Dr Lewis Williams

Addressing Climate Trauma Through Indigenous-led Intergenerational Resilience

Loss of traditional lifeways amidst the intensification of colonialism and capitalism, and subsequent rupture of people’s relationships with the earth are strongly implicated in climate and cultural-ecological crisis. Younger people stand to bear the brunt of these cumulative impacts. The scope and scale of these issues necessitates sharing knowledge and practices across regional contexts to exert collective impact.

This Project investigates how culturally inclusive approaches to the revitalization of Indigenous or traditional knowledges in contemporary modernist contexts can be mobilized to address cultural-ecological crisis. The research engages youth involved in climate and/or cultural-ecological restoration work from Indigenous/traditional and nonIndigenous/traditional communities in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Southwest, Ontario, comparing and contrasting finding across two contexts. This is relevant to Scotland in general, and the Highlands and Islands in particular, because questions of indigeneity are increasingly articulated within a context of both decolonization and an influx of new Scots.