Land-based pedagogies, Reconciliation and Climate Resilience: Out of the Classroom and into the Garden at a Canadian University

• In Event: Poster Group 2
  In Poster Session: Land-based pedagogies, Reconciliation and Climate Resilience: Out of the Classroom and into the Garden at a Canadian University

Proposal

In 2015, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, (TRC), presented its findings on the impact of residential schools on Indigenous communities within and across Canada,from 1895-1996. In addition to detailing the abuse, neglect and cultural genocide enacted on Indigenous children and their families, the TRC report included 94 Calls to Action to engage all Canadians in the process of truth-telling and Reconciliation.

When the discovery of unmarked graves on the lands of former residential schools made headlines across Canada in the summer of 2021, many communities came together to grieve and protest the government’s slow action on the implementation of the 94 Calls to Action. It was a time of deep public grief and outrage, and within our university campus, we struggled to find ways to respond meaningfully, outside of formal organizations and traditional politics. A group of students, faculty, staff and community members came together and sought space to develop a community garden on campus as a way to respond as a community to the failures of institutions and governments to act on the 94 Calls to Action. The vision was to create a place where we could learn through land-based pedagogies, and to begin to understand our own relationships the land on which we live and learn.

Although land-acknowledgments had become part of our official university rituals, spoken at the opening of classes and official university events, it was clear that the time had come to go beyond mere words and to explore exactly what was our relationship to the land upon which we both learn and work.

Land-based healing and pedagogies include practices that have been taught by Indigenous elders for thousands of years. In Indigenous teachings, land is understood as a relational element for healing and overall well-being. Nearly every aspect of Indigenous cultural identity is interwoven and connected to land, environment and biodiversity. In contrast, land, within the university is typically viewed as a commodity, and is rarely incorporated as a site for knowledge production or personal well-being. Our goal was to explore new ways to integrate learning through Indigenous land-based practices as a way to fulfill our commitment to and responsibility for Indigenous-settler reconciliation.

This research engages with participatory action methodologies to explore the impact of land-based pedagogies within the student community of a Canadian university. It documents the creation and evolution of a community garden, designed to support both healing, education and sustenance throughout our campus community. The study engages an integral ecological lens to consider ways that learning is transdisciplinary, social, spiritual and experiential. It is also informed by critical settler studies and theories, to decolonize the ways in which higher education is complicit in the erasure of Indigenous pedagogy and commodified land usage.

Author

• Allyson Larkin, King's University College