Healing in the Time of Climate Change: Indigenous Ways of Knowing for Mental Health and the More-Than-Human World

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The unprecedented shifts brought on by climate change ripple far beyond rising temperatures and extreme weather; they reach deep into the minds and hearts of all living beings. Anxiety, grief, and a profound sense of loss now shadow our collective experience. This climate-related mental distress is not only felt by people but also echoed in the land, waters, plants, and animals to which we are inseparably connected. As ecosystems unravel, the mental health of humans and non-human relatives becomes a shared story of vulnerability and resilience. 

Climate Change and Rising Anxiety

The reality of climate change is no longer a distant worry; it is a present and palpable force shaping the mental landscapes of countless individuals. Across ages and cultures, climate anxiety, sometimes called eco-anxiety, has emerged as a defining psychological response to the accelerating devastation of the natural world. This anxiety is not simply fear of future disasters but an existential reaction to loss, uncertainty, and powerlessness. 

 Signs of Climate Anxiety

People experiencing climate anxiety often report:  

  • Persistent worry, rumination, or panic about environmental catastrophe. 
  • Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, or grief, often described as “climate grief.” 
  • Disturbed sleep, including insomnia or nightmares, can be linked to climate crises. 
  • Physical symptoms may include an elevated heart rate, stomach upset, or fatigue. 
  • Social withdrawal, or conversely, sudden bursts of activism. 
  • Existential questioning about the future, meaning, and humanity’s role in planetary degradation. 
  • Heightened sensitivity to environmental news and changes, sometimes leading to overwhelm or burnout. 

 How Climate Anxiety Shapes Worldviews

Climate anxiety is shifting how people relate to themselves and the world:  

  • A fractured sense of security: The predictability of seasons and natural resources, as well as the scaffolding of cultural and personal identity, is disrupted. 
  • Heightened interdependence: For some, anxiety strengthens awareness of interconnectedness, prompting a search for meaning beyond individualism and consumerism. 
  • Urgency for change: Anxiety can fuel activism and demands for systemic transformation. 
  • Collective trauma and grief: Climate change becomes a shared mourning for lost species, landscapes, and lifeways. 
  • Shifts in values: Many are turning away from materialism toward ecological stewardship, simplicity, and relationality. 

 Climate Anxiety in the Indigenous Context

For Indigenous peoples, climate anxiety is layered with cultural grief, the loss of land, language, ceremony, and traditional livelihoods. This grief is deepened by colonial histories that severed people’s relationships with ancestral territories and more-than-human kin. 

 Yet, Indigenous worldviews also carry profound resilience. Seeing humans as part of a web of life provides a relational refuge, a framework for navigating climate anxiety through connection, ceremony, and stewardship. Unlike dominant Western approaches that often treat mental health in isolation, Indigenous perspectives integrate ecological realities into healing. 

 Supporting Mental Well-Being Amidst Climate Anxiety

Meeting climate anxiety as both a personal and collective challenge requires approaches that nurture resilience: 

Land-based healing and connection: Spending time on the land, engaging in cultural practices, and restoring bonds with ecosystems. 

  • Community support and dialogue: Safe spaces to share fears and grief, build solidarity, and mobilize collective hope. 
  • Eco-literacy and empowerment: Education in climate science, Indigenous land stewardship, and practical action to counter helplessness. 
  • Mindfulness and grounding practices: Techniques to calm and regulate overwhelming emotions. 
  • Centering Indigenous knowledge: Teachings of balance, renewal, and reciprocity enrich mental health frameworks with holistic approaches. 

 Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Medicine for Mind, Heart, and Spirit

Indigenous worldviews offer vital teachings for healing and well-being. Central among these is interconnectedness, the recognition that humans, earth, waters, animals, plants, and ancestors form one living web. This understanding fosters a holistic approach to mental health that weaves together mind, heart, body, and spirit. 

 Ceremonies, storytelling, land-based practices, and seasonal cycles cultivate balance and harmony, offering medicine for both individual and collective resilience. Reconnecting with Mother Earth is a profound step toward healing, inviting us to listen deeply to the rustle of leaves, the flow of rivers, the flight of birds and, in that listening to rediscover grounding, purpose, and hope. 

 Empathy for More-Than-Human Relations

Climate change also affects our non-human relatives. Plants wither, animals migrate or perish, and waters warm and recede. Indigenous teachings remind us that these beings hold life, spirit, and memory. They, too, suffer displacement and loss. Cultivating empathy for them expands our circle of care and underscores that mental and environmental health are inextricably linked. 

When we engage with land, waters, and wildlife not as resources but as relatives, fractured relationships begin to heal. This relational awareness lays the foundation of stewardship rooted in respect and reciprocity, integrating the need to confront climate change. 

Reconnecting with the Land

Reconnection is both sacred and practical. Land-based healing, traditional ecological knowledge, and Indigenous ceremonies are increasingly recognized within Indigenous communities and beyond as powerful supports for mental health. 

Spending time on the land harvesting plants, participating in a ceremony, or simply observing seasonal rhythms nurtures awareness, patience, and resilience. It roots us in the present, affirms belonging, and reminds us that we are part of a living community. Through this reconnection, humans can find strength in relationships, solace in shared struggle, and hope in reciprocal care. 

