Nature’s Voice and the “InBetween”

, , ,

The world was not made for human beings; human beings were made within a world already in motion. Mountains were rising, waters circulating, winds sculpting landscapes, and beings living, dying, and evolving long before anyone called them “resources” or “ecosystems.”

To remember this is to remember that humans are participants, not protagonists, in a larger, unfolding story. The “inbetween” names the field of forces, relationships, and intelligences that hold everything together and quietly teach us how to live.

The Missing Presence

In climate conversations, nearly all focus remains on human experience: our heat waves, our floods, our economies. Even when we speak of “nature,” it is often treated as an abstraction, absent, silent, reduced to numbers and reports.

Picture two people discussing ocean warming, the changing salinity, acidity, and oxygen levels. Their concerns may be sincere, their facts accurate, yet the ocean itself is nowhere to be found. No seawater in sight, no salt in the air, no tangible presence of what they are trying to defend.

What’s missing is not just an object but a relationship. Without water, they speak for the ocean rather than with it. That gap between human words and living reality is the “inbetween”: the space of copresence and reciprocity where genuine listening begins.

The InBetween as Relational Reality

The “inbetween” is the connective tissue of life, the space between beings that is never empty. It is where energy and responsibility circulate, where lessons about balance, limits, and renewal emerge. It is both a classroom and an ethical space: the testing ground for whether humans dominate the conversation or make room for morethanhuman voices.

When discussions ignore the inbetween, they collapse the world into a single human perspective. Nature becomes a backdrop, a passive object in need of representation. Yet the Earth is constantly communicating through tides, wind, migrations, decay, and regeneration. The problem is not silence; it is our failure to listen.

Water as Intelligent Presence

Consider water. Often labelled a “resource” or a line on a climate chart, water is in fact one of the planet’s most sophisticated presences. It shapes coastlines, redistributes heat, carries memory, and enlivens every ecosystem it touches.

Water:

  • Holds memory in glaciers, aquifers, clouds, and rivers.
  • Organizes life in complex webs that adapt to shifts in chemistry and temperature.
  • Nourishes land and species with exquisite timing where its cycles remain intact.

To call water intelligent is not metaphorical flattery. It acknowledges a living system that responds, adapts, and cocreates the conditions for life — something no technology can replicate.

Talking With, Not For

Honouring the inbetween means refusing to speak for nature in its absence and learning instead to talk to it. This begins with presence, bringing the element into the space of dialogue, physically and symbolically, and engaging it with respect.

Imagine climate discussions where:

  • A vessel of seawater rests at the center of the room, grounding the conversation in the reality it concerns.
  • Participants take a moment of silence, touch the waterl, and consider where that water has travelled and what it has witnessed.
  • Decisions are framed as questions to the water: What do you need from us? How are you already responding? How must we change to restore the right relationship?

The water does not answer in words, but through currents, chemistry, and movement. Listening becomes a relational practice of dialogue instead of a monologue.

Beyond HumanCentred Narratives

Recentring the inbetween overturns familiar climate narratives. It shifts concern from what climate change is doing to us to what Earth is asking of all beings, human and morethanhuman. It challenges the idea that the world is a stage built for human achievement and replaces it with humility, the awareness that our knowledge, while powerful, is partial.

Environmental destruction is not only a technical crisis but a relational one. When we discuss oceans, forests, and skies as abstractions, we reproduce the same separation and control that caused the damage.

Reweaving the Web of Relationship

Listening to nature’s voice through the inbetween calls for new practices of connection:

  • Bringing elements such as water, soil, plants, and stones into meetings and ceremonies as honoured participants.
  • Holding gatherings outdoors, where the morethanhuman world is not excluded but present.
  • Practising protocols of greeting, gratitude, and consent before making decisions that affect the land.
  • Learning from Indigenous teachings that treat land, waters, and elements as relatives with agency and law, not as mute resources.

In this way, the “impact of climate change” becomes a lived conversation among all beings. Human speech joins a chorus rather than dominating the soundscape.

Honouring the InBetween

Life will continue in some form with or without us, but human survival depends on restoring right relationships with the living world. The inbetween is where those relationships form, deepen, and become sacred again.

When climate dialogue makes space for the presence and voice of water, land, and other beings, it shifts from crisis management to relationship repair. We remember that we are not speaking on behalf of a silent planet, we are speaking within a living one.

In that shift from speaking for to speaking with, another kind of future becomes possible: one where humans take their rightful place inside a wider intelligence, listening to the teachers that have been here far longer than we have, and shaping choices that honour the lifegiving spaces in between.

