This blog post was written by FEELed Lab Research Associate Erin Delfs, as part of our support to syilx-led climate justice.
On April 9th, a small group of folx[1] from IndigenEYEZ, the UBC Centre for Climate Justice (CCJ), and UBC Okanagan (UBCO) gathered at the FEEled Lab on unceded[2] syilx[3] territory with three key intentions:
- To introduce Vancouver-based members of the CCJ to climate justice-related work being done in the Okanagan;
- to familiarize UBC students, staff, and faculty with IndigenEYEZ methodologies through an immersive, Earth Sense-style workshop; and
- to build foundations for sustainable, cross-community, and cross-organizational collaborations grounded in syilx sovereignty and climate justice frameworks.
Encouraging CCJ affiliates from the Vancouver campus (located on unceded Musqueam territory) to visit and learn more about climate justice work being done in the Okanagan (located unceded syilx territory) was informed by an understanding that climate justice is contextual and place-specific.
The climate emergency is a global problem. At the same time, this emergency unfolds differently and unevenly from place-to-place (Melchior 2024; Murdock 2021), and the Routledge Handbook for Climate Justice argues that “any configuration of climate responsibility needs to capture the specificity of people and place” (524). Here in the Okanagan, for example, it is critical to recognize that syilx communities have been living in sustainable and reciprocal relationship with the land and lifeways of syilx territory for over 10,000 years.
Furthermore, as discussed in a previous FEELed Note , discourses and frameworks of “climate justice” proliferated through settler academic contexts are not necessarily useful to syilx communities as these communities continue to uphold responsibilities to regenerating land and lifeways for future generations. Syilx scholars and knowledge keepers like Jeannette Armstrong and Bill Cohen encourage settlers who care about contributing to liveable futures for everyone living on syilx territory to centre, learn from, and collaborate with syilx communities who have been doing this future-facing work for a very long time (Armstrong 2020; UBC Studios Okanagan 2024).
This brings us to the work of syilx-led organizations like IndigenEYEZ. Grounded in Indigenous and syilx-specific ways of being and seeing the world, IndigenEYEZ offers a range of workshops and programs which provide Indigenous people with tools for cultivating connection, strengthening their communities, and mobilizing change.
IndigenEYEZ also offers generous opportunities to support settlers in unlearning colonial conditionings and enacting our responsibilities to decolonization and reconciliation. To deliver these workshops and programs, IndigenEYEZ draws on a diverse and intentional range of creative, relational, and emergent methodologies. IndigenEYEZ Program Director Kelly Terbasket has expressed that these methodologies are best understood through experiencing them rather than hearing them described.
Thus, the April 9th gathering at the FEELed Lab offered folx from UBCO and the CCJ an opportunity to experience these methodologies firsthand.
Co-leads of IndigenEYEZ’s Earth Sense program Kelly and Carrie Terbasket guided participants through a series of activities which focused on engaging with and learning from the land in ways that shift beyond normative colonial ways of knowing and relating, and encouraged participants to tap into senses which transcend the typical gamut of see-smell-hear-taste-touch. In between activities, participants were encouraged to share feelings and reflections, many of whom described the activities as generating reflexivity, unlearning, and joy.
Following Kelly’s emphasis that IndigenEYEZ methodologies must be experienced to be fully understood, we encourage readers who are interested in learning more to register for an upcoming Elements of Truth workshop series, or to bring a Table Talks peer-learning series into your organization or workplace.
Snapshots from an activity led by Kelly Terbasket called “7 Wonders.”
In a paper titled “Syilx perspective on original foods: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” syilx scholar and knowledge keeper Pauline Terbasket (2019) expresses:
What does it mean to restore our Food Chiefs? It means we recognize the social and ecological values and importance of food is for all human beings on this very small planet. It means we talk about building relations with communities across cultures and across Nations. We work to build and hold each other up, not to tear each other down by dominance, power, and greed. We would rather cooperate. We would rather share. We would rather be in this work together. (54)
Thinking with how this quote highlights the importance of relationship building, collaboration, and cooperation between communities, we think also of the many projects focused on syilx sovereignty and ecological regeneration – like Bringing the Salmon Home, the Okanagan Mountain-K’nmalka Wildlife Corridor Action Plan, and the Okanagan Lake Dam East Salmon Passage – that have emerged from collaborations built between many different people, organizations, communities, and Nations.
The April 9th gathering between IndigenEYEZ, UBCO, and the CCJ offers an emergent example of syilx and settler-dominant communities coming together to connect, leverage our respective tools and strengths, and build collaborations of shared responsibility towards regenerative and liveable futures on unceded syilx territory.
References
Armstrong, Jeanette. 2020. “An Okanagan Worldview of Society.” In Living Earth Community: Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim. Open Book Publishers. 10.11647/OBP.0186.
Jafry, Tahseen, Karin Helwig, Michael Mikulewicz, Taylor & Francis eBooks EBA, and Taylor & Francis eBooks A-Z. 2019;2018;. Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice, edited by Tahseen Jafry. 1st ed. Abingdon, Oxon;New York, NY;: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315537689.
kilawna, kelsie. 2023. “Caretaking the Vast Syilx Homelands.” The Narwhal (blog). December 12, 2023. https://thenarwhal.ca/guardians-penticton-indian-band/.
Maracle, Lee, Jeannette C. Armstrong, Delphine Derickson, and Greg Young-Ing, eds. 1993. We Get Our Living like Milk from the Land. Penticton, B.C: Theytus Books.
Melchior, Fabiola. n.d. “ENGAGING YOUTH AS CLIMATE ACTORS: PLACE-SPECIFIC EXPLORATIONS OF CLIMATE JUSTICE IN ACTION.”
Murdock. 2021. “Telling The Truth On Climate, Colonization, & White Supremacy.” Atmos. 2021. https://atmos.earth/climate-crisis-colonization-environmental-justice/.
Terbasket, Pauline. 2019. “Syilx Perspective on Original Foods: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” Edited by Sandra Shields. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, August, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2019.091.016.
UBC Studios Okanagan, dir. 2024. UBC Okanagan 2024 Teaching Awards – Bill Cohen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TlJteCxH9E.
[1] “Folx” is a version of “folks” often used to hold space for diverse gender and sexual identities.
[2] “Unceded” means that this land was never sold, signed over, or transferred through treaties or formal agreements. European colonizers committed land theft and genocide against syilx Okanagan people, and settlers continue to occupy, develop, and extract from this unceded and stolen land today. In a book titled “We Get Our Living Like Milk From the Land,” editors Armstrong, Derickson, Maracle and Young-Ing (1993) describe how the freedom of syilx people on syilx territory is “a right coming out of having looked after the land for thousands of years without destroying it,” and that “no guns, nor foreign laws on paper of other people, who destroyed their own land, can change that truth.” (7).
[3] syilx journalist Kelsie Kilawna (2023) writes: “According to some n̓syilxčn̓ language keepers, there are no capitalizations in the spellings of any n̓syilxčn̓ words. In an egalitarian society, capitalization insinuates there is something that holds more importance over another, and that does not fall in line with syilx ethics.” With respect to this protocol and these ethics, nsyilxcən words featured in this blog post are written using lower case letters. We acknowledge that this protocol may differ across communities and contexts.
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