Since few decades, a conceptual shift has been observed regarding the developmentrndi scourse from increased capital with the goal of modernizing a society to a broader, contextspecificrnapproach that considers cultural values and local technology. For these people'srnindigenous potentials to have significant intervention on the rural development strategies,rnthey must be promoted some way. It is in this cultural and knowledge promotion scheme thatrnthe use of people's indigenous language in education, which is an appropriate setting notrnonly for acquisition of external, scientific knowledge but also for inducing students into localrnway of life, calls due attention. The core argument in this study framework is that the role ofrnmother tongue based bilingual education should not be limited to pedagogical service. Itrnshould contribute to cultural dimension of development by harnessing society'S indigenousrnpotentials in local development scenario.rnThe major concern of this study was to explore the contribution of mother tongue educationrnin promoting indigenous knowledge systems. The objectives of the study were to examinernnotable indigenous knowledge of agriculture dominantly used in the study area and the ex lentrnto which the use of Oromo language in education is contributing to the promotion of thesernpractices with the implication of contributing to the rural development. Further investigationrnwas also sought to examine parents' participation in decision making about what studentsrnlearn at school. To achieve these objectives, interdisciplinary qualitative exploratoryrnapproach was employed. The data were collected through qualitatively designed interviewsrnand focus group discussions from primary school teachers and students, regional curriculumrndesigners, rural development experts, education officers, and local farmers. Fieldrnobservations and students' textbooks review were also carried out. The textual data werernanalyzed thematically using generic procedures of qualitative content analysis supported byrnOpen Code 3.4 version software.