For his creative research project, Mathew created a poetry collection. Although his poetry collection will remain unpublished at this point in time, please take a look at his thoughtful Note to Reader regarding this creative research project.
Indigenized Outdoor Education for Promotion of Environmental Action
I grew up spending lots of time outdoors partaking in activities such as camping, hiking, and snowboarding. As I have grown older, I have explored more forms of outdoor recreation and attributed large amounts of my well-being to these activities. Not only have these activities improved my individual wellbeing, but through the resulting connection to nature, I have been inspired with a deep care for the protection of the environment. Currently, we are witnessing an environmental crisis between the extraction, production, and burning of fossil fuels; mass deforestation destroying wildlife habitats and decreasing the earth’s capacity for carbon sequestration, and many other problematic industries ultimately contributing to climate change. Inspired by my personal experiences, this project aims to demonstrate that when people engage in outdoor education or recreation that is rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing, authentic experiences on the land facilitate a connection that is likely to inspire care for environmental issues leading to increased action to counter the climate crisis.
Shawn Wilson (2008) explains that relationality is a central aspect of Indigenous methodology, and in his book, he uses the pronoun I and takes the time to properly introduce himself to the reader as a necessary aspect of sharing the research. Therefore, in this explanation of my project, I will use the pronoun I, and take the time to explain the background of how I became inspired to create a project on the chosen topic.
Between the summers of 2008 and 2016, I made various visits to the Horstman Glacier on Blackcomb Mountain in Whistler. Throughout those summers I made many great memories and witnessed an exponential loss of snow cover on the glacier with one memorable rock gaining what looked like 20-30 feet of exposure over the 8 years. That section of the glacier is now permanently closed for summer operations due to the snow loss. It is very apparent to me that if we do not make changes, we will continue to see the loss of important outdoor recreation opportunities in many global communities.
In the summer of 2021, I worked as a hiking instructor for Outward Bound Canada and guided many people ages 18-40 on, in some cases, their first camping experiences. Of significance, was a trip funded by The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) which included a co-instructor, 4 BIPOC women from Calgary, and myself. The trip had a specific intent of raising environmental awareness and as a Métis person, I included what bits of Indigenous knowledge I felt comfortable sharing into this curriculum. We took the four participants into a remote area of the Rocky Mountains known as the YaHa Tinda on a backpacking trip in the wilderness for a total of 5 days. For these participants, the experience of spending 5 days immersed in this area with minimal visible human impact, paired with nightly talks and journaling prompts lead to an increased connection to these spaces that need to be protected and therefore a deepened care to have our environment cared for.
In the fall of 2021, I registered for a creative writing theory course with Nancy Holmes and the main theme of the course was that our writing was inescapably bound to the time in which it was written and influenced by the challenges of those times. One day Nancy had a climate scientist as a guest lecturer for the class and he was quick to acknowledge that at first impression it might seem strange to have a climate scientist give a lecture on creative writing. He did not actually give a lecture on creative writing; he gave a lecture on climate change, and he framed it in a way that inspired me and my work. What I learnt from that lecture is that academic papers are inaccessible to most people. For the average person, academic language is either too exclusive to understand, or too boring to care about. This is where creative writers can come in. The ability to communicate complicated ideas in a way that is accessible and engaging is an essential skill in creative writing that is needed in our world. Now this project is my opportunity to put that lesson into practice.
For this project, I chose ten academic sources. Some of these sources are focused on looking at how Indigenous ways of knowing and Indigenous well-being are relationally connected to the land and how that connection is being threatened by climate change. Other sources explore how outdoor recreation and education can contribute to forming passion that leads to action on environmental issues and could therefore positively contribute to countering the climate crisis. My intention here is to answer the research question, does approaching outdoor recreation/education rooted in Indigenous knowledge increase environmental awareness and care for environmental issues, serving as a contributing factor to countering the climate crises?
