At an event concluding with students wrapping tobacco in cloth, they first began by reflecting on the importance of stewardship.
In a discussion held by the AMS Environmental Sustainability Commission and the Social Issues Commission (SIC) on March 11, three Indigenous ists and 10 students discussed sustainability through an Indigenous lens on stewardship—responsibly using and protecting the environment. Together, they reflected on the importance of fostering a reciprocal relationship with the land, ensuring students’ environmental efforts respect the spaces they inhabit.
Following a land acknowledgement from the Commissioner of Environmental Sustainability Anne Fu, HealthSci ’25, ist Delia Pridham, ArtSci ’26, spoke about the Ottawa River, located between Ontario and Quebec, and the consequences of its dams to the Algonquin people. Pridham discussed how the building of dams along the river resulted in damage to ecosystems, causing toxicities in food sources for Algonquin communities which resulted in these peoples’ displacement.
Later in the discussion, Peer Advisor and Elder in the Office of Indigenous Initiatives, Allen Doxtator (Te ho wis kwûnt), emphasized the environment’s role in sustaining us through natural resources like air and water. He underscored how people must also work to serve the environment through stewardship and understanding rather than Western ownership.
“This land wasn’t for anybody to own if it’s just borrowed,” Doxtator said, addressing the audience.
In an interview with The Journal, Fu and SIC Indigenous Initiatives Coordinator Carlee Boissoneau Hunter, HealthSci ’26, explained the importance of educating non-Indigenous students on topics like stewardship, while providing spaces for Indigenous students to build upon and share knowledge with their peers.
“When we think about environmental activism and environmental justice, we really have to think about how that intersects with things like colonialism and anti-Indigenous racism,” Fu said.
In an interview with The Journal, Pridham and Sydney Allison-Muskratt, ArtSci ’26, explained how environmental stewardship is “a way of everyday life” in Indigenous communities compared to academic settings, where it’s often a new concept for students.
“These [stewardship] values are so ingrained in our culture, that we don’t even think twice sometimes, and then once you get to kind of an academic setting where people are preaching these [stewardship] values as kind of a new and revolutionary idea, it’s almost hard to comprehend how people didn’t think of this originally,” Pridham said.
For Allison-Muskratt, stewardship means leadership. “I think that it’s really important that Indigenous people are looking into powerful roles so that they can kind of front bigger projects [for environmental sustainability],”Allison-Muskratt said.
The event closed with attendees making tobacco ties as offerings to the environment. Offering tobacco in the form of a tobacco tie is a custom shared by many Indigenous peoples.
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