About this report

This is the first comprehensive report on climate change impacts, experiences and approaches written from the perspectives of First Nations, Inuit and Métis living in what is currently known as Canada. The objective of this report is to recognize, highlight and elevate Indigenous Knowledge, rights, expertise, issues, perspectives and experiences concerning climate change and its impacts within Canada. We aim for this report to be useful in research and policy domains as well as within communities themselves. It acknowledges the diversity of Indigenous Peoples in Canada in terms of culture, capacity, governance and geography, and marks a unique opportunity for the direct inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge and experiences into Canada’s National Knowledge Assessment process.¹

Central to our approach is a focus on rights- and responsibilities-based approaches to uplift the work of First Nations, Inuit and Métis in driving climate action at local, regional, national and international levels. This approach has gained increasing recognition and support from the Government of Canada as it advances work on Indigenous climate leadership.

Our author team, comprising over twenty authors and reviewers, is diverse and includes Indigenous academics, leaders, students, women, men, harvesters and youth from across the country. We are affiliated with universities, national Indigenous organizations, community-led organizations and Indigenous non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and are all deeply committed to caring for and maintaining strong connections to our families and communities. All members of our author team and reviewers are Indigenous, with two exceptions: Shari Fox and Anne Kendrick, both of whom have several decades of experience working with Indigenous Peoples.

We initiated the development of this report with a face-to-face meeting of the author team on Anishinaabe Algonquin Aki (also known as Ottawa) in February 2020. This meeting was crucial for establishing personal connections and focused on the co-development of broad key principles (see Box 1) and key messages to guide our work. While we initially planned multiple in-person author meetings on the Land and in our communities throughout the report’s development, the global pandemic necessitated a shift to virtual collaboration (see Section 3.5).

The authors co-developed sections of the report based on our unique experiences, expertise and professional training, consistently revisiting and reflecting on the key principles and values established early in the process (see Box 1). Additionally, we sought external input; for example, we conducted a virtual write-shop to strengthen specific text areas and to collectively develop the Moving Forward section, which addresses knowledge gaps and emerging issues (see Section 10.0).

To enhance the rigor of our approach, the report underwent peer review by First Nation, Inuit and Métis scholars. This diverse group of experts ensured the appropriate expression of Indigenous perspectives, identified strengths and weaknesses and contributed to better regional representation.

Collaboration was fundamental throughout the development of this report—the key messages, key principles and content were developed iteratively by the author team and refined over time. The broad and engaged approach used to develop this report reflects the collaborative spirit that exists and is needed to understand the impacts of climate change from First Nations, Inuit and Métis perspectives.

In developing this report, we encountered challenges, including the tensions in creating an “Indigenous report” that reflects diverse perspectives, experiences, and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples across Canada, and defining what “Indigenous” means. For this report, we define “Indigenous” as encompassing the three distinct groups in Canada: First Nations, Inuit and Métis. We acknowledge the distinct cultures within the “Indigenous” umbrella, the diversity between and within these groups, and that our experiences of climate change impacts and adaptation are inseparable from the wide and diverse set of cultures, histories, experiences and languages of First Nations, Inuit and Métis across the country. This also extends, as much as possible, to First Nations, Inuit and Métis living in urban areas, who make up more than half of all Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

Out of respect and a commitment to recognizing this diversity as central to our work, we must acknowledge our limitations in fully capturing the complexity of knowledge systems, and the climate change impacts and adaptation experiences of First Nations, Inuit and Métis across Canada. Instead, this report and its five key messages aim to provide a framework to guide the consideration and inclusion of Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous Knowledge Systems in climate-related discussions. These discussions must continue directly with rights- and title-holders. We view this report as an initial and essential step for future Indigenous-led climate change assessments, as well as measures and policy changes at local, provincial, national and international levels that incorporate First Nations, Inuit and Métis, along with Indigenous Knowledge Systems, experiences and perspectives.

