Activist asserts Indigenous voices essential to tackle climate change

Governed by natural laws that centre on balance and fairness for all life, Michelle Brass of Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) says the wisdom and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples must be brought to the forefront of the climate change crisis.

“We’ve been displaced from our lands and our way of life and as we look at transitioning off of fossil fuels, this provides an amazing opportunity for reconciliation and decolonization,” said Brass at the Summit on a Just Transition to Renewable Energy in Saskatchewan on Saturday morning.

“Indigenous peoples have deep knowledge of the land and that knowledge must be respected and taken seriously,” she said. “Our knowledge, our wisdom, our world view, provides many of the solutions to mitigating and addressing climate change.”

The summit was organized in response to a recent report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which called for drastic reductions in emissions by 2030. Held in Regina from Oct. 27-28, the summit hosted experts who talked about ways to phase out fossil fuels from the electrical grid and to transition industry while ensuring sustainable livelihoods for workers and Indigenous communities.

Brass, a member of ICA’S steering committee, was invited to speak to the crowd of about 100 people ranging from concerned citizens and university professors, to physicists and doctors, about how decolonization is part of a just transition.

“The report that came out from the IPCC earlier this week states that we have very little time to make extreme changes on a massive scale,” said Brass. “I’m not sure if people really understand what that means.”

“If we’re looking at making these massive changes, decolonization and transition has to start in our minds and it has to start at how we think about our society,” she said. “Everything on our planet that sustains us has rights and we live in relationship with that.”

She’s urging Canadians to look into their hearts and minds and consider how ready they are to make the drastic changes needed to address climate change.

It’s not just tweaking the system, she said, but engaging in a major overhaul that requires Canadians to give up some of the comforts they’ve grown accustomed to, but are unsustainable.

“I think we have the potential, but it also means letting go of a world view and an approach to land, resources, wealth that is not healthy for the people and the planet overall,” she said. “I’m wondering if they’re willing to

People won’t support climate policies if they think it’s just going to hurt them.

give that up.”

It’s a difficult thing to convince people, said Hadrian Mertins-kirkwood, a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Mertins-kirkwood presented on ways to transition to a greener economy without leaving workers behind.

“It’s going to be impossible, politically, to make any movement toward a cleaner economy if we don’t also bring workers along with us,” he said.

“People won’t support climate policies if they think it’s just going to hurt them.”

If a coal plant is shut down in an effort to go green, direct supports to vulnerable workers, such as income supports, pension bridging and re-training for new jobs are ways to mitigate the impact to those workers, suggested Mertins-kirkwood.

He said the bigger picture includes the economic benefits of investing in renewable energy infrastructure.

“We’re going to need a whole lot more people to do those jobs, so we want to proactively train more apprentices in those areas,” he said. “This isn’t just about the coal worker that everyone thinks about; it’s also about young people, what careers are we preparing them for? It’s really about shifting the entire workforce.”

He’s optimistic, but understands the challenges in addressing climate change with a general public that often sees it as a “future problem.”

“Everyone cares about it, but they care about it less than paying their bills this month. They care about it less than getting to work tomorrow,” said Mertins-kirkwood. “I feel like at some point people are going to realize ... we really need to do something. The scary part is that if it’s so bad that you need to do something, it’s kind of too late.”

He said talking about climate change can be despairing, because it seems so big and impossible to resolve, but that “we can do this.”