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From Colonial Logics to New Possibilities: Stories of Inuit Youths’ Engagement in Community-driven Water Stewardship (Poster 2)

Fri, April 25, 3:20 to 4:50pm MDT (3:20 to 4:50pm MDT), The Colorado Convention Center, Floor: Terrace Level, Bluebird Ballroom Room 3A

Abstract

Objectives
Canada is a water wealthy nation, yet actual access to drinking water is challenging in many communities in the North of Canada known as Inuit Nunangat – where Inuit live. In these fly-in communities, the water infrastructure is aged, the trucked water and sewer systems undependable, and water boiling advisories recurrent. That vulnerability to water security led to an Inuit initiated water stewardship project deeply grounded in Inuit Knowledge Systems (IKS), blended with Western Science to map new potential water sources. Through stories from this project, I highlight ongoing colonialism and environmental racism that control, undermine and silence entanglements of knowledge systems, bodies, and space that could spark imaginaries of new possibilities.

Framework
Many Indigenous youth experience a double displacement (Nelson-Barber et al., 2022): They face serious climate-induced destruction and were never taught the locally meaningful Indigenous knowledge systems that has given many generations in the past the kind of wisdom, ethics and philosophical understandings to ensure sustaining water practices (Waldron, 2020). This disconnect makes evident the need to center nature-culture relations that unsettle ongoing colonial and racial capitalist relations (Nxumalo et al., 2022).

Methods & Data Sources
I rely on an ethnographic case study of the water stewardship (2014 to 2018). Through a bricolage of data sources, I share stories of four youth participants, enriched through interviews by the two instructors. I center the resurgence of Indigenous knowledge systems and the multi-modal nature of learning as it takes hold in the head and heart through walking on the land, alongside Elders, through dialogue with locally active knowledge holders of water stewardship and multiple knowledge systems.

Results
Water sampling at the lake and in rivers entangled with walking the land helped youth reconnect with the land in ways many had never experienced before given lack of access to cultural experiences through schooling or family, as noted by Mikael: “to see the land in all its glory, like, this is where I grew up, but I’ve never seen it in this light before, in this way.” Exchanging about water practices and walking with Elders led to the rebuilding of other relations colonization had broken as Eric hints at: “I like talking with Elders, listening to their stories and getting answers… I like talking Inuktitut a lot, it’s really good because I am Inuk and it’s my language.” Such exchanges helped youth take pride in who they are and practice local traditional water stewardship such as getting water for the Elders on the iceberg. Some youth presented the results at a National Scientific Meeting, weaving together IKS with Western science and speaking from the heart as experts of their own homeland.

Significance
The stories speak to the need for expansive visions of climate change education and call for interdisciplinary pedagogies that uplift Indigenous knowledge systems while Western science might be invoked as tools when needed. Place-based and experiential learning and knowledge systems are essential to overcome ongoing discourses of dispossession and exclusion, leaving us with multiple lessons for socio-political action.

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