Indigenous Planetary Health Podcast

We are back from our summer break! Before we get started, stop! Take a deep breath in … and … out. Pause. Where is the sun in the territory you’re on now? Where is the moon? Observe and connect. In this episode, Heather is joined by Wet’suwet’en PhD candidate Sandra Martin Harris, who urges us to slow down, check in with the land, and connect with our bodies regularly for health and wellbeing. We also hear about Sandra’s involvement with The Planetary Health Learning Garden, a place of connection. It is a collaboration between the Public Health Association...

Summer break continues, and art meets planetary health in a replayed episode with Sarah Jim. Through her paintings, Sarah reminds us of small but mighty relations.  

One of the key values of our collective is prioritizing the importance of art to an Indigenous worldview. In this episode, Hoku and Heather sat down with Sarah Jim who is a visual artist from the village of Tseycum in W̱SÁNEĆ. As a muralist, her art practice reflects the lessons she’s learned from Coast Salish mentors and from her land-based work at PEPÁḴEṈ HÁUTW, where she worked at the...

Continuing with our summer break, let’s revisit an old episode with Dr. Shannon Waters. As a physician frustrated with a health system focused on sickness, Shannon talks about what keeps us well.  

In this episode, Heather and Carey Newman sit down with Dr. Shannon Waters to talk about how stewarding Indigenous lands and waters in a good way is essential for human health, specifically the health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples. Speaking from her cultural context, Shannon asserts that human health requires Hul’q’umi’num Peoples to have authority over health, education, the environment, water, salmon, an...

Co-hosts Heather and Hōkū are taking a break this summer, so journey back with us to listen to the first ever guest on the Indigenous Planetary Health Podcast, Dr. Nicole Redvers. As a global leader in planetary health science, education, and advocacy, Nicole talks about centering the earth in Indigenous planetary health.  

Planetary health has emerged as a new ‘science’ in academic circles. It is touted as a framework that reimagines a path forward through the current climate crisis. But contrary to what you might have read or heard, the concepts behind planetary health are not new at a...

In this episode, Heather and Hoku speak with Katsi’tsakwas (Ellen Gabriel) about her recently published memoir, When the Pine Needles Fall: Indigenous Acts of Resistance (co-authored with Sean Carleton). Ellen is an activist and artist, and known worldwide for her role as the official spokesperson for the Longhouse during the 78-day Siege of Kanehsatà:ke in 1990 brought on by Oka, Quebec when the municipality initiated the disturbance of a sacred burial to make way for… a golf course parking lot. The book is a powerful blend of personal narrative and political analysis about the “Crisis that was caused by Oka.”...

Indigenous science and western science may not be so different after all. Dr. Shandin Pete joins Heather and Hōkū to talk about Indigenous philosophy, observational science, and hydrology. By combining stories, belief structures, and traditions with mathematical and hydrological understandings of water, Shandin explains how Indigenous observational methods and ways of doing things are not so different from the scientific method. In other words, the “thinking of the past crosses over into scientific traditions of today,” he says. If we can understand more about the past, we can repurpose traditions and beliefs to fit within the constructs of today...

If you don’t know who Haunani-Kay Trask is, or what the Hawaiian sovereignty movement is about, this episode is for you! Hōkū sits down with longtime friend Noelani Goodyear-Ka’ōpua to learn about Haunani-Kay Trask’s work and life, and everything Noelani and colleagues are doing to honour Kumu Haunani-Kay’s legacy as speaker, activist, thinker, and writer. As Noelani tells us, Haunani-Kay Trask was a steadfast advocate for Hawaiian sovereignty within a larger critique of imperialism and colonialism, globally. Her work was influenced by political movements in the sixties and seventies such as the Black Power movement, t...

n this episode, Heather is joined by one of her many mentors, esteemed Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall, who brought forward the concept of Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing). Etuaptmumk is a framework that emphasizes the importance of multiple perspectives and the value of integrating diverse knowledge systems. We learn so much from Albert in this episode on the importance of knowing who you are, where you come from, and where you’re going. We are also introduced to two new concepts: Msit No’kmaq, which tells us that we are all interconnected relations with responsibilities to care for and honour all be...

