Thapa, K., Laforest, M., Banning, C., & Thompson, S. (2024). “Where the Moose Were”: Fort William First Nation’s ancestral land, Two–Eyed Seeing, and industrial impacts.
https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=4e2efdd9-ba0f-36f9-96f0-5ed3de4c7e6b
A two-eyed seeing approach considered Indigenous knowledge and Western science towards eco–health, reconciliation and land back with Fort William First Nation (FWFN) in Ontario, Canada. To map traditional land use, occupancy, and ecological knowledge, we interviewed 49 FWFN members about their hunting, fishing, trapping, plant harvesting, cultural sites, and sacred gatherings on their ancestral land. Their traditional land use and occupancy includes more than 7.5 million ha of their ancestral land. The FWFN members reported many industrial impacts on their reserve and ancestral land. We analyzed the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) change over time on FWFN’s ancestral land and the Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper Mill (TBPP)’s National Pollutant Release Inventory data to investigate the FWFN members’ ecohealth concerns. The NDVI analysis revealed large tracts of degraded FWFN’s ancestral land due to logging areas, mining claims, settlements, and paper mills. Mining claims and greenstone belts occupy a quarter of the FWFN members’ ancestral land. The TBPP mill dumped pollution into the Kaministiquia River upstream and upwind of the FWFN community, exposing FWFN members to kilotons of cancerous and other toxic chemicals each year for over a century. Resource extraction and pollution in Northwestern Ontario negatively impacted the human health and ecosystem integrity of FWFN, requiring reconciliation by restoring damaged land and preventing pollution as the starting point for land back. The first step to land back is ending the environmental racism of the TBPP’s pollution directed downstream and downwind of FWFN and protecting ancestral land against logging, mining, and other extractive industries.
Leonard, K., David-Chavez, D., Smiles, D., Jennings, L., Anolani Alegado, R., Tsinnajinnie, L., Manitowabi, J., Arsenault, R., Begay, R. L., Kagawa-Viviani, A., Davis, D. D., van Uitregt, V. B., Pichette, H., Liboiron, M., Moggridge, B., Russo Carroll, S., Tsosie, R. L., & Gomez, A. (2023). Water back: A review centering rematriation and Indigenous water research sovereignty.
https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=125a178f-9e34-3f7b-a67e-7ec72a6aa180
The recent Land Back movement has catalysed global solidarity towards addressing the oppression and dispossession of Indigenous Peoples’ Lands and territories. Largely absent from the discourse, however, is a discussion of the alienation of Indigenous Peoples from Water by settler-colonial states. Some Indigenous Water Protectors argue that there cannot be Land Back without Water Back. In response to this emergent movement of Water Back, this review of research by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers traces the discursive patterns of Indigenous Water relationships and rematriation across themes of colonialism, climate change, justice, health, rights, responsibilities, governance and cosmology. It advances a holistic conceptualization of Water Back as a framework for future research sovereignty, focusing mainly on instances in Canada, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States. We present the findings on the current global Waterscape of Indigenous-led research on Indigenous Water issues. Water Back offers an important framework centring Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being as a foundation for advancing Indigenous Water research.
Cook, A. (2022). Indigenizing philosophy on stolen lands: A worry about settler philosophical guardianship.
https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=14e32152-607c-3ed9-9656-4e686ed448e5
One technique of elimination is the use of the settler guardianship principle, which Burkhart defines as the "legal and political doctrine that settler states have the right and obligation to protect Native people and Native tribes, particularly from themselves" ([5]). In Canada, After The Publication of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report on the Indian Residential Schools, universities and town halls have been flooded with questions about how they are going to implement its ninety-four calls to action and how they are going to promote reconciliation on stolen lands.[1] Many universities have taken heed of the call to "Indigenize" their curricula.[2] The worry remains, however, that the language of reconciliation is empty rhetoric that "metaphorizes" decolonization, rather than responding to the demands of Indigenous communities for self-determination and land back ([28]). In addition to the difficulty of challenging taken-for-granted assumptions about what ethics curriculum should include, an understanding of oneself as "floating free from the land" can prevent settlers from forming relationships with land grounded in reciprocity. We have to take care of everything that belongs to us].[9] In other words, I worry that the call to Indigenize philosophy ultimately serves settlers in assuaging settler guilt while leaving structural settler colonial power intact.
