Indigenous Reconciliation And Environmental Resilience

There are two themes: Indigenous reconciliation and environmental resilience. The purpose is to inform and inspire action – to quicken the pace of reconciliation and lessen the pace of global warming. The chapters, loosely held together by personal experience, may be read in any order like a magazine or a blog.

This book argues that there is a need to develop greater indigenous-led intergenerational resilience in order to meet the challenges posed by contemporary crises of climate change, cultural clashes, and adversity. In today’s media, the climate crisis is kept largely separate and distinct from the violent cultural clashes unfolding on the grounds of religion and migration, but each is similarly symptomatic of the erasure of the human connection to place and the accompanying tensions between generations and cultures. This book argues that both forms of crisis are intimately related, under-scored and driven by the structures of white supremacism which at their most immediate and visible, manifest as the discipline of black bodies, and at more fundamental and far-reaching proportions, are about the power, privilege and patterns of thinking associated with but no longer exclusive to white people. In the face of such crisis, it is essential to bring the experience and wisdom of Elders and traditional knowledge keepers together with the contemporary realities and vision of youth. This book’s inclusive and critical perspective on Indigenous-led intergenerational resilience will be valuable to Indigenous and non-Indigenous interdisciplinary scholars working on human-ecological resilience.

Collaborative exploration of global environmental crises focusing on the co-production of knowledge from scientific, indigenous sources.

This book addresses the ethical and practical issues at stake in the reconciliation of Indigenous and non-indigenous communities. An increasing number of researchers, educators, and social and environmental activists are eager to find ways to effectively support ongoing attempts to recognize, integrate and promote Indigenous perspectives and communities. Taking Canada as its focus, this book offers a multidisciplinary consideration of a range of reconciliation policies, practices and initiatives that are relevant in all settler states. Set against its increasing neoliberal appropriation, the book resituates reconciliation in the everyday contexts of community interaction and engagement, as well as in the important areas of Indigenous knowledge, resource management and social and environmental justice. Reconciliation is not just the responsibility of law and government. And, attuned to the different perspectives of settlers, migrants and refugee communities, the book examines areas of opportunity, as well as obstacles to progress, in the forging of a truly decolonizing framework for reconciliation. As the challenges of reconciliation cross numerous academic and substantial areas, this book will appeal to a range of scholars and practitioners working in law, politics, education, environmental studies, anthropology and Indigenous studies.

This handbook provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge strengths-based resource on the subject of Indigenous resilience. Indigenous Peoples demonstrate considerable resilience despite the social, health, economic, and political disparities they experience within surrounding settler societies. This book considers Indigenous resilience in many forms: cultural, spiritual, and governance traditions remain in some communities and are being revitalized in others to reclaim aspects of their cultures that have been outlawed, suppressed, or undermined. It explores how Indigenous people advocate for social justice and work to shape settler societies in ways that create a more just, fair, and equitable world for all human and non-human beings. This book is divided into five sections: From the past to the future Pillars of Indigeneity The power in Indigenous identities The natural world Reframing the narrative: from problem to opportunity Comprised of 25 newly commissioned chapters from Indigenous scholars, professionals, and community members from traditions around the world, this book will be a useful tool for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of manifestations of wellness and resilience. This handbook will be of particular interest to all scholars, students, and practitioners of social work, social care, and human services more broadly, as well as those working in sociology, development studies, and environmental sustainability.

"With connections to traditional homelands being at the heart of Native identity, environmental justice is of heightened importance to Indigenous communities. Not only do irresponsible and exploitative environmental policies harm the physical and financial health of Indigenous communities, they also cause spiritual harm by destroying the land and wildlife that are held in a place of exceptional reverence for Indigenous peoples. Combining elements of legal issues, human rights issues, and sovereignty issues, Indigenous Environmental Justice creates a clear example of community resilience in the face of corporate greed"--

Contemporary Studies in Environmental and Indigenous Pedagogies: A Curricula of Stories and Place. Our book is a compilation of the work of experienced educational researchers and practitioners, all of whom currently work in educational settings across North America. Contributors bring to this discussion, an enriched view of diverse ecological perspectives regarding when and how contemporary environmental and Indigenous curriculum figures into the experiences of curricular theories and practices. This work brings together theorists that inform a cultural ecological analysis of the environmental crisis by exploring the ways in which language informs ways of knowing and being as they outline how metaphor plays a major role in human relationships with natural and reconstructed environments. This book will be of interest to educational researchers and practitioners who will find the text important for envisioning education as an endeavour that situates learning in relation to and informed by an Indigenous Environmental Studies and Eco-justice Education frameworks. This integrated collection of theory and practice of environmental and Indigenous education is an essential tool for researchers, graduate and undergraduate students in faculties of education, environmental studies, social studies, multicultural education, curriculum theory and methods, global and comparative education, and women’s studies. Moreover, this work documents methods of developing ways of implementing Indigenous and Environmental Studies in classrooms and local communities through a framework that espouses an eco-ethical consciousness. The proposed book is unique in that it offers a wide variety of perspectives, inviting the reader to engage in a broader conversation about the multiple dimensions of the relationship between ecology, language, culture, and education in relation to the cultural roots of the environmental crisis that brings into focus the local and global commons, language and identity, and environmental justice through pedagogical approaches by faculty across North America who are actively teaching and researching in this burgeoning field.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report designed to facilitate reconciliation between the Canadian state and Indigenous Peoples. Its call to honour treaty relationships reminds us that we are all treaty people — including immigrants and refugees living in Canada. The contributors to this volume, many of whom are themselves immigrants and refugees, take up the challenge of imagining what it means for immigrants and refugees to live as treaty people. Through essays, personal reflections and poetry, the authors explore what reconciliation is and what it means to live in relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Speaking from their personal experience — whether from the education and health care systems, through research and a community garden, or from experiences of discrimination and marginalization — contributors share their stories of what reconciliation means in practice. They write about building respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples, respecting Indigenous Treaties, decolonizing our ways of knowing and acting, learning the role of colonized education processes, protecting our land and environment, creating food security and creating an intercultural space for social interactions. Perhaps most importantly, Reconciliation in Practice reminds us that reconciliation is an ongoing process, not an event, and that decolonizing our relationships and building new ones based on understanding and respect is empowering for all of us — Indigenous, settler, immigrant and refugee alike.