Grant: Indigenous Gender and Wellness Development Grants

Considering how gender operates within land-based and place-based learning is critical as both humans and more-than-human relations and relationships have been heavily shaped and regulated by settler colonialism and settler heteropatriarchy. The deterioration of Indigenous notions of gender and the forceful colonial imposition of a Western gender binary, has served to fracture Indigenous peoples' relationships with Land. This has engendered dire consequences for Land, Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people . Indigenous Feminist theory reveals how colonialism and patriarchy combine and intersect with race, gender, sexuality, location and other factors to create oppressive circumstances for Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. The effect is to wreak havoc on the ways Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people, are able to culturally mediate their relationships with Land. As we understand culturally and through Indigenous theory, that knowledge comes up through the Land, it is also equally important to understand and act upon re(connecting) bodies with the Land so that these knowledges can be picked up and new knowledges can be produced and shared. This project, "Gathering Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit Land-Based Educators and Practitioners", would fulfill just that by facilitating relationship building and collaboration between twenty Indigenous women and two-spirit people who are both formal and informal land-based educators and practitioners. Doing so will help strength and solidify the network that exists between women and two-spirit Indigenous land-based educators and practitioners, and help to revive and re(produce) knowledges and practices and affirm and facilitate Indigenous women, girls', and two-spirit peoples' relationships to Land.