Hung, Lillian, et al. "Best Practices and Practical Strategies for Co-Designing Virtual Reality with Indigenous Peoples: A Scoping Review Protocol. (2025)
Virtual reality (VR) is gaining traction in healthcare, education, and cultural sectors, from simulations in medical education to immersive museum experiences. Recently, VR has emerged as a powerful tool for Indigenous cultural preservation, language revitalization, and storytelling, offering immersive ways to safeguard knowledge and strengthen community connections. However, despite VR’s potential to support Indigenous self-determination, little is known about the extent of Indigenous leadership, engagements, and settler-Indigenous collaborations in VR development. There is a critical need to examine how VR can be ethically and meaningfully co-designed with Indigenous communities to ensure cultural integrity, respect for Indigenous knowledge systems, and equitable participation in technological innovation. Thus, this scoping review aims to identify practical strategies and best practices for co-designing VR with Indigenous communities. In accordance with the JBI methodology, we will conduct a comprehensive search across seven electronic databases, including MEDLINE (EBSCOhost), Scopus, Web of Science, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Compendex (Engineering Village), and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global (ProQuest). Google Scholar will also be searched for grey literature sources. Eligible studies will focus on Indigenous populations (Population) and fully immersive VR co-design (Concept) across various contexts. Studies that do not discuss the design process will be excluded. Two independent reviewers will conduct literature screening, data extraction, and analysis, with findings synthesized narratively and presented in a structured charting table. The results will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed journal publication and shared with relevant community partners to support knowledge translation and application.
Boissonneault, Michaël, et al. "Projected Speaker Numbers and Dormancy Risks of Canada's Indigenous Languages.(2025)
UNESCO launched the International Decade of Indigenous Languages in 2022 to draw attention to the impending loss of nearly half of the world's linguistic diversity. However, how the speaker numbers and dormancy risks of these languages will evolve remains largely unexplored. Here, we use Canadian census data and probabilistic population projection to estimate changes in speaker numbers and dormancy risks of 27 Indigenous languages. Our model suggests that speaker numbers could, over the period 2001- 2101, decline by more than 90% in 16 languages and that dormancy risks could surpass 50% among five. Since the declines are greater among already less commonly spoken languages, just nine languages could account for more than 99% of all Canadian Indigenous language speakers in 2101. Finally, dormancy risks tend to be higher among isolates and within specific language families, providing additional evidence about the uneven nature of language endangerment worldwide. Our approach further illustrates the magnitude of the crisis in linguistic diversity and suggests that demographic projection could be a useful tool in assessing the vitality of the world's languages.
Benson, Nicki. ""Don't just Collect Words": Strategies for Advanced Indigenous Language Learning. (2024)
Advanced adult Indigenous language speakers are essential in Indigenous language revitalization (ILR). As first language speakers age and pass away, communities increasingly depend on adults with high proficiency to carry the language forward (Fishman, 1991; Hinton, 2011; W.H. Wilson, 2018). Yet, few studies in ILR focus on adult learners, and fewer still on adults working on advanced proficiency. Similarly, in the field of applied linguistics (AL), minimal attention has been given to strategies for advanced language learning, and less still to Indigenous language learning (Daniels & Sterzuk, 2022; Mclvor, 2020). This paper presents the results of a study aimed at understanding how adult Indigenous language learners have achieved advanced proficiency, including cases where there are few or no first language speakers to rely on for mentorship. It presents specific strategies and techniques that participants implemented to successfully progress to advanced proficiency. Insights from this context are shared to further understandings of, and possibilities for, greater connections between AL and ILR.
Morin, C. (2025). Digital kinship: Storying and remembering our ancestors.
Paul Seesequasis is at the forefront of gathering historical memories епсарsulated in photographs. His Indigenous Archival Photo Project mobilizes community online to identify subjects of the archival photos. The project, inspired by his mother, is facilitated online through social media, and his curations have been featured in physical exhibitions across Canada. Online communities can engage with Seeseguasis's selected collection of archival photographs - both to witness and to name the ancestors whose image is captured in time. By highlighting the inheritance of Indigenous memory, Seeseguasis, author of Blanket Toss under Midnight Sun: Portraits of Everyday Life in Eight Indigenous Communities (2019) and People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie (2024), illuminates what is often left out of the historical record. Thatis, Indigenous resistance has always been a presence throughout time and is, in part, what contributes to Indigenous survivance and continuity today. Seeseguasis's work exemplifies relational technologies by using photography and digital platforms to connect deeply with communities, stories, and places. Seeseguasis's Indigenous digital archival project tends to community and builds kinship across lifetimes.
