Author: Mark Stoller

We are facing a crisis with respect to human-induced climate change, which is impacting the land, water, and air around us. 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.

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”.

For many Indigenous Peoples, Ceremonies have always been a part of everyday life for individual and community health and wellbeing. As a global pandemic, COVID-19 has impacted all of us; but some are impacted more and others less given pre-existing inequities, disparities, injustices.

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.

The Achieving Strength, Health, and Autonomy through Renewable Energy Development for the Future (A SHARED Future) program of research is about reconciliation between knowledge systems is about reconciliation between knowledge systems; it must be foundational to our work together

The goal of this new research project is to identify, document, and critically understand and analyze how Huu-ay-aht citizens are experiencing the first decade of implementation as the Nation prepares for the 2026 ‘Periodic Review’ of the Maa-nulth Treaty.