Indigenous and community leaders:
Many communities are already living sustainable lives, reflecting an ethics of care and respect for nature. Shifts in power are required to strengthen the influence and impact of these cultural leaders, whose ways of living – many of them rooted in reciprocity, relationship and interdependence – have been unrecognized, willfully erased or pushed to the periphery.
Indigenous communities and nations across Canada are showing, and historically have shown, leadership on climate and biodiversity. Many First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities share and promote views that the natural world is not separate from humans, and are acting and governing accordingly, staying connected with practices and lifestyles that reflect these values. For example, the 4Rs youth movement is connecting Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth change makers in respect, reciprocity, reconciliation and relevance.
Other leading communities are adopting promising ways of living outside the western mainstream of wasteful, inequitable consumption. These include intentional communities such as ecovillages or Transition Towns, immigrant communities with strong ties to diaspora globally, and movements led by women and youth. Common practices such as communal sharing, repairing and caring for each other serve as examples of sustainable living in action today.
By acknowledging and celebrating these communities as leaders, we reinforce, normalize and mainstream these ways of living and cultures.
“We need to not only imagine a new way of doing things, but we must, as Canadians, re-imagine our unsustainable economic values and realign them with Indigenous values….
With our understanding of nature, which we depend on as our food source and as a powerful character-builder for our children, Indigenous Peoples have much to offer in helping to galvanize a largely disconnected urban world.”
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and author of The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet
POSSIBLE ACTIVITIES AND PROGRAMS
- Provide consistent, reliable core funding over multiple years for individuals, organizations, and networks led by Indigenous peoples, leading communities, women and youth.
- Support cultural leadership by reinforcing their existing Fair Earth Living practices and celebrating their ways of living through funding their activities and sharing their stories.
- Fund Indigenous-led movements and solutions.
- Enable Indigenous leadership in decision-making, policy agenda-setting and implementation on climate, nature conservation and wellbeing.
- Support continued and deepened learnings in Indigenous pathways and visions for the future.
- Foster cross-cultural training across Indigenous knowledge systems and western systems.
- Decolonize philanthropy and identify efforts to amplify true “reciprocity” and reconciliation based on leadership from First Nations, Metis, and Inuit nations and communities.