Community Partnerships
Our project design harnesses interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral capacity by organizing research around three thematic clusters of conceptual and applied experimentation: Foodways, Energy & Waterways; Cables, Roads & Rail; and Law, Land-based Learning & Knowledge Exchange. The three clusters are constituted by experimental field projects that combine engineers with social scientists in partnership with Indigenous communities and organizations. The clusters will work to co-generate knowledge and applied solutions to pressing challenges that respond to the legal traditions and ecological conditions of the bio-regions in which they are located. As team members work collaboratively in multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral teams, their different knowledge systems will be integrated and enhanced, allowing for new paradigms to emerge. This will allow team members to share methods, data and knowledges emerging out of distinct Indigenous legal and political traditions and, particular ecologies across common infrastructure systems.
The project is “high risk” in the sense that we are genuinely asking what it will mean to honour Indigenous jurisdiction while building resilient future societies. These partnerships are particularly risky in a year when many Indigenous people declared the project of reconciliation “dead.” Reaching out to establish a team that bridges a settler-Indigenous divide and to work in relations of mutuality and collaboration is risky in a context of so little earned trust, but it also signals the urgency and potential for careful work to find new ways forward. Our futures are deeply intertwined and — in an era of climate crisis and global pandemic — so much is at stake. If reconciliation is not working, are we willing to try something new?
Our team composition is the result of centering deep, long-standing commitments to equity and diversity in our practices. Importantly, Indigenous team members, women and LGBTQ2S people are represented at every rank and in every sector among our team – from junior scholars who are just embarking on their academic careers to prolific senior scholars at the rank of Full Professor. In short, we have assembled a stellar team of scholars and practitioners who are poised to seize this particular moment in the historical trajectory of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples.
CLUSTER 1:
Foodways, Energy & Water Systems
Each of the team members in this cluster has expertise working to rebuild the infrastructures of Indigenous livelihoods as embodied enactments of jurisdiction through projects that remake water, food and energy systems. Experimental field projects to be evaluated include:
- The reclamation and remediation of lands through small farms, hoop houses, solar and winter greenhouses (Karletta Chief, Rob Clifford, Tiffany Joseph and the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council)
- Irrigation systems that recover resources from wastewater to provide energy, nutrients and water for food production (Kanahus Manuel and the Tiny House Warriors, Maya Trotz)
- Renewable energy infrastructure such as solar micro grids (Melina Laboucan-Massimo and Sacred Earth Solar, Shiri Pasternak)
- Materials economy infrastructures for hemp cultivation and processing (Winona LaDuke and Honour the Earth, Deb Cowen)
- The restoration of Anishinaabeg women’s clan-based jurisdiction with sugar bushes (waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy, Damien Lee)
- Land-based skills infrastructure and workshops, such as centers and sites for hide tanning, smokehouses and processing areas for meat, berries, medicines, and fish (Anne Spice and Gidimt’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation)
CLUSTER 2:
Cables, Roads & Rail
This cluster aims to study creative, locally designed, managed and controlled infrastructures that support connectivity and circulation between communities for the purposes of trade, travel and communications without presenting risks to the territories that sustain them. It asks: What forms of connectivity and what forms of circulation are life-sustaining and affirming? Which forms encourage the flourishing of Indigenous social, economic and political orders? Team members in this cluster have established expertise in infrastructures of Indigenous mobility, communications and circulatory systems. Experimental field projects to be evaluated include:
- Community initiatives for connectivity and connection that do not compromise stewardship obligations in relation to waterways (Michelle Daigle, Dayna Scott, Anne Spice)
- The re-use and redesign of colonial infrastructures such as railway networks to support intentional re-industrialization, e.g. ‘solutionary rail’ (Winona LaDuke, Deb Cowen)
- Fibre optic pipelines for the circulation of Indigenous ideas, images, representations, stories, and perspectives that connect participants from across the bio-regions and the world (Jason Lewis)
CLUSTER 3:
Indigenous Law, Land-based Learning & Knowledge Exchange
This cluster will develop new initiatives for land-based learning about Indigenous laws and practices for exercising jurisdiction, will produce new knowledge about legal tactics and negotiating strategies for re- gaining jurisdiction over specific lands and processes of decision-making, and will foster new and reinvigorated venues for knowledge exchange. Team members in this cluster have extensive and deep expertise in Indigenous laws and legal orders and land-based learning. They will:
- Implement experiments in the expansion of Indigenous law camps into new territories and seasons (John Borrows, Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, Jeffery Hewitt)
- Work with partner communities that seek to reject colonial systems of governance in favour of “re-rooting” in Indigenous governance systems and political orders, such as the dodaem or clan system (Damien Lee with Sagamok Anishnawbek)
- evaluate legal and negotiating tactics for re- gaining jurisdiction over specific lands such as provincial parks (Rob Clifford with W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council) or specific processes, such as environmental assessments (Dayna Scott with Neskantaga First Nation)
The work of this cluster also includes initiatives to foster new and reinvigorated venues for knowledge exchange. CIRCLE (led by Stark) will be an institutional partner alongside the Yellowhead Institute (Pasternak and Lee). These institutes will anchor activities relating to knowledge mobilization and dissemination, hosting team members on a rotating basis as visiting faculty and scholars or residencies, the annual project team meeting and possible culminating conference.
