Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq Grandmothers - Land/Water Defenders Sharing and Learning Circle: Generating Knowledge for Action

This report is a summary of the Grandmothers/Defenders’ stories and are interwoven with corresponding news articles, press releases, and other public documents. This is followed by an overview of some of the critical common issues and importantly, strategies for moving forward proposed by the Grandmothers/Defenders. The Grandmother’s Report is a collection of stories told by Wolastoqiyik Grandmother/Defenders against the Sisson Mine in New Brunswick and Mi’kmaq Grandmothers against the Alton Gas project in Nova Scotia at the event, Indigenous Grandmothers Sharing and Learning Circle: Generating Knowledge for Action, held at the Tatamagouche Centre in Nova Scotia, January 26 to 27, 2020. Like the MMIWG Report’s Calls for Extractive and Development Industries, the Grandmothers’ Report urges further research on environmental approvals and granting permits for resource projects to proceed; however, the Grandmothers’ Report also calls for the restoration of ancestral governance systems that honour women’s leadership, as well as maintaining and building new allied relationships and granting personhood rights to river systems. The Grandmothers/Defenders’ stories give witness to how two worldviews, Indigenous and colonial, intersect and collide. According to Dr. Pictou’s report, the Indigenous worldview is often neglected, excluded from, or distorted in the media and in other forms of knowledge production practices like Environmental Assessment reports

\u27Awakening the Sleeping Giant\u27: Re-Indigenization Principles for Transforming Biodiversity Conservation in Canada and Beyond

Precipitous declines in biodiversity threaten planetary boundaries, requiring transformative changes to conservation. Colonial systems have decimated species and ecosystems and dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their rights, territories, and livelihoods. Despite these challenges, Indigenous governed lands retain a large proportion of biodiversity-rich landscapes. Indigenous Peoples have stewarded the land in ways that support people and nature in respectful relationship. Biodiversity conservation and resurgence of Indigenous autonomies are mutually compatible aims. To work towards these aims requires significant transformation in conservation and re-Indigenization. Key to both are systems that value people and nature in all their diversity and relationships. This paper introduces Indigenous principles for re-Indigenizing conservation: (i) embracing Indigenous worldviews of ecologies and M’s-it No’kmaq, (ii) learning from Indigenous languages of the land, (iii) Natural laws and Netukulimk, (iv) correct relationships, (v) total reflection and truth, (vi) Etuaptmumk—“two-eyed seeing,” and “strong like two people”, and (vii) “story-telling/ story-listening”. Although the principles derive primarily from a Mi’kmaw worldview, many are common to diverse Indigenous ways of knowing. Achieving the massive effort required for biodiversity conservation in Canada will entail transformations in worldviews and ways of thinking and bold, proactive actions, not solely as means but as ongoing imperatives

Social equity is key to sustainable ocean governance

Calls to address social equity in ocean governance are expanding. Yet ‘equity’ is seldom clearly defined. Here we present a framework to support contextually-informed assessment of equity in ocean governance. Guiding questions include: (1) Where and (2) Why is equity being examined? (3) Equity for or amongst Whom? (4) What is being distributed? (5) When is equity considered? And (6) How do governance structures impact equity? The framework supports consistent operationalization of equity, challenges oversimplification, and allows evaluation of progress. It is a step toward securing the equitable ocean governance already reflected in national and international commitments

Treaties and Treaty-Making

Grounded in the sister disciplines of sociology and anthropology, this textbook is an accessible and critical introduction to contemporary social research. Alex Khasnabish eschews the common disciplinary silos in favour of an integrated approach to understanding and practising critical social research. Situated in the North American context, the text draws on cross-cultural examples to give readers a clear sense of the diversity in human social relations. It is organized thematically in a way that introduces readers to the core areas of social research and social organization and takes an unapologetically radical approach in identifying the relations of oppression and exploitation that give rise to what most corporate textbooks euphemistically identify as “social problems.” Focusing on key dynamics and processes at the heart of so many contemporary issues and public conversations, this text highlights the ways in which critical social research can contribute to exploring, understanding and forging alternatives to an increasingly bankrupt, violent, unstable and unjust status quo

¿Qué es la descolonización? Concepciones Relacionales y Ancestrales Mi’kmaw y Perspectivas Antropológicas sobre las Relaciones de Tratados

