What is it about?

Honouring Our Guardians centers the leadership of Indigenous women activists, policy makers and scholars from different parts of the world through an international/translocal community of praxis for climate justice. It tests frames, policies and practices that are Indigenous in design and execution, through community pilots in three different locations: the Pacific Islands, the Great Basin area of the USA, and the Brazilian Amazon.    

Analyses from this deeply collaborative and iterative process will challenge and transform mainstream narratives and policies around climate justice that have so far failed us because they are not systemic enough, nor led by those most affected.

Why is this important?

The lived experiences of Indigenous communities offer the exemplary intersectional, multi-faceted, cross-generational analyses of the chronic stressors of the climate crisis, including capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy and racism. Yet most risk mitigation and climate change strategies and solutions currently either ignore or romanticize Indigenous communities. When considered, “indigeneity” is treated as a monolithic category, rather than with the rich textures and differences of 370 million people, living across 90 countries, in multiple complex contexts of land, forest and ocean. Most importantly, the expertise and experience of Indigenous activists, scholars, policy makers and practitioners is rarely centered in this mainstream environmental discourse. With all good intentions, it is still primarily Western and global North based and led, including when it focuses on global South contexts for research and activism.

This pilot project intends to do exactly the opposite. We will be audacious in both imagination and action to create a community of praxis, centering Indigenous leadership, reciprocity and resilience in local practices of resistance, adaptation and transformation.

What do we plan to do?

Indigenous activists, scholars and policy makers are together in a community of praxis for climate justice over two years, sharing our multiple systems of knowledge and re-imagining frames of reference for the climate crisis from our Indigenous perspectives. We co-design and workshop the policies and practices we are implementing through community projects in our own contexts. We will then be able to reflect, compare, contrast and analyse across these contexts, and offer analyses and insights for reciprocity and resilience across multiple other contexts.