Moving Forward Together

The climate crisis compels us to rethink mental health in relational terms, recognizing that human well-being is inseparable from the well-being of the land and all its beings. Indigenous knowledge offers enduring wisdom for this path. By honouring interconnectedness, embracing land-based healing, and nurturing empathy for all relations, we can cultivate mind, heart, and spirit medicines essential for resilience. 

 Together, human and more-than-human kin can walk toward healing, balance, and renewed hope grounded in the living teachings of the earth we call home. 

 

Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock

(Image Credit: Ahmed Hossam, Unsplash)

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When the Land Speaks Through Fire: Indigenous Wisdom, Memory, and Stewardship of the Living Landscape

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Across the sprawling landscapes of Turtle Island, from the western mountains through central prairies, over eastern woodlands, to the northern boreal and tundra, the land carries memory. It speaks through ancient fires, through the whispers of returning smoke, through the cycles of regeneration and loss. Fire is not merely a destructive force but a living relative with agency, voice, and purpose embedded in the land’s sacred balance. 

Fire as a Living Relative and Teacher

In Indigenous worldviews across Canada, whether among the Coast Salish, Anishinaabe, Cree, Dene, Mi’kmaq, Inuit, or Métis, fire is understood as more than heat and flame. Fire is a relative: a powerful presence that teaches and transforms. Fire holds knowledge about when and where to flow, how to clear away the old and invite new life, and when to retreat to allow healing. It is a force that must be listened to, respected, and lived with, not tamed or feared. 

The land itself contains this fire knowledge, its patterns and rhythms, held not only in the soil and trees but also in the pulse of the more-than-human relations that weave together plants, animals, insects, and waters. These relationships have been cultivated through generations of ceremony, stewardship, and attentive listening. 

The Memory of Fires Past: Lessons Written in the Land

For millennia, Indigenous peoples have carried the memories of fire’s many faces: the gentle burns that nurtured wild berries and medicines, the larger fires that shaped forests and grasslands, and the fires that carried warnings and renewal. These memories are more than history; they are living teachings embedded in stories, songs, and place. They remind us how fire once danced in balance with water, wind, and seasons, fostering abundance and diversity. 

The land’s hold on this memory reveals how fire traditionally cleared away invasive undergrowth, opened habitats, cycled nutrients, and created mosaic landscapes vital for wildlife. Indigenous fire stewardship was respectful and purposeful, marked by precision, ceremony, and an understanding of fire’s role as a caretaker. 

The Changing Land: Fire’s Agency Amidst Drought and Climate Change

Today, this sacred balance is strained as climate change stirs new challenges. Prolonged drought and rising temperatures dry the land beyond its natural resilience. Fire’s agency, once harmonized with the earth’s rhythms, now pulses with growing intensity and unpredictability. Wildfires rage more frequently, far beyond the historical rhythms of many regions, threatening the very life-systems they once helped sustain. 

In western forests, ancient conifer refugia for caribou and lynx face pervasive mortality. In central prairies, grasses and wildflowers fail to recover, leaving soil exposed. Eastern woodlands lose their understory of medicinal plants and berries, which are relied upon by birds and smaller mammals. Northern boreal and tundra zones are suffering from the collapse of delicate lichen beds and shrinking habitats for migratory birds. 

All the while, fire continues to assert its agency, challenging all beings to remember and adapt. 

Honouring Fire Knowledge: Stewarding Indigenous Wisdom for the Land and All Life

To walk respectfully with fire in this changing world demands more than technology or control; it demands honouring Indigenous fire knowledge systems, which see fire as a living relation, as part of the land’s voice. 

Non-Indigenous peoples and institutions must listen deeply to this wisdom. Stewardship means recognizing the fire’s spiritual, ecological, and cultural roles as encoded in Indigenous laws, ceremonies, and practices, which are calibrated to the land’s signals and cycles. It means supporting Indigenous leadership with sovereignty over how landscapes are cared for and how fire is welcomed, guided, or restrained. 

 This stewardship involves: 

Recognizing the land’s agency, learning from the land where fire is needed and where it is invited to restore life, not simply extinguished as a threat. 

    • Integrating Indigenous fire timing and techniques, such as controlled or “cool” burns guided by ecological indicators and spiritual guidance, which have been practiced for thousands of years. 
    • Respecting the relational web that includes plants, animals, fungi, and waters as kin with roles in fire’s unfolding. 
    • Bridging knowledge systems where Indigenous knowledge co-creates with scientific understanding, enhancing fire forecasting, monitoring, and response rooted in ecological respect.

Fire as a Call to Renew Kinship and Balance

As drought and dry conditions intensify, the urgency of honouring fire’s role becomes increasingly apparent. Fire teaches humility the lesson that we are part of the land’s family, not masters of it. The fate of biodiversity, including berries, pollinators, game, medicinal plants, soil microbes, and waters, echoes the health of the balance of fire. 

 

In listening to fire’s voice, remembering its cycles, and walking with Indigenous stewardship, humans reclaim responsibility. Fire need not be a force of devastation alone but can become a renewing presence that heals scars, encourages diversity, and sustains future generations of life. 

This is not only a strategy for wildfire management, but a sacred path forward, one where agency, memory, and respect guide us toward living in a reciprocal relationship with the land, honouring fire’s place as a vital and sacred relative. 

Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock

(Image Credit: Jan Kopřiva, Unsplash)

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