Citation is a practice of valuation that prioritizes certain forms of impact, relevance and importance (Ahmed, 2013). In this report, our author team strived to advance Indigenous ways of knowing within a practice often rooted in extractive and predominantly non-Indigenous ideologies. These ideologies prioritize knowledge production and, in academic contexts, peer-review for tenure and promotion (Todd, 2016; Lewis, 2012). More directly, citations and their associated politics can reproduce “…the popular myth that research is done by English-speaking, white, cis men” (Liboiron, 2020, p. 97). Additionally, hierarchies reproduced within academia often favor human-generated and written knowledge, reflecting the entrenchment of settler colonial knowledge and practices (Burgess et al., 2021; Younging, 2018; Simpson, 2017). As a result, the richness of oral and visual traditions and the intergenerational knowledge held within communities and with our more-than-human relations are frequently overlooked (Kimmerer, 2013).

This report draws on and cites published and peer-reviewed literature but also includes quotations from Elders, case studies, references to videos, multimedia, online works and integrates art and personal stories. In doing so, we adopt a decolonial methodology that actively provides space for Indigenous Peoples and voices (Ferrazzi et al., 2019; Zavala, 2013; Smith, 2012). Our work is broadly situated within an Indigenous research paradigm to empower Indigenous Peoples’ research that is culturally relevant and accountable (Kovach, 2021; Chiblow, 2020; Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami [ITK], 2019a, 2019b; Smith, 2012; S. Wilson, 2008). This research paradigm broadly informs our understanding of “evidence.”

By drawing on and embodying Indigenous ontologies (the nature of being) and epistemologies (theories of knowledge), we underscore that relationships within and between humans and the natural world are based on principles of reciprocity, non-exploitation and respectful coexistence (Coulthard, 2014). We prioritize the 5 “Rs” of Indigenous Land-, Ice- and Water-first research: relationships, respect, relevance, reciprocity and responsibility (Styres and Zinga, 2013). Overall, our author team aimed to deconstruct dominant assumptions underlying colonial systems of climate change solutions by centering Indigenous sovereignty in the design, implementation and writing of this report² (Neville and Coulthard, 2019).

Given the history, context and the dangerous trajectory of current global climate inaction (Carr, 2022), it is “…not rational for Indigenous [P]eoples to rely on these global, national and regional economic and political frameworks for climate justice and a sustainable future” (McGregor et al., 2020, p. 36). Therefore, the For Our Future: Indigenous Resilience Report stands as a unique, independent document that acknowledges Indigenous Peoples, our knowledge systems and our distinct perspectives. This is crucial for several reasons.

First, Indigenous Knowledge, perspectives and experiences with environmental crises and change are often overlooked in mainstream climate dialogues and assessments. This oversight leads to persistent failures in addressing the concurrent crises of colonization and dispossession (Zurba et al., 2022; McGregor, 2019; Watt-Cloutier, 2015; Downing and Cuerrier, 2011). This neglect is frequently evident in government approaches to policy and analysis, which are entrenched within specific social and ecological frameworks (e.g., Indigenous Climate Action, 2021a). The 2022 Working Group Report II on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022) was the first global climate change assessment to acknowledge colonialism (see also Section 3.4). Our report, in contrast, emphasizes Indigenous place-based approaches to addressing climate change and the frameworks of knowing, being and doing that inform them.³

Second, there has been only incremental progress in recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems as equally valid and in promoting equitable and open involvement of Indigenous Peoples in western science and policy dialogues (Expert Panel on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience, 2018).

Third, when Indigenous Knowledge Systems have been considered in western science and policy debates, it has often been done primarily by non-Indigenous scholars, who in specific circumstances have marginalized, misinterpreted, or misappropriated systems of knowledge that are not their own.

Now is the time for Indigenous leadership and authorship—and by extension, the more appropriate inclusion of our knowledge systems in climate change assessments, research and policy discussions. It’s time to create our own space where our knowledge systems are not merely included but are given priority, actively embodied, and effectively communicated, as seen in initiatives like Climate Science 2050: Advancing Science and Knowledge on Climate Change (Climate Science 2050) (Government of Canada, 2020a).

