Indigenous Intergenerational Resilience: Confronting Cultural and Ecological Crisis(Routledge Studies in Indigenous Peoples and Policy)

This book argues that there is a need to develop greater indigenous-led intergenerational resilience in order to meet the challenges posed by contemporary crises of climate change, cultural clashes, and adversity. In today’s media, the climate crisis is kept largely separate and distinct from the violent cultural clashes unfolding on the grounds of religion and migration, but each is similarly symptomatic of the erasure of the human connection to place and the accompanying tensions between generations and cultures. This book argues that both forms of crisis are intimately related, under-scored and driven by the structures of white supremacism which at their most immediate and visible, manifest as the discipline of black bodies, and at more fundamental and far-reaching proportions, are about the power, privilege and patterns of thinking associated with but no longer exclusive to white people. In the face of such crisis, it is essential to bring the experience and wisdom of Elders and traditional knowledge keepers together with the contemporary realities and vision of youth. This book’s inclusive and critical perspective on Indigenous-led intergenerational resilience will be valuable to Indigenous and non-Indigenous interdisciplinary scholars working on human-ecological resilience.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Indigenous-led intergenerational resilience: The work of the "now" Chapter 2: The cultural and generational dimensions of climate and ecological crisis Chapter 3: Paradigms of resurgence and intergenerational resilience Chapter 4: Rongoā Māori as a generative response to the crises of our times Chapter 5: Ko ngā Pūrāko ō Tūrangawaewae—Stories of finding the places where we can be powerful Chapter 6: A global decolonial praxis of sustainability—Undoing epistemic violences through critical pedagogies of place Chapter 7: The dish with one spoon: Rehonoring an ancient treaty Chapter 8: The whakapapa (genealogy) of all things

About the Author :
Lewis Williams is an interdisciplinary, Indigenous, feminist scholar-practitioner of Ngāi Te Rangi descent. Her scholarship and practice centre on Indigenous resurgence and reconciliation as key means of addressing Indigenous disparities and human-planetary wellbeing. Growing up in Aotearoa / New Zealand and initially qualifying and practicing as a social worker and community developer, she has worked and lived within diverse communities and regions within Aotearoa / New Zealand, Turtle Island / Canada, and Australia. Lewis is the Founding Director of the Alliance for Intergenerational Resilience (AIR), a Canadian-based international not-for-profit organization whose aim is strengthening human-ecological resilience through the resurgence of Indigenous knowledges and lifeways within all peoples. She is also an Associate Professor, Indigenous Studies Program and Department of Geography and Environment, University of Western Ontario, Turtle Island / Canada.

Review :
"[Indigenous Intergenerational Resilience] offers leadership in thinking with ontologies and epistemologies beyond the binaries of Indigenous-non-Indigenous, which Williams argues is necessary in recovering our relationship with the life-world we inhabit, regardless of our identity and our level of connection or disconnection with people, place, culture and genealogy. I found this engaging and thought provoking, and at times unsettling: which I suspect is a necessary part of continuing to grapple with our response-abilities for enacting more ethical place pedagogies. As Williams asserts “we are our relationships, past, present and future” (p. 14). Indigenous Intergenerational Resilience is recommended as a provocative read for those working across the spectrum of environmental and sustainability education, especially those interested in supporting stronger connections with place, and learning with Indigenous ways of knowing." — Sutton, B.A. (2023). A review of “Indigenous Intergenerational Resilience: Confronting Cultural and Ecological Crisis”. Australian Journal of Environmental Education 39, 429–431.