Why healing is at the centre of Indigenous Climate Action’s work
Why It Matters
At the roots of the climate crisis are systems of oppression, which perpetuate harm mentally, physically and emotionally. Rest is just as important a response to the climate crisis as organizing — the two go hand in hand. Healing justice could be a way to sustain the climate movement.
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Melina Laboucon-Massimo, a leading Lubicon-Cree climate justice advocate and co-founder of Indigenous Climate Action (ICA), has organized for over a decade in response to the harmful impacts of extractive industries on the environment. Her community in Northern Alberta, Canada is on the frontlines of the tar sands, the largest site of oil extraction in the world.
Because of the violence and trauma these industries can have on communities, along with stress of frontline organizing, Laboucon-Massimo was forced to bed rest for months in 2019 to address her health problems that had built up over time.
Eriel Deranger, also a founding member of ICA, has experienced the impacts of organizing against extractive industries and needed rest too in 2020. ICA was able to support both in taking a sabbatical and healing.
The climate crisis is layered with grief, loss, and violence – from racial and social injustice to the extractive industries fueling climate change and environmental destruction. At the same time, organizers who work on the frontlines of the climate justice movement suffer from these dynamics. It is a recipe for burnout not only at the individual level, but also the collective.
It’s why Laboucon-Massimo and Deranger have called for the implementation of a healing justice framework within their organization and the larger climate movement. The framework serves as a foundation for healing and repair of not only the planet but of humanity.
As Loubican-Massimo writes in an ICA statement, “Healing justice is a framework that recognizes the impact of trauma and violence on individuals and communities and names collective processes that can help heal and transform these forces. In a system and society that actively targets Black, Brown and Indigenous bodies with violence, oppression and terror, it is critical to build movements that fight for and achieve justice for all people. This justice includes healing, well-being, and not only surviving but thriving. Resiliency and healing are strategic — we need everyone in our movements to have access to healing from trauma and violence as it strengthens all of us and all of our movements.”
Erin Konsmo is at the helm of these changes at ICA as healing justice manager. “Healing justice is a vital practice for climate work. It is a practice about transforming societal and structural harms while providing spaces for collective healing,” Konsmo tells Future of Good. “Everybody is impacted by ecological grief and climate trauma these days. People aren’t machines. We shouldn’t just be reacting. We need time for rest and reflection.”
The framework is not a new concept — it originally emerged from Black, Brown and Indigenous, queer and trans movements seeking to address collective trauma in their work. It was finally named the healing justice framework in 2007 by Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, helping spur the movement among grassroots organizers, scholars and organizations alike to address the systemic and relational roots of the climate crisis.
For example, Indigenous communities have responded to the trauma of extractive industries by organizing water walks, which focus on community and prayer to heal the water. During the summer of 2021, the Saskatchewan River Water Walk began at the Saskatchewan River Crossing at the Alberta-B.C. border, between Jasper and Banff. A group of 11 people carried water from the river as they walked over 1,900 kilometres across the prairies to raise awareness about the need to heal and protect the river from pollution. They finished the walk east of Prince Albert at the Saskatchewan River Forks.
From grassroots groups and NGOs to governmental departments, social purpose organizations can play a crucial role in the healing justice movement since healing is not possible without institutional change. Research has shown that within organizational structures, there can be a sense of crisis mode, hierarchies, unconscious communication patterns and disconnection which reinforces harm and burnout. If healing justice practices and values can be enacted on an organizational level, it alleviates the burden of care on the individual, and reorients one’s well-being within a collective.
Loretta Pyles published research for the National Association of Social Workers in 2020 that encourages a healing justice framework to be a part of individual and organizational interventions. In her book, Healing Justice: Holistic Self-Care for Change Makers, Pyles says the basic premise of a healing justice practice which recognizes the relationship between the personal and political: that individual experiences of oppression are manifestations of larger social forces. “We are often co-creating or reproducing oppressive systems moment to moment,” she writes. For example, organizations and individuals who place emphasis on outcomes, performance measures and the bottom line, even if that means it comes at the cost of well-being or building relationships. In other words, the ends justify the means.
To change the structures of oppressive systems requires transformative practices within organizations of all kinds, including for-profit, nonprofit and public. ICA, for example, launched the Indigenous Youth Mental Wellness Honorarium to support Indigenous youth engaged in climate justice and frontline direct action. The honorarium supports youth to access counseling, gas money to access traditional territories, support an elder in sharing teachings and ceremony with youth, and art, yoga or exercise training as well.
ICA is challenging harmful relational dynamics through implementing the healing justice framework. Konsmo explains how relationship building is part of the framework in action: “We are also challenging the extractive nature of relationships external partners have with ICA to have [mutually supportive and genuine] relationships that help support our team, their nations and communities. It is important to interrogate the way you organize and ask yourself if you are doing your own learning to understand the dynamics of racism and colonialism before showing up and wanting to be in partnership. That internal awareness and education is really important to have a healthier relationship when showing up to the table.” Konsmo points out that following and supporting Indigenous leadership and climate solutions rather than replicating a savior mentality is one way to support healthier partnerships.
For ICA, implementation of the healing justice pathway is still relatively new. The team began working internally first to build in concerted time for leaders in the movement to be able to focus on their healing, “because they have been reacting to violence for years without rest,” Konsmo explains. Other internal changes to implement healing justice at ICA have included a four-day work week, space built-in for employees to rest during moon time (menstruation) and support seasonal cycles [such as seasonal depression and summer ceremonies] for needed rest. It includes support from somatic practitioners and access to counselors during times of high stress and campaigns.
“It is one thing to say you should rest and take care of yourself and another to actively support people to have resources for rest and healing,” Konsomo says. “For example, the whole ICA team is going to COP27 in November, which will be a high intensity event. We are looking to build counseling for the event and body practitioners.”
Beyond internal adaptations and shifts to better support healing justice, ICA has started discussions in movement spaces to teach people that rest is just as important a response to the climate crisis as organizing — the two go hand in hand. Rest can also look like making time to connect with one’s cultural activities, communities and ceremonies.
With a planet in peril, not only does the earth need to heal from the harms of colonialism and capitalism — but so do humans, according to Konsmo. “There is still work to be done north of the medicine line in so-called Canada to lead by example and show other people that healing justice is needed as a part of climate justice. We need to make concerted efforts to collectively respond to harms that build in time for rest, ceremony and healing. If we don’t, then it will continue to result in harm to people’s bodies, whether that’s sickness or in some cases loss of people in our movement,” says Konsmo.
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