Novel approaches to restoring Indigenous governing authority over lands and waterways

What is the relationship between infrastructure and jurisdiction? How can remaking the material systems that sustain collective life enact Indigenous jurisdiction? How can the “just transition” to sustainable economies be imagined and infrastructured to foreground Indigenous knowledges and governance systems? These are the questions that Osgoode-EUC Professor Dayna Nadine Scott and project co-director Professor Heidi […]

Plant diversity workshop and medicine plant walk provide Indigenous perspectives in planning

On Friday, May 20th 2022, Professor L. Anders Sandberg and fourth-year student Baillie Weiderick, both from the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, and Brian MacLean of Lost Rivers travelled together to attend and learn from a plant diversity workshop and medicine plant walk, hosted by Indigenous Elders and Anishinaabe teachers. The […]

Birds and plastic pollution – A case study in Toronto

by Melina Damian, MES, Ontario Nature's Communications Coordinator When you think of a bird’s nest, what’s the first image that comes to mind? Probably a bunch of sticks and leaves bundled together – right? Unfortunately, for birds that live in urbanized areas, they often use anthropogenic debris (otherwise known as garbage) to build their nests. […]

The anthropocentrism of settler colonialism and the survivance of land

Benjamin J. Kapron studies philosophies, understandings, and ways of thinking that generate, undergird, and uphold Canadian settler colonialism, particularly regarding understandings of Land and the other-than-human beings who together compose Land (animals, plants, waters, rocks, et cetera). While dominant settler thought may commonly understand Land to be a passive material object—the ground, or an expanse […]

Envisioning Indigenous-derived climate change futures

Climate change has been identified as the "defining issue of our time" by many of the world's leading experts. Many now use the term "climate crisis" to stress the urgency with which we must act to achieve a just and sustainable future. Successfully addressing the challenges ahead will require, as the UN has stated, a […]

Exploring the reinventive spirit in times of crisis

This show, Everything Slakens in a Wreck, is an explication of this moment we are in -- we are all trying to find our way in a maelstrom, a storm, a roller coaster ride of volatility and uncertainty, insecurity, and the wreckage of trauma. The exhibition is indeed a vision of a remarkable curator, Andil […]

Ontario's cormorant hunt and what it means for its future

by Gail Fraser For the last 14 years, I’ve studied double-crested cormorants at Tommy Thompson Park on the east side of Toronto’s harbour. Every April, I put on my coveralls and venture forth to follow a sample of nests, recording when nesting began and whether birds were successful at raising young. My goal is to […]

Sights of Contestation Part I: Unconscious

by Isaac Thornley This post is the first of three in the Sights of Contestation series. Sights of Contestation explores a variety of resistances, both material and discursive, found in current pipeline debates. The authors of this series focus on different sites of contestation—Keystone XL, Line 3, and the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project—to understand the role the unconscious, bodies, […]

Sights of Contestation Part II: Body

by Alexandra Watt Simpson This post is the second of three in the Sights of Contestation series. Sights of Contestation explores a variety of resistances, both material and discursive, found in current pipeline debates. The authors of this series focus on different sites of contestation—Keystone XL, Line 3, and the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project—to understand the role the unconscious, […]

Sights of Contestation Part III: Images

by Laurence Butet-Roch This post is the third of three in the Sights of Contestation series. Sights of Contestation explores a variety of resistances, both material and discursive, found in current pipeline debates. The authors of this series focus on different sites of contestation—Keystone XL, Line 3, and the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project—to understand the role the unconscious, […]