Indigenous languages are action oriented to their core. Heather and Hōkū join SENĆOŦEN language specialist and land steward Dominique James for a conversation about language, native plants, and what it means to engage in reconciliACTION. A child of SÁNEĆĆ land, we hear about Dominique’s experiences with the SENĆOŦEN Survival School, what it means to SENĆOŦEN-ize, and how language shapes the ways we can interact with the land. Dominique shares how she is helping the Habitat Acquistion Trust (HAT) “see how she sees.” A key part of seeing as she sees is sharing langua...

In this episode, Heather and Melissa Quesnelle chat with leading Māori health researcher Dr. Helen Moewaka Barnes about her pathway to becoming a health researcher and how she approaches her work. For Helen, being introduced to academic research through community directed projects meant she has always approached her work with Māori communities at the center. She describes feeling uncomfortable describing her work as research but rather describes her work as Kairangahou: a person who engages in the process of weaving. In this episode, Helen describes how kairangahou is distinct from Kaupapa Māori and how both are esse...

In this episode, Heather chats with longtime friend and colleague Simon Brascoupé. Simon has a lifetime of Indigenous advocacy to share with us, including the origins of Earth Summit (92’), the tensions between environmental movements and Indigenous peoples over the years, and his current role with the Archipelagos of Indigenous-led Resurgence for Planetary Health project. He tells us stories of beavers, bears, and chickadees because these more-than-human kin have much to teach us about how to live well in place. Simon describes the principals and importance of community and land-based art and advises Indigenous youth to “feel your feet on the g...

In this episode, Hōkū sits down with Dr. Melissa Nelson to discuss love, gender, and sustainable futures, all through the lens of ecology, or as she puts it, the study of complex interrelationships. We hear about Melissa’s work on rematriation as a returning to lands, homes, bodies, spirits, and Indigenous women’s leadership. Resurgence, although interrelated with rematriation, focuses on Indigenous power, survivance, affirming cultural instructions from within, and new futures, knowledges, and expressions of Indigeneity. Melissa’s work is intertribal and fosters a sense of Indigenous internationalism, focused on exchange of tools, stories, songs, seeds, and knowledg...

Despite the proliferation of climate justice debates, equity considerations remain predominantly western, human centric, and exclusionary. Further, IndigiQueer impacts and perspectives continue to be marginalized, although as we hear from our guests, there is power in the margins. In this episode, Hōkū and Heather talk with Dr. Lewis Williams and Jordan Ramnarine who contend that IndigiQueer people have unique strengths, roles, and responsibilities in Indigenous Resurgence and for visioning otherwise realities to colonialism and hetero-patriarchy. For Lewis and Jordan, an assertion of IndigiQueer cosmologies is a refusal of the hierarchal, patriarchal logic of domination that causes ecological devastation. In...

Carey Newman joins Heather for this episode to chat with ḥapinyuuk (Tommy Happynook). Tommy is čačaac̓iiʕasʔatḥ from huuʕiiʔatḥ (Huu-ay-aht First Nations). He is both ḥaw̓iiḥ (a hereditary chief) and a researcher with the Archipelagoes project. In chatting with Tommy, we learn how he prioritizes community responsibilities and in doing so how it is beneficial to his work as a researcher at the University of Victoria, instead of at odds with it. It is this balance of community member and researcher that is so rare and yet so needed.  

We hear, through story, how Tom...

Governments and international governmental organizations’ responses to global environmental crises are failing; Indigenous environmental repossession, where it’s happening, is working. In their book, Because This Land Is Who We Are, authors Chantelle Richmond, Renee Pualani Louis, and Brad Coombes explore distinct instances of Indigenous repossession in geographically diverse locales in Canada (Anishinaabe), Hawai’i (Kanaka Maoli) and Aotearoa (Māori).  

In this episode, we are joined by Chantelle and Renee to talk about their very different, but mutually reinforcing case studies, and the insights they reveal for other Indigenous communities involved in environmental repossession (i.e., Indigenou...

In this episode, Heather and Hōkū sit down with winner of the 2024 Climate Breakthrough Award, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a a Dënesųłiné Indigenous rights and climate activist. Eriel was raised in relation with the ecosystems across so-called Alberta and Saskatchewan, where each part of the land is understood to be a relative. Eriel discusses how the white supremacist perspective that the earth is our dominion to conquer (using the ever-expanding tar sands in her home territory as an example) is a root cause of climate change. She describes how simply reducing greenhouse gases does not reconcile the ways i...