 

Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock

Image Credit: Hector John Periquin, Unsplash

 

/0 Comments/by

Climate Resilience as an Act of Self-Determination

,

Across these lands, First Nations are not simply responding to climate change; they are expressing a profound act of self-determination. Investing in resilience is not just about reducing risk or protecting infrastructure; it is about renewing relationships with land, water, plants, animals, and elements as the primary teachers of how to live, adapt, and thrive in a rapidly changing world.

For Indigenous communities, resilience is inseparable from identity, language, law, and governance. It is a way of saying: We will define our own adaptation, guided by the natural laws that have sustained life here for millennia.

Learning from Nature’s Long History of Change

Climate change is often described as novel or purely human-made. While industrial activity has unquestionably accelerated, the Earth’s climate has always been in motion. Over millennia, warming, cooling, flooding, and fire have continuously reshaped life. In these cycles, nature teaches a hard truth: some species perish, others adapt. Those that survive don’t just endure; they reorganize, forge new relationships, and sometimes emerge more resilient and diverse than before.

Indigenous Peoples have observed and lived within these adaptive processes for thousands of years. By watching how plants root deeper, how animals shift migration patterns, and how waters carve new paths, communities learn what authentic adaptation means. Adaptation is not an optional add-on; it is a law of life.

More-than-Human Teachers of Autonomy

Indigenous law and lifeways are rooted in the more-than-human world. Languages carry the verbs and metaphors of specific territories, while hunting, fishing, harvesting, and ceremony express ecological kinship.

From this perspective:

  • Plants teach patience, rootedness, and collective defence.
  • Animals show mobility, alertness, and cooperation.
  • Waters’ model persistence and the quiet strength of flow.
  • Fire and wind remind us of transformation and the limits of control.

These beings are not “resources.” They are teachers. They show that autonomy is not isolation but the capacity to respond to change while remaining in right relationship with the web of life. For many First Nations, this is where self-determination begins in the school of the land, long before it is written into policy.

Climate Change as a Crucible for Renewal

When communities design resilient housing, energy systems, food networks, or water infrastructure, they do more than install technology; they realign human systems with the teachings of their territories. This can mean:

  • Designing community layouts that follow local contours, winds, and wildlife corridors.
  • Adjusting hunting and fishing practices to track shifting species while maintaining reciprocity.
  • Reclaiming fire stewardship to protect habitats and renew ecosystems.
  • Localizing food and energy to reduce reliance on fossil-fuel-heavy supply chains.

Each of these is a form of climate self-determination. The more space, resources, and authority First Nations must shape such models, the more deeply adaptation can take root in long-term relationships with land and water. These shifts are not only technical but also cultural, linguistic, and spiritual. They create the conditions for communities to renew their institutions, habits, and values at the pace the Earth now demands.

Knowledge That Evolves with the Climate

As First Nations engage closely with their territories, monitoring ice, tracking plant cycles, observing wildlife, and watching shorelines, a living record of change emerges. Each project produces two transformations:

  • Infrastructure evolves through new buildings, systems, and practices.
  • Knowledge evolves, deepening understanding of place, risk, and interdependence.

This co-evolution is crucial. Static plans soon fail in a world of accelerating climate disruptions. True resilience relies on the capacity to read the land, interpret signals, and adjust course. When governance is grounded in the agency of the land itself, Indigenous Nations are uniquely positioned to lead this kind of adaptive practice.

From Self-Determination to Shared Sovereignty

When First Nations lead adaptation, they are not only strengthening their own communities, but they are also modelling shared sovereignty rooted in place. Shared sovereignty does not erase difference; it anchors relationships in mutual responsibility.

It rests on three recognitions:

  • Natural laws, those governing water, soil, species, and climate, are the highest laws.
  • Human governance must fit within them, not above them.
  • Nation-to-nation relationships are strongest when grounded in shared duties to land and water.

As First Nations are supported to listen to and act from the authority of land, new possibilities for collaboration and climate justice open. Non-Indigenous societies have much to learn from these approaches, not just techniques, but humility: accepting that humans must adapt to the Earth, not the other way around.

A Path Forward for Climate Justice

Climate change is revealing the brittleness of systems built on extraction and the denial of limits. In contrast, Indigenous climate leadership offers another path, one grounded in relationship with morethanhuman relatives and exercised through responsibility rather than domination.