Joanie Crandall. (2023). Videographic, Musical, and Linguistic Partnerships for Decolonization: Engaging with Place-Based Articulations of Indigenous Identity and Wâhkôhtowin.
https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=161f0e8d-474f-38f2-a023-b204766e311d
N’we Jinan, a group of young Indigenous artists who run a mobile production studio and an integrative arts studio, travel to different Indigenous communities, where they support youth in writing and recording music that involves the local community. N’we Jinan employs social media to articulate and protect Indigeneity through the sharing of Indigenous music videos, empowering youth to resist continued colonization. These videos serve to create a sense of connection in Indigenous communities in Turtle Island (Canada) as well as offer a means by which non-Indigenous listeners can learn about contemporary Indigenous cultures. Viewed in conjunction with Nunavut’s Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit and the Northwest Territories’ Dene Kede and Inuuqatigiit, which provide a framework of traditional knowledge, values, and skills specific to Indigenous communities in the Canadian Arctic, the texts implicitly invite non-Indigenous listeners’ engagement in social justice activism as settler allies. The texts invite listening to and viewing the empowering songwriting and recording practices through the lens of social justice and wâhkôhtowin or kinship relations, which involves walking together (Indigenous and settler) in a good way and engaging with Bourdieu’s influential framework of cultural capital. The themes explored in the songs include cultural identity, language, and self-acceptance. The empowering songs of N’we Jinan are place-based articulations of identity that resist coloniality and serve as calls to action, creating embodied videographic, musical, and linguistic partnerships that serve as important articulations of Indigenous identity and which promote the decolonization of reading and listening practices and, by extension, education.
Morrison-Young, I., & Bres, J. de. (2023). Decolonial Māori memes in Aotearoa.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/11771801231158151
Decolonial Māori memes in Aotearoa. This article examines the contemporary phenomenon of decolonial Māori memes, created by young urban Māori to advance the project of decolonizing Aotearoa (New Zealand). We weave Kaupapa Māori (philosophy and practice of Māori people) theory with Foucauldian visual analysis and critical multimodality to analyze 154 memes posted on three Instagram accounts from 2019 to 2021. We demonstrate how the Māori meme creators use discursive strategies to advance decolonization locally, drawing on Māori concepts and practices, including kotahitanga (solidarity), whanaungatanga (relationship-building), whakapapa (ancestry), tino rangatiratanga (self-determination), and use of te reo Māori (the Māori language). We distinguish two functional categories: boundary-marking memes that reference racist Pākehā (New Zealander with European ancestry) behaviors that perpetuate colonization, and solidarity-building memes that reference Māori acts of decolonization. We argue that the humor of the memes provides a potential decolonization roadmap for New Zealanders via its critique of Pākehā actions and cultivation of kotahitanga among Māori.
Bell, Elicia, et al. "Indigenous knowledge‐bridging to support ecological stewardship in Canada and Tanzania.(2025)
https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=d286d673-e081-31a2-833f-76da3f47fe0e
Indigenous peoples globally are evoking their resource governance practices to assert cultural integrity and self-determination on traditional lands, despite increasing challenges presented by climate change, geo-political threats and ongoing colonial violence. Place-based governance and cultural prosperity are threatened wherever Indigenous land and resource access is interrupted (McDonnell & Regenvanu, 2022). Assertion of environmental stewardship has been shown to be an influential tool for establishing and protecting land tenure and rights in diverse contexts (Milgin et al., 2020; Turner et al., 2022). Insights provided through knowledge-bridging—shared learning experiences that occur at the interface of knowledge systems, while recognizing and upholding the respective integrity of those systems—can help enhance and reshape capacities for environmental management (Rathwell et al., 2015; UNESCO, 2020). Cross-cultural partnerships between Indigenous communities present a distinct avenue for experience sharing, particularly around documenting mechanisms of natural resource management, pathways of knowledge mobilization and upholding cultural integrity.