For decades, Indigenous feminists have documented how colonization and hetero-normative patriarchy have eroded, erased, and eclipsed Indigenous women, Two-Spirit, queer, and feminine men’s contributions to land governance, cultural transmission of knowledge, and keepers of practices and protocol for living in reciprocal relationship with all of creation. We also know that within patriarchal systems, nature is conflated with the feminine as something which can be controlled and from which resources can be extracted without consent or concern for the short- and long-term impacts. Indigenous feminists have provided unequivocal evidence that we cannot solve the current climate crisis without addressing th...

In our first episode of season two, Heather and Hōkū are thrilled to be hosting Janna Wale, a young Indigenous leader working to heal the planet through place-based, community-engaged practices. In this time of frustration with and despair about the state of local and global politics, this interview with Janna is like a booster-shot of hope. Heather and Hōkū sit down with Janna Wale to discuss the transformative potential of Indigenous youth, many of whom are considered the “seventh generation.” They discuss how young people are guiding critical conversations in climate change, sustainability, and resilience. Janna talks about th...

In this episode, Heather Castleden and guest co-host Melissa Quesnelle sit down with Dr Susanne Theissen, who talks about how her life story animates the work she does with Indigenous communities. Armed with a degree in business, Dr. Theissen uses her training to decolonize western constructs of economic prosperity and explains how her approach contributes to Indigenous resurgence and planetary health. This approach is illustrated through a project she is doing with the internationally renowned knitters of Cowichan sweaters. She shares how planetary health is an intertwining of cultural strength, intergenerational strength, economic strength, and intellectual property. 

Dr...

In this episode, Heather Castleden and guest host Carey Newman chat with Zoe Todd about Indigenous planetary health from the perspectives of fish. Zoe discusses how through critical Indigenous fish philosophy, we can view fish as more than human beings with whom we have a diplomatic responsibility. They discuss how every Nation across so called Canada has a wealth of knowledge and protocols for how to be in good relation with fish. As a species that has survived multiple mass extinctions, we have a lot to learn from fish. The discussion turns to gender and sexuality and particle physics...

In this episode, Heather Castleden and guest host, Carey Newman, speak with Dr Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark. Dr Stark shares how she came into academia through a desire to learn her language and how she began to study law because her generation saw promise around the liberatory aspects of the court systems in Canada and the US. She recognizes, as well, how her generation has “stood on the shoulders of giants” of their Elders and how she and others are now clearing new pathways for the next generation to seek justice and resurgent futurities. She also engages with the Anishinaabe phil...

In this episode, Heather Castleden and Melissa Quesnelle talk with Melina Laboucan-Massimo about activism, Indigenous resurgence, and land defense, all based in love and care for land and people. Attending her first blockade at age 7, Melina describes her work not so much as protesting, but as her inheritance. Her work with energy justice and energy transition is a sacred responsibility she has inherited to care for Mother Earth. Speaking about her home community in Little Buffalo, which is impacted by one of the largest industrial projects in the world, Melina talks about the simplicity of planetary health meaning clean water...

In this episode, Heather Castleden and Carey Newman speak with critically acclaimed and award-winning mezzo-soprano Marion Newman (Carey’s sister!) about the nuances of Indigenous identity, the transformative power of music, and the deconstruction of hierarchal and patriarchal structures in the arts community. Marion discusses a new opera she is developing called Namwayut, meaning ‘We Are All One’, asserting how important it is to understand how we are all related to each other and all living beings.

Not only is the content of the opera unique and important, Marion also “flipped the script” of how operas conventionally come toget...

In this episode, Heather Castleden is joined in the podcast studio with guest co-host, Carey Newman, and together they speak with Dr Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel about everyday acts of resurgence through art, from song and dance to visual art and stand-up comedy. He describes the importance of ecosystem balance, internal and external peace, and harmony amongst all our relations as Cherokee responsibilities for supporting planetary health. He also highlights how Christian patriarchal values have disrupted Cherokee ways of being in relation with each other and how the next generation, people his daughter’s age, are starting to push back ab...

