At the tipping point: Why decolonizing climate action is more important now than ever

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At just eight years old, Eriel Deranger stood up to her Grade 2 teacher and principal when she pointed out a book in the school library that portrayed racial stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples. After a conversation with her mother at the principal’s office, the book was removed from the library and her mother was hired as a cultural safety trainer. 

This was one of the key moments that started Deranger’s lifelong work fighting for Indigenous rights. 

“That was a moment for me where I was like, ‘Oh, we actually have power to change things if we want, like one single person can make a difference,’” Deranger says. 

Growing up, she lived on the traditional trapline on the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Treaty 8 territories until her family was forcibly removed and relocated to Regina in the late 70s. 

Deranger was part of developing the United Nations’ Indigenous Youth Caucus in the early 2000s, has worked for the Federation of Sovereign Indian Nations, and had a career in land claims. She spent six-and-a-half years with her nation working on issues regarding tar sands, also known as oil sands, as a spokesperson and advisor to chief and council before founding Indigenous Climate Action in 2015. 

She credits her time working in land claims to the beginning of her foray into the environmental movement.  

“When you work in land claims, you start to realize that everything is about accessing resources,” Deranger says. 

“I realized that the Alberta tar sands, at that time, were the largest industrial project in my community’s backyard, and it was having huge detrimental impacts on my own community and family members.” 

Indigenous Peoples have been fighting the colonial treatment of their natural resources for decades. As the world quickly approaches tipping points with climate change, some experts are turning to traditional ways of knowing as alternatives to colonial solutions. 

A 2022 report published in the International Affairs academic journal argues decolonial approaches to governing the climate are centrally important if policy-makers are to achieve just climate futures. 

“Decolonization is tricky. I think that it doesn’t necessarily have to mean we just throw everything out and live in some sort of anarchy …. That’s not it,” Deranger says. 

“Indigenous populations didn’t live in anarchy, we had laws …. [There is a] need for a social shift, and that social shift comes from decentring human beings, first off, from the ideologies of what governance and law mean.”

Decolonization and Indigenization have become buzzwords in certain spaces, but there is a clear distinction. Deranger says Indigenization refers to including Indigenous people in the conversation in existing colonial structures, while decolonization is about deconstructing those systems and building something different. 

Indigenization is an important step, but it is not the same as decolonization. 

Staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, Eugene Kung, has been working with various groups and Indigenous communities to revitalize their laws and apply them to contemporary issues. Eventually, they hope to get to a point where Canadian law fully incorporates Indigenous law.

Kung says one way to decolonize is by decentring laws and worldviews behind colonization and amplifying Indigenous laws. This includes the perpetuity of capitalist consumption fueling climate change. 

“[There are] very real implications of ignoring Indigenous law at your own peril,” Kung says. 

“Growth is increasingly dependent on consumption and credit. It is inherently unsustainable …. Ultimately, almost every economic activity comes down to some extraction of some natural resource.”

To make Canada a place of justice, fairness, and equity, Kung says it is important to not ignore Indigenous law. 

“I think that’s the moment we’re in right now,” he says.

“It’s like sweeping dust under a rug, you can do that for so long and have the appearance of a tidy house. But after a while, the rug is gonna get saturated with dust, and if every time you try to lift a corner and sweep a little more, some is going to spill out the other side. And so it’s a little bit like that, you just can’t ignore this anymore.”

Canada has made efforts like adopting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which received royal assent in 2021. It was created to affirm the rights of Indigenous Peoples and taken on by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Yet, its application needs to meet the expectations of Indigenous communities. 

“We want to be recognized as sovereign nations with our own systems and structures. That is part of decolonization, the release and relinquishing of that power,” Deranger says. 

In an email statement to The Runner, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) wrote that First Nations, Inuit, and Métis in Canada are at the front of climate change efforts. 

“Indigenous leadership and knowledge are critical to achieving the foundational changes required to address climate change and ensure a healthy environment,” ECCC wrote.  

“The Government of Canada also supports without qualification the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the right to free, prior, and informed consent. Recognizing the role of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis in leading self-determined climate action in Canada is critical to advancing reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.”

Kung says we haven’t come as far as politicians suggest, and any progress that has been made should not be credited to the government but to the Indigenous communities who have fought in courts to inch closer to decolonization, often at a great expense. 

Deranger adds Indigenous communities are still fighting in court for their lands to be protected and their voices to be heard. 

“The courts side with the government and the proponents in the corporations, stating these projects are in the public interest and our nations simply need to find deals for compensation for those losses, as if everything can be solved with money,” Deranger says, adding that this is a strong colonial value.  

“We need to be upholding and looking towards future generations, and money is not going to safeguard our lands, waterways, and kin.”

Change in this regard receives societal hesitation because of the years settlers have benefited from these systems, says University of Victoria environmental studies professor Karena (Kara) Shaw, who is also the academic director of the school’s transformative climate action certificate.

Shaw’s research focuses on the social and political dynamics of environmental problems with an emphasis on movements for social justice, such as Indigenous self-determination. She studies the barriers these movements encounter and why change doesn’t happen despite compelling arguments for why it should. 

“Settlers benefit a ton from colonization,” Shaw says. “I think that the ability to occupy the lands of Indigenous people and extract resources from them is one of the foundational aspects of our economy. So there’s a self-interested approach that blocks change.”

While Indigenous communities wait for society to recognize that a dramatic shift needs to happen, the world is warming at unprecedented rates, and current policy structures are failing to meet climate targets. 

In 2023, the auditor general of Canada reported that, in addition to not being on target to reach 2030 emissions goals, Canada’s current emissions are significantly higher than they were in 1990. 

The report added that the federal government has failed to meet emission reduction targets despite having developed more than 10 climate change mitigation plans in the past three decades, and “course correction is critical to achieving the target.” 

Deranger says if things keep going the way they are right now, current structures and systems will not survive the climate crisis. 

“I don’t think [the systems will] survive the climate crisis …. I think what will be born out of the climate crisis is going to be something entirely different than the world that has existed for the last 150 [to] 200 years,” Deranger says. 

“I think what is going to survive is going to be fundamentally different, and we will be forced into decolonization.” 

Decolonizing approaches to the climate crisis will take time, and Shaw says if we do some things now, such as stopping fossil fuel expansion, it would give us more time to work on the things that move slowly, like changing our governance systems and structures. 

“There’s a lot of things that are hard, but one thing is clear — First Nations and Indigenous people … they’re not going anywhere,” Shaw says. 

“They’re here for the long haul, and they’re going to look after their lands as well as they can. If we can just stop making that really difficult for them, then I think we’re going to see the right solutions emerge.”