Ginn, Carla, et al. "How do Health, Spirituality and Well-being Intersect in the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA) Region 3? A Métis-Guided, Community-Based, Participatory Study (2025)
https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=f05adaae-054c-3a38-af2f-85cb99879926
Globally, effects of colonisation are devastating and profound, shredding the fabric of traditional societies.1 In Canada, colonisation efforts have aimed to assimilate First Nations, Métis and Inuit people into dominant European settler systems and ways of life. Métis people account for over a third of Indigenous people in Canada;2 Métis refers to a person who self-identifies as Métis, is distinct from other Indigenous people, is of historic Métis Nation ancestry and is accepted by the Métis Nation.3 Emerging as a people through seventeenth-century fur trade networks and the subsequent relationships that formed between Indigenous people and European fur traders, Métis people developed their collective identity with distinct cultural and social features over time, which continue to thrive and evolve today.4 Since the existence of Métis communities, the Canadian government has brought about assimilative and racist colonial policies to allow for white settlement and development on Indigenous land.5–7 These policies and processes have had destructive impacts on Métis people’s identity and ways of life, including their relationship and connection to land, governance and kinship systems.8 Christianity was promoted and often forced on Indigenous people and played a marked role in carrying out assimilative efforts, with similar and unique impacts across Indigenous groups in Canada.5 9 The missionary impulse, the residential school system and the child welfare system influenced Métis people’s relationship with culture, identity and spirituality, along with how they relate to religion and spirituality.5
Caroline, Lumosi, et al. "Understanding the Role and Challenges for Indigenous and Community-Governed Lands in Contributing to Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework (2025)
https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=1df3787e-b7f6-3f0d-95da-ab89770b9306
Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework commits nations to protecting and conserving at least 30% of the world’s terrestrial and inland water areas and coastal and marine areas by 2030 (30 × 30). There can be significant overlap with Indigenous and traditional territories (ITTs) and protected areas. We explore if and/or how ITTs are currently recognized and reported as contributors to national protection targets by analyzing whether these territories are counted as standalone conservation areas, integrated into government-led protected and conserved area networks or systems, or neither, in 18 countries. Our analysis reveals critical linkages between tenure regimes, ITTs and their recognition in reporting to global area-based conservation databases. Legal recognition of tenure rights, particularly ownership and stewardship rights, emerged as the strongest predictor of whether ITTs are formally being accounted for in these databases. Our findings also reveal that the contribution of ITTs to national protection targets not only depend on tenure type but also on governance rights, despite the way it is reported.
Rankin, Aric, et al. "A Multi-Site Qualitative Study to Explore and Understand Barriers and Enablers Indigenous Community Members Experience when Accessing Health and Social Services, from the Perspective of Indigenous Patient Navigators and Indigenous Community Members in Canada. (2025)
The current state of health care in Canada for Indigenous Peoples is grounded in the historical colonial development of the existing healthcare system. In an already complicated system, a role such as the Indigenous Patient Navigator (IPN) can assist to bridge the gap of health inequity. The purpose of this study is to understand and explore the barriers and enablers Indigenous community members experience when accessing health and social services, from the perspective of IPNs as well as Indigenous community members who access IPN services across health and social care settings in the province of Ontario, Canada. This multi-site qualitative study was guided by methodological principles of Interpretive Description (ID; Thorne, 2016) and the Two-Eyed Seeing approach to ensure the inclusion of non-Indigenous and Indigenous worldviews. The framework by Loppie and Wein (2022) is used to organize this study's findings. Semi-structured one-toone, virtual or telephone interviews were conducted, involving 36 participants (20 IPNs and 16 Indigenous community members). Indigenous community member barriers to accessing care and enablers to supporting access to health and social services are described at multiple levels of health determinants, including Root, Core, and Stem, using a tree metaphor outlined and described by Loppie and Wien (2022). This research provides the foundation for future research to explore the role of the IPN and how this role might address the barriers and support enablers Indigenous Peoples experience when accessing health and social services across health care settings.
Brown, Michael. "Cultural Safety: A Theoretical Interpretation of and Application to Indigenous Ways of Knowing First Nations, M´etis, and Inuit Youth Mental Health. (2025)
Mental health services for Indigenous youth require an approach and design grounded in Indigenous Ways of Knowing. Through this theoretical paradigm shift, researchers in public health are starting to understand that cultural safety is critical in the delivery of FNMI (Indigenous) health services that actually provide healing and do not further harm people (deliberately or not). Still in progress, public health researchers and youth mental health service providers continue to (allegedly unknowingly) uphold colonial legacies, highlighting an urgent need for Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Doing. However, doing so haphazardly would be to continue colonial harms; thus, this article outlines the tenets of cultural safety and shows how they can be applied to the mental health and wellness of FNMI youth. Strengths and challenges serve as the throughline for the discussion. The article concludes with an extension of these tenets with potential application for mental health services for Indigenous youth.
Crooks, Kristy, et al. "We Cannot Repeat History again: A Call to Action to Centre Indigenous Leadership as we Prepare for the Next Pandemic. (2025)
Indigenous communities worldwide continue to disproportionately bear the burden during pandemics due to ongoing health inequities and systemic exclusion from pandemic decision-making processes. As the global community prepares for the next pandemic, it is critical to prioritise Indigenous leadership and governance within public health responses. This commentary highlights successful models of Indigenous-led pandemic responses during COVID-19 in Canada and Australia. It introduces the EPIC (Equity, Partnerships, Intelligences, and Change) framework, that emphasises equity, leadership and local and cultural intelligence as critical components to improve pandemic preparedness and response for Indigenous communities. This international collaboration calls on governments and health authorities to uphold Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and leadership in pandemic planning and response efforts. https://login.ezproxy.nic.bc.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/we-cannot-repeat-history-again-call-action-centre/docview/3201600507/se-2?accountid=37666