For readers of the Indigenous Climate Hub, this is an invitation to see resilience not as a technical challenge but as a renewal of connection:

  • Supporting First Nations’ leadership strengthens teachers’ adaptation to lands, waters, and living beings.
  • Investing in Indigenous self-determination invests in knowledge systems that can guide all communities through uncertainty.
  • Embracing shared sovereignty honours natural law and the hope that, by learning from the Earth, humanity can move beyond survival into a state of balance.

In this light, climate change becomes more than a threat; it becomes the crucible through which deeper self-determination, wiser stewardship, and more just relationships among nations are forged.

 

Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock

Image Credit : Kenzie Broad, Unsplash

 

/by

An Ecological Finance Future for Indigenous Climate Action

, ,

Federal climate funding for Indigenous communities remains crucial. Yet it is still built on a colonial budgetary logic: Ottawa decides priorities, timelines, and reporting cycles, while lands and waters wait for approvals. Programs that support Indigenous-led monitoring, natural climate solutions, and clean energy are vital lifelines, but they do not yet form a new system. They leave power in the same hands and retain a logic of serving human interests over ecological well-being.

What if the land itself were treated as a primary financial actor?

Imagine an economy where a river, forest, or entire watershed is recognized as a rights-bearing entity with its own ongoing claim to revenue, care, and decision-making. Governments, markets, and communities would relate to ecosystems as partners and “shareholders,” not as resources to be managed or used up. Indigenous Nations whose governance systems have always understood the land as a living relative would guide these relationships and decide how value flows across generations.

This is the foundation of ecological finance: a shift from temporary project grants toward Indigenous-governed, land-anchored systems where ecosystems and Indigenous Peoples are co-beneficiaries with enforceable rights to long-term returns.

From Social to Ecological Finance

Social finance seeks to align capital with social outcomes, such as housing, health, and education, through tools like impact investing and community bonds. Ecological finance goes further: under Indigenous jurisdiction, it treats ecosystems as active participants in the circulation and reinvestment of money.

Core ideas include:

  • · Ecosystems as rights-holders. Territories, forests, and waterways are recognized as having an inherent right to restoration and ongoing support, with a portion of revenues dedicated to them in perpetuity.
  • · Indigenous-governed ecological endowments. Permanent, Indigenous-controlled funds draw from public, philanthropic, and aligned private capital. Earnings sustain guardianship, land planning, youth training, and climate adaptation.
  • · Ecological performance as return. Returns are linked to indicators such as species recovery, water quality, and soil health. Investors “earn” only when ecosystems thrive.

Rather than asking how nature can serve finance, ecological finance asks how finance can serve the land.

How This Touches Daily Life

For ecological finance to matter, it must become part of everyday economic practice, a routine way households and communities contribute to the care of their territories. Examples include:

  • · Community ecological dividends. A share of energy bills, transit fares, or tourism fees automatically supports Indigenous-governed ecosystem funds tied to the territories that sustain that infrastructure.
  • · Indigenous equity in green infrastructure. Renewable projects and conservation areas are co-owned by Indigenous Nations, with dividends flowing first to ecosystem restoration and community well-being.
  • · Every day regenerative consumption. Consumers opt into “ecological tithe” pricing, where a small portion of each purchase supports Indigenous-led restoration where goods originate or are consumed.

In each case, transactions become acts of relationship with specific lands and waters, guided by Indigenous laws and responsibilities.

Financial Models from a New Paradigm

Emerging mechanisms already hint at what ecological finance could become:

  • · Indigenous Project Finance for Permanence (PFP). One-time capital raises create enduring funds for Indigenous-led conservation, releasing earnings as long-term governance conditions are met.
  • · Indigenous Impact Bonds. Investors provide capital for restoration or adaptation; repayment occurs only when Indigenous-defined ecological outcomes are achieved, with a share flowing to permanent ecosystem care.
  • · Ecological Sovereign Wealth Funds. Resource revenues and settlements seed Indigenous-governed endowments. Only sustainable returns are drawn each year, turning extractive flows into intergenerational wealth.
  • · Shared-prosperity cooperatives. Clean energy and other green assets are co-owned by Indigenous Nations and communities, prioritizing restoration, local livelihoods, and equitable returns.

These approaches don’t abolish finance but redesign who holds value claims, moving ecosystems and Indigenous Nations from the margins of the balance sheet to its center.

Shared Prosperity Beyond Capitalism as Usual

In this context, prosperity is not defined by GDP or job counts but by clean water, thriving territories, revived languages, and lower climate vulnerability. The integrity of relationships within the web of life measures wealth.

