Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Indigenous Peoples have strong and beneficial relationships with the land. In their care, land is more biodiverse (e.g., has a greater number of plants and animals), and the water and air are cleaner. Unfortunately, 500 years of settler land abuse has harmed our environments. Now, we must work to heal the land by restoring the element of human care. Through Indigenous relationships with land, we have an ability to support the life sustaining services that the land provides. I work with Indigenous communities (based on my personal network and relations, such as the Manitoba Métis Federation and soon local Coast Salish Nations) to study how cultural land use, such as traditional gardening, harvesting, and cultural burns, benefit the environment. My work also supports Indigenous research autonomy by sharing capacity with new technologies. This includes mobile tools for sequencing DNA (Oxford Nanopore MinION) or measuring the light reflectance/absorption of leaves (SVC HR-1024i). These tools provide new methods to measure the health of the land and can find new meaning and uses from Indigenous contexts. Importantly, we co-create this work from Indigenous perspectives. This helps to ensure new knowledge, innovations, and outputs directly benefit the community. I also do this work physically in community rather than at university labs. This reduces barriers to knowledge sharing and brings tools and training to the community, elders, leaders, and young people. My research program affirms the material return of Indigenous Peoples’ research autonomy and their relationships with the land and can be seen as an act of decolonization. These actions support new Indigenous futures and at the same time develop sustainable environments for all Canadians and in a global context.