This framing aligns with other key Indigenous approaches to climate change, such as the National Inuit Climate Change Strategy (ITK, 2019a), Assembly of First Nations’ National Climate Strategy (Assembly of First Nations, 2023), Métis Nation Climate Change and Health Vulnerability Assessment (JF Consulting, 2020) and Inuvialuit Settlement Region Climate Change Strategy and Climate Change Action Map (Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, 2022). Indigenous Climate Leadership was explicitly acknowledged in the Government of Canada’s strengthened climate plan, A Healthy Environment and A Healthy Economy (Government of Canada, 2020b), which recognizes the importance of self-determination by and for Indigenous Peoples, and in Canada’s first National Adaptation Strategy (Government of Canada, 2023). This strategy upholds Indigenous rights as one of its guiding principles and includes a dedicated annex for Indigenous climate change strategies and action.

It cannot be overstated how the broader historical and ongoing inequities and injustices resulting from settler colonialism, along with imposed policies, governance and laws, compound the impacts of climate change for Indigenous Peoples (Funes, 2022; Huntington et al., 2019; Arsenault et al., 2018; Collins et al., 2017). It wasn’t until 2022, more than three decades after its establishment, that the IPCC acknowledged colonialism as a driver of climate change: “Vulnerability of ecosystems and people to climate change differs substantially among and within regions (very high confidence), driven by patterns of intersecting socio-economic development, unsustainable ocean and land use, inequity, marginalization, historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism and governance (high confidence)” (IPCC, 2022, p. 12).

This context is crucial for understanding each key message in our report, particularly the one on the unique strengths of Indigenous Peoples to respond to environmental and climate change(see Section 5.0). Settler colonialism and its manifestations, such as extractivism, structural racism and discrimination, have led to the estrangement, exclusion, displacement and forcible removal of First Nations, Inuit and Métis from our traditional territories and, by extension, of our caretaking and decision-making related to those territories. This has limited our ability to exercise authority in our lived environments and overlooked the concerns we have raised about ecosystem destruction since the arrival of Europeans in the Americas over five centuries ago. There are many elements and layers to this context that we are unable to address within the scope of this report. Climate change must be seen as “intimately connected to the ideologies, systems and practices of colonialism” and the dynamics of “intensified forms of patriarchy, western scientific imperialism and aggressive neo-liberalism that marginalize Indigenous Knowledge and practices as relevant only to the Indigenous Peoples who hold them” (Lewis et al., 2020, p. 898). Without analyzing historical and ongoing colonialism, we risk perpetuating approaches that continue to fail (McGregor, 2019; Cameron, 2012). Essentially, settler colonialism has undermined Indigenous Peoples’ right to live well. Most mainstream assessments of climate change and the natural environment overlook colonialism in their analyses (Cameron et al., 2022, 2019; Cameron, 2012).

Indigenous Peoples are reasserting authority over a range of issues, including governance and control of our education, health care, research, food systems, water and energy resources. This work is complex, and Canada’s constitutional authority divisions of power and jurisdiction over Indigenous Peoples affect First Nations, Inuit and Métis in different ways (see Box 2). A distinctions-based approach, recognizing the specific rights, interests, priorities and concerns of First Nations, Inuit and Métis, while respecting our unique cultures, histories, rights, laws and governments, is increasingly used (Government of Canada, 2018; Government of British Columbia, n.d.). Indigenous women, in particular, have worked for generations to overcome the unique impacts of colonial patriarchal structures on their lives and communities, striving to restore their relationships with the natural world and participate in governance and political decision-making, including climate action (Asselin and Basile, 2018).

The implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the multiple calls to action by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission focus on Indigenization and decolonization processes, with implications for climate change research and action. Decolonized climate change research and action are anchored in place-based knowledge systems, where Indigenous perspectives, knowledge and methodologies are rooted. It has been increasingly recognized that Indigenous Peoples’ governance, knowledge systems and legal orders are central to supporting and enabling adaptive capacity in the face of climate change (Deranger et al., 2022; Reed et al., 2021b; McGregor et al., 2020; Cameron et al., 2019; McGregor, 2017). This report aims to offer a decolonizing lens to the current climate change dialogue in Canada by centering Indigenous Knowledge, perspectives and realities.

The For Our Future: Indigenous Resilience Report, like the rest of the National Knowledge Assessment, is based on existing work. Drawing on this foundation and further supported by words, stories, multimedia and case stories showcasing current and ongoing work in many communities, we aim for the For Our Future: Indigenous Resilience Report to be useful in research and policy domains as well as within communities themselves. We use specific case stories from the perspectives and experiences of First Nations, Inuit and Métis to provide concrete examples, following a consistent structure in each section. Each begins with a reiteration of the key message, followed by an accessible takeaway paragraph summarizing the essence of the message. This is followed by an introduction and several subsections exploring supportive evidence.

The profound impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on our communities cannot be overstated or overlooked in the context of this report (Richmond et al., 2021; ITK, 2020a; United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2020). COVID-19 has overwhelmed First Nations, Inuit and Métis governments and communities who have struggled with active cases, hospitalizations and deaths. We extend our deepest respect to those who have worked tirelessly in our communities, and we offer our support and condolences to all who have been affected by the virus—we acknowledge your hardships and loss.

The unique experiences that First Nations, Inuit and Métis have faced and continue to face due to COVID-19, is exacerbated by colonialism and its structural impacts on our communities. These include forced removal from our Lands, Waters and territories; lack of access to clean water and sanitation; overcrowded and substandard housing; food and water insecurity; disruptions in essential community services; and chronic underfunding of medical services, facilities and transportation. These factors directly affect health (physical, mental, spiritual and emotional), impact the availability of time, and reduce the capacity to respond and engage with everyday work demands, outside activities and other ongoing critical issues such as climate change (Bowers et al., 2021; Kenny, 2020). Despite these challenges, First Nation, Inuit and Métis governments have reasserted jurisdiction over the past three years by implementing borders, strict quarantines, testing rules for returning community members and mobilizing mutual-aid and care economies within urban centres.

Throughout the pandemic, we have witnessed a continued emphasis on and active facilitation of increased industrial and extractive activities that continue to impact the inherent, Treaty and constitutionally-protected rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis. The concept of “building back better” and “re-opening the economy” may not adequately address the structural legacy of colonization on our infrastructure, governance and ways of life for First Nations, Inuit and Métis (Busby, 2021). The pandemic has underscored the need for distinctions-based data to understand and respond to the unique health and economic needs of Indigenous Peoples (Obed, 2020), with implications for addressing future crises and climate impacts.

In the context of developing this report, the combined impact of events during 2020‒2023—including the COVID-19 pandemic, the increasing number of extreme climate events (especially the atmospheric river event in British Columbia and the wildfires in British Columbia, Yukon, Quebec and Alberta) and the “discovery” of unmarked graves at Indian Residential Schools across the country—were acutely felt by the author team and are reflected in the report’s key messages. Many on our team were affected by the stresses and upheavals in work, family life or health that necessarily took precedence over meetings and writing. Our authors, who are parents, grandparents, community leaders, artists, educators, caregivers, entrepreneurs and also fill many other roles, all of which were disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the exceptional events of the past few years, with those in northern, rural and remote communities being particularly affected.

Despite these challenges, we consider this report to be illustrative of a broad perspective on the unique impacts of climate change and adaptation approaches that First Nations, Inuit and Métis face in Canada. It is not, however, intended to be a comprehensive representation of all the climate leadership activities undertaken by First Nations, Inuit and Métis citizens, governments and organizations across the country. A thorough survey of this climate leadership must be done in full partnership with First Nations, Inuit and Métis.