Reúne a antropólogos indígenas y no indígenas de México, Canadá y Australia que trabajan en las intersecciones de los derechos indígenas, la defensa y la investigación en acción. Presenta un conjunto de piezas que no toman los paradigmas políticos o geográficos habituales como punto de partida; en cambio, los diálogos particulares de los márgenes presentados en este libro surgen de un rechazo de la jerarquización geográfica del conocimiento en el que el Sur Global continúa siendo el espacio para el trabajo de campo, mientras que el Norte Global es el lugar para su sistematización y teorización

Reconciliation or Apiksitaultimik? Indigenous Relationality for Conservation

Transformative Politics of Nature highlights the most significant barriers to conservation in Canada and discusses strategies to confront and overcome them. Featuring contributions from academics as well as practitioners, the volume brings together the perspectives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts on land and wildlife conservation, in a way that honours and respects all peoples and nature. Contributors provide insights that enhance understanding of key barriers, important actors, and strategies for shaping policy at multiple levels of government across Canada. The chapters engage academics, environmental conservation organizations, and Indigenous communities in dialogues and explorations of the politics of wildlife conservation. They address broad and interrelated themes, organized into three parts: barriers to conservation, transformation through reconciliation, and transformation through policy and governance. Together, they demonstrate and highlight the need for increased social-political awareness of biodiversity and conservation in Canada, enhanced wildlife conservation collaborative networks, and increased scholarly attention to the principle, policies, and practices of maintaining and restoring nature for the benefit of all peoples, other species, and ecologies. Transformative Politics of Nature presents a vision of profound change in the way humans relate to each other and with the natural world

Reconciliation or Apiksitaultimik? Indigenous Relationality for Conservation

Transformative Politics of Nature highlights the most significant barriers to conservation in Canada and discusses strategies to confront and overcome them. Featuring contributions from academics as well as practitioners, the volume brings together the perspectives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts on land and wildlife conservation, in a way that honours and respects all peoples and nature. Contributors provide insights that enhance understanding of key barriers, important actors, and strategies for shaping policy at multiple levels of government across Canada. The chapters engage academics, environmental conservation organizations, and Indigenous communities in dialogues and explorations of the politics of wildlife conservation. They address broad and interrelated themes, organized into three parts: barriers to conservation, transformation through reconciliation, and transformation through policy and governance. Together, they demonstrate and highlight the need for increased social-political awareness of biodiversity and conservation in Canada, enhanced wildlife conservation collaborative networks, and increased scholarly attention to the principle, policies, and practices of maintaining and restoring nature for the benefit of all peoples, other species, and ecologies. Transformative Politics of Nature presents a vision of profound change in the way humans relate to each other and with the natural world

¿Qué es la descolonización? Concepciones Relacionales y Ancestrales Mi’kmaw y Perspectivas Antropológicas sobre las Relaciones de Tratados

Reúne a antropólogos indígenas y no indígenas de México, Canadá y Australia que trabajan en las intersecciones de los derechos indígenas, la defensa y la investigación en acción. Presenta un conjunto de piezas que no toman los paradigmas políticos o geográficos habituales como punto de partida; en cambio, los diálogos particulares de los márgenes presentados en este libro surgen de un rechazo de la jerarquización geográfica del conocimiento en el que el Sur Global continúa siendo el espacio para el trabajo de campo, mientras que el Norte Global es el lugar para su sistematización y teorización

Treaties and Treaty-Making

Grounded in the sister disciplines of sociology and anthropology, this textbook is an accessible and critical introduction to contemporary social research. Alex Khasnabish eschews the common disciplinary silos in favour of an integrated approach to understanding and practising critical social research. Situated in the North American context, the text draws on cross-cultural examples to give readers a clear sense of the diversity in human social relations. It is organized thematically in a way that introduces readers to the core areas of social research and social organization and takes an unapologetically radical approach in identifying the relations of oppression and exploitation that give rise to what most corporate textbooks euphemistically identify as “social problems.” Focusing on key dynamics and processes at the heart of so many contemporary issues and public conversations, this text highlights the ways in which critical social research can contribute to exploring, understanding and forging alternatives to an increasingly bankrupt, violent, unstable and unjust status quo