In the face of declining human-ecological systems, as well as intercultural and interspecies trauma, we are currently witnessing a renaissance of activist-orientated environmental education. In Canada, this work is increasingly viewed as part of a broader healing response of "DEEP" reconciliation work between Indigenous and…

In cultures of excess, the challenge is to see. In a time of climate change, how will humans find the questions, the reflections, the poems, or the prayers that will bring ecological justice and peace? This writing begins a response to the call made on the last day of our gathering at Loon Lake for a "commonist manifesto" around…

In this paper I argue that education must be defined by our willingness to experience compassion in the face of others' suffering and thus by an ethical imperative, and seek to expose psycho-social processes of shame as dark matters that inferiorize and subjugate those expressing such compassion for the more-than-human world. Beginning with…

Environmental education is one site of many that reinforces dominant obesity discourses and weight-based oppression through privileging fit, able bodies. Using personal narratives and insights from the nascent field of fat studies, we offer a critical analysis of obesity discourse in environmental writing in general and environmental education in…

Considering (a) the many potential connections between hunting, culture, and environmental thought, (b) how much hunters have contributed to the conservation movement and to the protection of a viable land base, and (c) renewed interest in hunting as part of the wider movement toward eating local, non-industrialized food, we seek to bring hunting…

Margin acts as ground to receive the figure of the text. Margin is initially unreadable, but as suggested by gestalt studies, may be reversed, or regrounded. A humanities course, "Native American Architecture and Place," was created for a polytechnic student population, looking to place as an inroad for access to the margins of a better…

This article discusses the development of a methodological metissage that combined Indigenous and interpretive traditions. This metissage was developed during a doctoral study conducted with Canadian environmental educators who incorporate Western and Indigenous knowledge and philosophy into their ecological identities and pedagogical praxis. It…

In an effort to figure out what it means to educate "ecologically," I decided to track down some of the stories that I was living, telling and making as an educator. I ended up lost in the house of environmental education, stuck within the rooms of ecological science and political advocacy. Outside on the lawn sat the story of place…

This paper explores the pedagogical benefits of combining remote winter wilderness travel and homestead living with reading, writing, and listening to personal narratives from the expedition region. A co-taught interdisciplinary university course will be used as a case study to demonstrate the ways in which this approach aids in developing…

In this article, the author examines some of the ways in which art and literature converge upon the site of the Canadian landscape, generating an "ekphrastic" conception of place which reminds everyone constantly that every framed, static view of a landscape represents a story house, a repository of narratives concerning all those…

A Blackfoot woman, caught in the act of adultery, was condemned at this site to have her nose cut off as a penalty for her actions. People do not know her story. The tribe cast it on the ground. And so She, Nose Hill, was named. John Laurie Boulevard holds her mound in a circlet of asphalt, defining the map of her "terra incognita." She…

In this essay, the author recalls several of her experiences in which she successfully pulled her boats out of river holes by throwing herself to the water as a sea-anchor. She learned this trick from her senior guides at a spring training. Her guides told her, "When you're stuck in a hole, take the "C" train."" "Meaning?" The author asked her…

The lake is blue black and deep. It is a glaciated finger lake, clawed out of rock when ice retracted across Nova Scotia in a northerly direction during the last ice age. The lake is narrow, a little over a mile long, and deep, 90 to 190 feet in places according to local lore, off the charts in others. The author loves to swim there, with a sense…

Sailing, a harnessing of wind with canvas to propel a sailboat across distances of water, in winds shaped by landforms, airflow and temperature, requires constant renegotiation by skipper and crew in response to the wind's changeable presence. In a choreography of movement, sails secured by sheets are loosened or reined in by hand to allow wind…

This environmental autobiography outlines my process of repositioning the natural environment as a primary character in my life. By exploring moments in my childhood when I made instinctive connections with my surroundings, I have come to better understand the person I am today and where I am going. Throughout this autobiography I address the…