Circle 4: Action

A First Nations’ Worldview

First Nations-led solutions are multidimensional, interrelated, interconnected, and grounded in First Nations law, knowledge, language, and governance. The core of a First Nations worldview is an understanding that we are one with the land.

This recognition lays the foundation for a set of legal principles and orders that, while unique to each individual First Nation, represent natural, spiritual, and environmental law. It is this sacred responsibility.

Circle 3: Impacts

The First Nations’ Lived Reality

In Canada, climate conversations often disregard the historical legacy of colonization, which has included relocating First Nations, forcibly removing children from their families and placing them in Residential Schools, and prohibiting the use of traditional languages and practices, among other atrocities.

Climate change exacerbates many of the resulting impacts of colonization, including those relating to mental health and well-being, poverty, poor housing, food and water insecurity, and the erosion of rights, culture, and access to lands.

The lived reality of First Nations needs to be understood and incorporated into analyses of the distribution and experience of climate-related impacts. In this regard, addressing the climate crisis cannot be separated from the broader project of First Nations self-determination and reconciliation.

Circle 2: Context

The Legislative, Legal and Policy Ecosystem

For First Nations, climate action is a rights- and responsibilities-based activity that occurs within a legislative, legal, and policy context. This stems from our inherent jurisdiction over our lands and territories, as well as our affirmed right to self-determination.

The broader ecosystem for this includes the federal government’s passing of legislation to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN Declaration), its commitment to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, as well as the Calls for Justice from the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. It also includes Indigenous-specific jurisprudence and the protections afforded to First Nations by the Constitution Act, 1982.