support claims for land rights and self-determination. Pedagogical Application: Critical Intercultural Education The research explores how this data can be translated into Critical Intercultural Education. We propose a pedagogy of "Reading the Land for Justice," where learners decode the landscape to uncover the layers of colonial history and Indigenous survival. This method fosters critical consciousness (Freirean conscientização) regarding the relationship between language, power, and land.

Restoring Epistemic Sovereignty The primary outcome is a model for Social Justice Education that restores "epistemic sovereignty" to the Ainu people. The findings demonstrate that Ainu place names constitute a valid, independent epistemology that challenges the legitimacy of colonial land administration. By reclaiming these names, education becomes a practice of restorative justice, allowing learners to experience the land not as "Hokkaido" (a colonial designation) but as Aynu-mosir (Human Land), grounded in Indigenous rights. Transnational Solidarity and Human Rights Furthermore, this study establishes that Ainu education must assert the right to connect with global movements for Indigenous Human Rights. The existence of Ainu place names across Russian and Japanese territories proves that Ainu rights are inherently a trans-border issue, exposing the limitations of nationalistic education. This finding empowers the Ainu community to bypass state "containment" and align with international frameworks like the UNDRIP (Article 13). Ultimately, this research offers a pathway for Intercultural Education to move beyond superficial dialogue toward the substantive restoration of rights and the rectification of historical injustices.

Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin. Inoue, T. (2025). Visualizing the Indigenous rights of the Ainu People: Establishment of online database of the Ainu placenames. International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, 11(2), 117-120. Langacker, R. W. (1993). Reference-point constructions. Cognitive Linguistics, 4, 1–38. Okuda, O. (2001). "Ainu Language Revitalization and the Responsibility of Researchers" [in Japanese]. Chiba University Eurasian Language and Culture Studies, 4, 103-110. Sato, T. (2012). "Current Status and Revitalization of the Ainu Language" [in Japanese]. Linguistic Research, 142, 29-44.