In this episode, Heather Castleden is joined by cohost Deondre Smiles and they speak with Graeme Reed about planetary health, nature-based solutions, Indigenous knowledge and the teachings from Elders. Dr Reed argues that what is needed for planetary health is for Indigenous Peoples to be reconnected with each other, their lands, knowledges, languages, and themselves. Reconnection opens possibilities for solutions that are place based and responsive to the needs of local communities. For Dr Reed, planetary health, as understood from a Western lens, is premised on the idea that to support human health we need to transform nature, what...

Co-hosts, Heather Castleden and Hōkūlani Aikau, sit down with water scientist, legal scholar, policy expert, and writer, Dr. Kelsey Leonard, to talk about how she upholds her responsibilities as “a protector of the shoreline”. A citizen of the Shinnecock Nation, Dr. Leonard uses all her training to address the impacts of climate change on her community. In this episode, we talk about the barriers and challenges to addressing climate change and how to bring about planetary health, which include how researchers are trained at universities and how Indigenous knowledge continues to be undervalued in these spaces. While critic...

In this episode, Heather and co-host Melissa Quesnelle, sit down with Dr. Dawn Smith to talk about how Indigenous Knowledge is transmitted from one generation to another and how important it is for this knowledge to be shared in communities. Dr Smith’s nuučaańuł (Nuu-chah-nulth) name is sii-yaa-ilth-supt and she is from Ehattesaht. She grew up in W̱SÁNEĆ (Tsawout) with her late parents, Clyde and Norma Claxton. Dr. Smith is an assistant professor at the University of Victoria where she works to understand the strict laws of nature and what it means in her home communit...

In this episode, Heather and Carey Newman sit down with Dr. Shannon Waters to talk about how stewarding Indigenous lands and waters in a good way is essential for human health, specifically the health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples. Speaking from her cultural context, Shannon asserts that human health requires Hul’q’umi’num Peoples to have authority over health, education, the environment, water, salmon, cedar. This means Hul’q’umi’num Peoples need to be at the table so that they can make decisions about 100% of their territories not just the 15% that is on the table in treaty discussions...

Dr. Mary Tuti Baker is Kanaka Maoli and an assistant professor of Indigenous Politics and Futures at Western Washington University. Dr. Baker was born of the waters of Waimānalo Bay, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. She currently teaches Comparative Indigenous Studies at Western Washington University. Her work in Indigenous political thought examines the politics of decolonization, and articulations between and within Indigenous communities and non-Indigenous social justice movements which is reflected in her most recent work “A Garden of Political Transformation: Indigenism, Anarchism and Feminism Embodied,” published in Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies. In this episode, Dr. Baker discusses the les...

Dr Dan Hikuroa (Ngāti Maniapoto, Waikato-Tainui, Ngaati Whanaunga, Pākehā) is Senior Lecturer in Te Wānanga o Waipapa at Waipapa Taumata Rau/University of Auckland where he has also lectured in Anthropology, Geology, Sustainability, Environmental Engineering and Business Studies. He is UNESCO – Culture Commissioner for New Zealand, Co-Deputy Director Engagement Te Pūnaha Matatini. He is a researcher for Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga and Sustainable Seas and a Council member of the American Geophyiscal Union. Dan’s expertise is in the areas of Earth Systems, Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge and ways of knowing), clim...

Dr. Heather lgloliorte (Inuk-Newfoundlander, Nunatsiavut) is an internationally renowned curator and art historian whose work centres circumpolar Inuit and other Indigenous arts and knowledges within global art contexts such as contemporary art exhibitions, public art installations, museum collecting practices, and new media art and film productions. Her research foregrounds Indigenous perspectives and creativity, with a particular emphasis on the training and mentoring of Indigenous youth from remote and northern communities, while focusing on decolonizing institutions and challenging colonialist understandings of resilience, health, resources, and technologies. She is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices...

In this episode, Hōkūlani Aikau explains how doing ethnographic research in the academy provided her with opportunities to learn from and about her various communities. As an ethnographer her approach is committed to understanding the experiences of the people with whom she works. Her training and experience have brought her to the Archipelago Collective and she explains how trans-Indigenous critical juxtaposition can be productive and synergistic and offers a foundation for thinking globally about planetary health without losing sight of the local, Indigenous context.

