Grant: College & Community Social Innovation Fund

Weejeedamin: An Indigenous Land-based Futurity, is the innovative development and application of urban land co-management strategies rooted in traditional Indigenous land-based practices and knowledges. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many adverse social determinants of health within urban Indigenous communities across the country. Combined with the closure of many community food gardens and urban parks at the beginning of the pandemic this further stressed many urban Indigenous people's relationship with the land, especially in a time when Elders and Knowledge Keepers were asking for an increased collection and use of traditional medicines. Building on the work already accomplished by local grassroots Indigenous community organizations, this project will allow for an enhanced coordinated effort among our community partners - The City of Kitchener, White Owl Native Ancestry Association and the Wisahkotewinowak Urban Indigenous Garden Collective, to create a 33 acre restoration project securing sustainable, traditional food and medicines, increasing local biodiversity through habitat restoration and reintroduction of native species, building community capacity, mobilizing knowledge, and exercising land co-management and relational agricultural practices on the land.