Current Projects

The HEC Lab is engaged in a number of community-based participatory research projects from coast to coast. You can learn more about each project below.

Archipelagos of Indigenous-led Resurgence for Planetary Health

The health of our planet, all Peoples, and all living entities is in crisis. The drivers of this crisis are colonization, capitalism, extractivism, globalization, and racism, underpinned by concomitant policies, systems, and structures that reinforce this worldview.

A SHARED Future: Achieving Strength, Health, and Autonomy through Renewable Energy Development for the Future

The A SHARED Future program of research is about reconciliation between knowledge systems; it must be foundational to our work together.

Catalyzing Intersectoral Collaborations on the Intersectional Public Health Impacts of Climate Displacement: Insights from British Columbia

The goal of the project is to facilitate cross-jurisdictional and intersectoral collaborations that can advance and support innovative and equity-informed research, capacity building, and knowledge sharing on the public health effects of climate related displacement in BC.

Intersectional Perspectives on Climate Change and Public Health

Each year, the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada (CPHO) produces an independent report on the health of Canadians that is provided to the Minister of Health and Parliament. This year’s CPHO report focuses on the role of public health systems related to climate change. The HEC Lab’s Scientific Director, Heather Castleden, and Research Associate Isaac White have been commissioned to produce a research-based supplementary “What We Heard” report.

Making Space for Ceremony

For many Indigenous Peoples, Ceremonies have always been a part of everyday life for
individual and community health and wellbeing. This project examines the importance of Indigenous ceremony during the COVID-19 pandemic

Our Ancestors Are in Our Lands, Water, and Air

To date we have been researching the impacts of the pulp and paper mill in the estuary adjacent to the community of Pictou Landing First Nation, known as A’se’k, which provided us with the foods, medicines, transportation, shelter, and tools we have needed to survive and thrive since time immemorial.

Relational Accountability

After a decade of research efforts towards decolonizing the Settler-dominated academy I found renewed inspiration from reading Adam Gaudry and Danielle Lorenz’s 2018 publication “Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: Navigating the different visions for indigenizing the Canadian Academy”.

Spirit of the Lakes

The link between healthy lands, waters, and people has been known, embodied, and taught in Indigenous societies since time immemorial, yet these knowledge systems have been largely delegitimized, ignored, or dismissed in the natural sciences in our pursuit to solve environmental problems.

tašiiʔakqin ʔuyaqḥmisukqin (Our Journey, Our Story):
Huu-ay-aht Perspectives on Modern Treaty Implementation

Our Journey, Our Choice, Our Future is a comprehensive case study in partnership with Huu-ay-aht First Nations that employs a community-based participatory approach and intends to document, understand, and evaluate their journey to accepting the Treaty, as well as the issues, decision-making processes, and outcomes associated with implementing their Treaty.

The Living Lab Indigenous Land Stewardship & Educational Resurgence Project 

This three-year project (2022-2025) aims to establish a new Indigenous-led land stewardship program and community of practice in the Capital Regional District (CRD) and Salish Sea / ṮEṮÁĆES region based on a community-driven research, policy program and governance system that is intended to transform and mobilize public schools and higher education systems and assets.

Podcast: Getting Personal

WELCOME TO ‘GETTING PERSONAL’! Sam, Saskia, Kiera, and Erica are four graduate students currently doing research in the areas of geography, environmental studies, and health promotion at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario.

Digital Stories

Digital storytelling is a tool in research and teaching that is showing promise in terms of positive (i.e. effective) social change, while embodying key tenets of ethical praxis. Digital stories are essentially short multi-media film vignettes that draw upon still frame images, video, audio, music, and a pre-recorded narrative to tell a personal or collective story about a particular topic.