Dr. Hōkūlani Aikau is a Kanaka ‘Ōiwi Professor and the Dir...

Heather and Hoku sit down with Chamorro scholar, Tiara Na’puti, to discuss Indigenous planetary health from the perspective of Guåhan and the Marianas archipelago. Tiara is an Associate Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California-Irvine. Her scholarship and community work addresses militarism, colonialism, Indigenous cultures, and movements in the Mariana Islands archipelago and throughout Oceania. As Tiara explains, while Guåhan is geologically part of the Marianas archipelago, it is geo-politically a territory of the United States. Listeners may not be aware that the United States military is one of the biggest polluters on t...

In both Canada and the United States, the idea of state, provincial, territorial and national parks are widely celebrated for preserving wilderness for the public to enjoy. However, what might be less known is that the origins of the nature conservancy movement that produced these parks are based in white supremacy and anti-Indigenous racism. While these parks were established in Indigenous territories, they were designed to keep Indigenous Peoples out. In this episode, Heather and her guest co-host, Naatoi’Ihkpiakii Melissa Quesnelle, sit down with Dr. Deondre Smiles, a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and an As...

Dr. Diana Lewis who is Mi’kmaq from the Sipekne’katik First Nation holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Health Governance at the University of Guelph. She joins co-hosts, Hokulani Aikau and Heather Castleden, for a conversation about doing community engaged research and the leadership role Indigenous women are playing to redress environmental injustice and racism in their communities. In this episode, Diana shares her experiences of doing Indigenous-led research, providing listeners with clear, accessible instructions for how to do this work in a trusting and respectful community-centered way.   

This podcast is created by the Impact...

One of the key values of our collective is prioritizing the importance of art to an Indigenous worldview. In this episode, Hoku and Heather sit down with Sarah Jim who is a visual artist from the village of Tseycum in W̱SÁNEĆ. As a muralist, her art practice reflects the lessons she’s learned from Coast Salish mentors and from her land-based work at PEPÁḴEṈ HÁUTW̱. She also talks about how art allows her to educate others about the role of the small ones – the slugs, frogs, bees, bugs, flowering plants, and medicinal plants –in planetary health.

T...

In this episode, Heather and, guest host, Carey Newman have a conversation with Métis activist Breanne Lavallee-Heckert. When we spoke with Breanne, she was the Research Director for Indigenous Climate Action, an Indigenous-led organization that works on connecting and supporting Indigenous communities to reinforce their place as leaders who are driving climate change solutions for today and tomorrow.

Carey and Heather speak with Breanne about the limits of the Canadian legal system for addressing issues of planetary health and why she chose to reject the process of being called to the bar. Listen and learn how s...

In this episode, Heather and special co-host, Jeff Corntassel, a professor in Indigenous Studies and a member of our collective at the University of Victoria, sit down with Carey Newman, renowned artist, master carver, filmmaker, author, and public speaker to discuss the circuitous route he followed that brought him to be a part of the Archipelagos collective.

Perhaps most well known for his work on The Witness Blanket, Carey’s work co-creating a totem for the 2008 North American Indigenous Games was the first time he engaged in community engaged art making. The experience of having 11,000 people participate in...

Planetary health has emerged as a new ‘science’ in academic circles. It is touted as the a framework that reimagines a path forward through the current climate crisis. But contrary to what you might have read or heard, the concepts behind planetary health are not new at all, at least not from the perspective of Indigenous worldviews. In this episode, Heather sits down with Dr. Nicole Redvers, a member of the Deninu K’ue First Nation to talk about Indigenous planetary health and how she came to be doing this work. They are joined by, guest host, Melissa Quenelle, who sh...

The Indigenous Planetary Health Podcast features artists, activists, and academics working to heal our planet through Indigenous-led resurgence. In this episode, co-hosts, Heather Castleden and Hokulani Aikau will introduce you to a few of the folks who comprise the Archipelago of Indigenous-led Resurgence for Planetary Health, including Carey Newman (Master Carver), Dawn Smith (Nuu-chah-nulth Governance), Heather Igloliorte (Curator), and Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles (Indigenous Geographies).

Heather and Hoku will also introduce themselves and explain why they have embarked on this new journey, bringing you conversations with folks from the Archipelagos Collective who are tackling the triple crisis of...