Photo of a river running through a mountain range and forest in Cone Mountain, Alberta.
Photo of a river running through a mountain range and forest in Cone Mountain, Alberta. Credit: Scott Goodwill / Unsplash Credit: Scott Goodwill / Unsplash

Colonialism caused climate change, and Indigenous traditional knowledge and a rights-based approach in planning how human beings mitigate and adapt to this existential threat is the key to getting us out of this mess. Indigenous peoples are the leading global experts on rapid adaptation and the shared challenges we as human beings face today, such as mass migration. This is because we were forced to learn this knowledge by experiencing the expansion of western imperialism through the colonization of our sacred lands and waters by settlers gone mad with notions of terra nullius, their minds poisoned by the Vatican’s doctrines of discovery and the Papal Bulls. 

Today in Canada, over 50 per cent of Indigenous Peoples live in urban centers dispossessed from our land-based lifestyles due to genocidal policies like Indian residential schools and the Natural Resource Transfer Act (NRTA), which continues to open our lands to predatory extractive industries on a massive scale. Same story, different players in a framework of neo-colonialism. You probably know an Indigenous Person in your city but might not know that most of us are environmental refugees dispossessed and displaced by massive extractive industries working with the settler colonial state whose only intention is to extract raw resources to be sold on the international market to the highest bidder. 

This was a hard year to be Indigenous in so-called Canada, the discovery of tens of thousands of unmarked graves of children who just never made it home from the over one hundred and thirty Indian residential schools. From the incredible violence and poverty created in our communities by the austerity agenda of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. To the incredibly layered and complex emotions brought up by the Pope’s visit to Canada to give an apology without any meaningful action toward reparations. All of this piled upon the collective experience humans across the world have been facing in terms of the existential threat of escalating conflict, pandemics, climate change, and global recession. For a bit there this last year, it seemed that the indigenous peoples were impacting the national discourse on truth and reconciliation and the implementation of the 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commision (TRC), and then Queen Elizabeth died. 

The death of the Queen brought about yet another act of erasure of Indigenous Peoples collective pain and demonstrated how insignificant our contemporary and historical suffering is to so many settlers, including the Canadian corporate media.

Just this last month, the world scientific body known as the IPCC released its sixth doomsday report on the state of our climate. Basically, the report reiterated that we have less than four years to decarbonize the global economy if we are to stave off the worst impacts of our rapidly destabilizing climate and minimize the violent, unpredictable climate weather-related events already causing havoc in so many economies across the planet. In short, we have changed the chemistry of mother earth in just 150 years of industrialization, and if we do not end our addiction to fossil fuels, we will very quickly as a species begin to lose our ability to habituate in major parts of Mother Earth due to it being too hot or too cold to no water or food security. Climate-fueled conflict is sweeping the globe, and the largest migration of the human species has already begun. 

Governments of the world recognize the vital and crucial role of Indigenous Peoples traditional knowledge in the fight to stabilize our climate. In 50 years of environmentalism in Canada, there has not been a major environmental victory without Indigenous Peoples and our collective rights-based framework leading major coalition efforts to victory. When it comes to climate change and its root cause, a predatorial capitalist economic system, Indigenous Peoples know how to survive an apocalypse. We understand what it means to be resilient and to adapt rapidly. Because of colonialism we understand things such as mass migration because colonization forced us to become experts on these matters. 

We have a really big problem in our country given that up to this point, the success of Canada’s economy is inextricably linked to the suppression of Indigenous Peoples inherent and treaty rights. The climate crisis gives us an incredible opportunity to deconstruct and rebuild Canada’s economic engine in a way that does not marginalize Indigenous Peoples but rather reaffirms us as partners in benefiting from and sharing these lands and waters into the future. I do not believe that Indigenous Peoples knowledge alone can get us out of this climate mess we are in, I do believe that our knowledge with western science and maybe a dash of magic can. It is critical that we understand the relationship of Indigenous Peoples as rights holders with the Canadian Settler Colonial State referred to as the Crown. People need to understand that the reason Indigenous Peoples in Canada are so cash poor is due to systemic racism, the state failing on its fiduciary and legal obligation and silly idea’s like “First Nations are a burden to the taxpayer”. The true story is that Canada continues to molest and meddle in our self governance over our traditional lands and resources stifling our economic self determination. This is why the landback movement is so important because the reality is that Indigenous Peoples lands and resources have been subsidizing white wealth accumulation since before Canada was founded. Canada, like any other country or company, has to file credit rating applications when it borrows money. They have great credit because of the paternalistic assertion that Canada holds all Indigenous lands and resources in trust for Indigenous Peoples. If the country actually stayed out of Indigenous Peoples affairs we would not see the housing crisis or boil water advisory crisis or the massive social problems we see on the reserve today because land equals economic self determination. 

This earth day we need to lift each other up, we must think about and act on the sacrifices we need to make to change systems currently running on fossil fuel. We need to incorporate the work of reparations and truth and reconciliation between Canada and Indigenous Peoples into this fight. We should consider our individual ecological footprint and be environmentalists but given the data and time restraints the IPCC and frontline communities have been screaming in urgency, we must build the biggest social movement in the history of humankind to force decision makers to respond to the scale of the problem we face. This means standing up to big oil, especially in Alberta’s controversial tar sands. We need to tax the profits these companies are posting to help pay for the transition and not be subsidizing them. We need to tax the banks as well that are financing and profiting from high carbon intensity sectors. We need to be ready if these decision makers do not stand up to big oil and the banks that finance them, we need to be in a position to remove and replace them with leaders who will if they refuse. 

This earth day I will be with my sons and dreaming about the day when landback, reparations and truth and reconciliation become a priority for settler Canadians and I encourage you all to join us in this critical moment in solidarity.