By design, ecological finance redistributes capital toward damaged ecosystems and historically marginalized communities. Indigenous laws of reciprocity and responsibility offer ethical guidance for that redistribution grounded in consent and obligations to more-than-human kin.

Global Participation Without Extraction

This vision welcomes global participation but on non-extractive terms. Philanthropy, public institutions, and investors can contribute to Indigenous-governed funds under capped returns and long horizons, recognizing that decisions about lands, benefits, and stewardship belong to Indigenous Nations. Financial institutions can embed Indigenous rights and co-governance into climate strategies, treating Indigenous Peoples as co-architects of just transition pathways rather than peripheral stakeholders.

A New Form of Stewardship

Ecological finance is not a utopia. It acknowledges deep inequities while working to rebalance them through redesigned financial systems. For Indigenous communities and Nations, the invitation is to keep designing models grounded in Indigenous law and ecological ethics.

For governments, institutions, and everyday Canadians, it is time to move beyond line-item funding and support Indigenous-centered, land-governed finance that gives nature a voice and a share. If the

environment is to shape its own future, then finance must learn to listen, and ecological finance is one way of turning that listening into sustained, intergenerational action.

 

Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock

Image Credit : Ardian Pranomo, Unsplash

 

 

/by

Melting Ground: Why Permafrost Matters for Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples

When people discuss climate change, most envision melting glaciers, smoke-filled skies from wildfires, or hurricanes ravaging coastlines. However, another crisis is unfolding in Canada’s North, one that is quieter but just as perilous: the melting of permafrost.

Permafrost is ground that has remained frozen for at least two years, though in many places, it has been frozen for thousands of years. It is a mix of soil, rock, and ice, and it covers almost half of Canada’s landmass, particularly in the Arctic. Think of it like the Earth’s natural deep freezer. Inside it are ancient plants, animal remains, and vast amounts of carbon that have been trapped and locked away for millennia.

As long as the permafrost stays frozen, those gases remain contained. But now, as temperatures rise and the Arctic warms nearly four times faster than the global average, that freezer door is swinging wide open.

Why the Arctic Matters to Everyone

It might be tempting to think of the Arctic as far away, remote, untouched, or disconnected from daily life in southern Canada. But the reality is that what happens in the Arctic affects everyone. Permafrost contains almost twice as much carbon as is currently in the Earth’s atmosphere. When it melts, that carbon escapes in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, two of the most potent greenhouse gases.

This creates a dangerous cycle: warmer air melts permafrost, which releases greenhouse gases, and those gases in turn contribute to even greater warming of the Earth. Scientists refer to this as a “feedback loop.” If large amounts of permafrost thaw, the gases released could overwhelm even the strongest climate policies, making it almost impossible to slow global warming.

The ripple effects are already visible. Melting permafrost worsens heatwaves in Ontario, intensifies wildfires in Alberta and British Columbia, and fuels stronger Atlantic storms. Rising global temperatures also bring increased insurance premiums, higher food prices, and strained infrastructure due to new climate extremes. The Arctic may be far north, but it is the beating heart of global climate stability.

Impacts Close to Home in Canada

For northern communities, the impacts of melting permafrost are immediate and deeply personal. Buildings, schools, and homes that were once stable on frozen foundations are cracking and sinking. Road’s twist and buckle, airstrips become unsafe, and pipelines leak as the ground beneath them shifts. This is not just inconvenient; it is life-threatening, as these systems provide access to food, medical care, and basic supplies in places already cut off from southern infrastructure.

The hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, sits on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. As the permafrost beneath it thaws, the coastline is collapsing at an alarming rate of several meters each year. Entire homes have already been moved inland, and Elders warn that parts of the community may disappear into the sea within a generation. For residents, this is not just about losing land but losing ancestral ties to a place that has always been home.

In Inuvik, Northwest Territories, traditional underground ice cellars, once reliable food storage systems for generations, are collapsing into the permafrost. Families now face soaring costs to ship in groceries; undermining food security and cultural practices tied to country food.

Even the transportation routes that connect the North to the South are threatened. In the Yukon, the Dempster Highway, Canada’s only all-season road to the Arctic coast, is buckling as thawing permafrost destabilizes its foundation. Engineers are racing to repair roads that were never designed for melting ground, costing governments tens of millions of dollars each year.

And the South is not spared. The carbon released from permafrost melt contributes to the greenhouse gases driving climate extremes across Canada, including hotter summers in Toronto, devastating wildfires in Kelowna, severe flooding along the St. Lawrence, and worsening droughts on the Prairies. What melts in the North shapes life everywhere else.