My writing process has included reading the papers, writing summaries and commentaries on these papers, and using them as inspiration for creating poetry. As poetry is a creative art form, the process of transforming my inspiration from the sources into poetry is not always direct or specifically structured. These academic sources have merely served as inspiration and validation for the information in my poems. I have read and absorbed the information embedded within these papers and have then allowed that inspiration to flow outward naturally into poetry. In my perspective, academic writing is a result of thinking, while poetry happens when we stop thinking, connect inward and let the words flow outward. While the poem “If You Could See What I See” was more closely inspired by McRae’s (1985) paper, many other poems were more generally inspired by the collection of the information in general. The form of this process is a result of the central focus of an Indigenous worldview in the project. The Indigenous worldview sees things holistically, the information that is embedded within the poetry is an attempt to explore and present the information from the gathered sources as interwoven, interrelated parts of a whole. To see the complete list of sources that inspired the poetry, you can view them in the included reference section.
It is my hope that my musings on these academic sources may allow the information that is embedded within them to connect to audiences who would otherwise not access that information. It is my hope that this collection of poetry will connect with a wide audience. My primary audience is people who are interested in poetry or other forms of creative writing, have a passion for outdoor recreation and care for environmental issues. When thinking of my secondary audience, I like to imagine that the sky is the limit. I hope that these poems may be read by educators who may rethink their curriculum. I hope that these poems will reach people who have not spent much time outdoors and inspire them to seek those experiences. Perhaps most of all, I hope that these poems may sway people’s perspectives towards seeing the importance of protecting the environment and open their eyes to the values embedded within Indigenous knowledge that can help us accomplish that.
Climate change is one of the most prominent issues of 21st history, and as a creative person, I see it as my responsibility to contribute my craft to help solve this issue. Through my personal experiences connecting with nature and with my Metis ancestry, I have been inspired to protect the land. As a result of the research included in this project, I conclude that when people engage in outdoor education or recreation that is rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing, authentic experiences on the land facilitate a connection that is likely to inspire care for environmental issues leading to increased action to counter the climate crisis. This conclusion positions outdoor education/recreation that is rooted in Indigenous knowledge as a strong tool for combatting the most prominent issue that we face in the 21st century.
References
Baird, J., Hutson, G., & Plummer, R. (2020). Examining links between connections to nature and intentions for pro-environmental behavior as outcomes of NOLS. Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.18666/jorel-2020-v12-i4-9992
Cameron, L., Mauro, I., & Settee, K. (2021). “a return to and of the land”: Indigenous Knowledge and climate change initiatives across the Canadian Prairies. Journal of Ethnobiology, 41(3). https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-41.3.368
Embury, M. (2009). Rediscovering and re-imagining Indigenous Environmental Education outdoors (dissertation). Rediscovering and re-imagining Indigenous environmental education outdoors. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://www.proquest.com/docview/305096099?accountid=14656&pq-origsite=summon.
Friedel, T. L. (2011). Looking for learning in all the wrong places: Urban native youths’ cultured response to western-oriented place-based learning. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 24(5), 531–546. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2011.600266
Galway, L. P., Esquega, E., & Jones-Casey, K. (2022). “Land is everything, land is us” Exploring the connections between climate change, land, and health in fort william first nation. Social Science & Medicine, 294, 114700. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114700
Greenwood, M., & Lindsay, N. M. (2019). A commentary on land, health, and Indigenous Knowledge(s). Global Health Promotion, 26(3_suppl), 82–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/1757975919831262
Johnson, jay, & Ali, A. E. (2019). Paddling as resistance? exploring an indigenous approach to land-based education amongst Manitoba Youth. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 14(4), 205–219. https://doi.org/10.1080/15595692.2019.1669015
McRae, K. (1985). An environmental ethic for outdoor education: dilemma and resolution. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 1(2), 2–7. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45239470
Schwass, N. R., Potter, S. E., O’Connell, T. S., & Potter, T. G. (2021). Outdoor journeys as a catalyst for enhanced place connectedness and environmental stewardship. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 24(2), 215–231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-021-00079-6
Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Fernwood Pub.