 Why Permafrost is Sacred in Indigenous Worldviews

For Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic, permafrost is not just frozen soil; it is a living part of their homeland and identity. Inuit, First Nations, and Métis Peoples have lived in relationship with frozen ground for thousands of years. The permafrost preserves sacred sites, traditional travel routes, and hunting lands. It has long been a source of stability, shaping the balance of ecosystems and making possible the cultural practices that sustain communities.

For Inuit in particular, permafrost has always been a trusted partner in food security. Ice cellars dug into the ground kept caribou, seal, fish, and whale meat fresh throughout the year. This practice is not only efficient and sustainable but also deeply cultural, tying families to cycles of harvest and sharing. As the permafrost melts and these cellars collapse, Inuit food systems are being disrupted. Families must rely more heavily on expensive store-bought food, which undermines both health and cultural sovereignty.

The thaw also threatens sacred spaces. Burial grounds are being disturbed, rivers and lakes are shifting, and the plants and animals that communities depend on are disappearing. In Indigenous worldviews, the land is kin alive and relational. When the permafrost melts, it signals not just an environmental crisis but a breaking of relationships that have been nurtured since time immemorial.

The Human Face of Melting Permafrost

The impacts of permafrost melt cannot be measured solely in terms of carbon emissions or financial costs. They must also be seen in the daily lives of the people who call the North home. In some communities, houses tilt and become uninhabitable, forcing residents to relocate, which disrupts family life, education, and mental health. In others, health centres and schools need constant repair, straining already limited budgets.

Travel across the land, once a predictable and safe experience, is now risky. Snowmobiles break through thinning ice. Trails flood or erode unexpectedly. Hunters face danger simply by trying to continue practices that have sustained their people for millennia.

For many Indigenous families, this is not only about the loss of infrastructure but also the loss of identity. When permafrost thaws, so do the practices tied to it: storing food, travelling safely, caring for burial sites, and teaching youth how to live in balance with the land. These changes erode culture, language, and ways of knowing that are inseparable from place.

Why the World Should Pay Attention

The melting of permafrost is not just a northern problem it is a global alarm bell. Scientists estimate that if even a fraction of the carbon stored in permafrost is released, it could equal the emissions from decades of current human activities. This is enough to derail international climate targets and lock the planet into a state of runaway warming.

This matters for everyone. Rising seas will not stop at Canada’s borders; they will flood coastal cities around the globe. Droughts and crop failures will disrupt food supplies and drive-up prices worldwide. Heatwaves will claim more lives in cities already struggling to keep cool. Economic costs will skyrocket, from insurance payouts to rebuilding disaster-hit communities. If the permafrost continues to thaw unchecked, the climate shocks of the past decade will look mild compared to what lies ahead.

But beyond the science, there is also a moral responsibility. The Arctic has contributed the least to climate change yet is suffering some of its most significant impacts. Indigenous communities, which have lived sustainably for generations, are now bearing the brunt of global emissions. For the world to ignore this crisis is to accept an injustice that will echo through history.

The Arctic is often referred to as the “canary in the coal mine” for climate change, but it is more than a warning system; it is a driver of global stability. If we lose the permafrost, we risk losing the fight against climate change altogether. Paying attention to what is happening in the Arctic is not optional. It is a test of whether humanity can listen, learn, and act before it is too late.

Moving Forward: Responsibility and Action

Addressing permafrost melt means tackling climate change at its root: cutting greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning to renewable energy. Canada must lead in reducing its dependence on oil and gas while investing in clean energy and climate-resilient infrastructure. But technical fixes alone are not enough. Indigenous-led monitoring, adaptation, and governance must be supported and prioritized.

In Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, Indigenous guardians and community researchers are already combining traditional knowledge with Western science to track permafrost thaw, monitor wildlife, and pilot new forms of housing built for unstable ground. These projects demonstrate that solutions are most effective when they originate from the individuals most closely connected to the land.

For families in southern Canada, the issue may seem distant. However, the truth is that every decision matters. The energy we use, the food we waste, and the products we buy all contribute to the warming that melts permafrost. By reducing consumption, supporting Indigenous-led initiatives, and advocating for robust climate policies, households far from the Arctic can still play a role in protecting it.

The permafrost is melting. It is reshaping the Arctic, altering Canada, and posing a threat to global climate stability. However, it also offers us a choice: to continue down a path of denial, or to act guided by science, led by Indigenous knowledge, and rooted in care for the generations to come.

Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock

Image Credit : Alin Gavriliuc, Unsplash

 

/by