Unlearning Canada in 2025

This blog explores how confronting Canada’s jurisdictional conundrum is essential for advancing Indigenous-led nature-based solutions and achieving reconciliation. The Restore Assert Defend (RAD) Network sets a bar for reconciliation in action as we push for the changes that lead us towards a regenerative future. We weave connections and opportunities at the intersection of scientific analysis and Indigenous knowledge systems and governance.

RAD Network supports collaboration across the many communities and organizations working on nature-based solutions, and works to support Indigenous-led regenerative economies. Restoring jurisdiction over lands and waters is not just a legal or political matter—it is the foundation for effective, just, and sustainable solutions. New forms of financing and investment in climate and nature must centrally recognize Indigenous rights, jurisdiction and decision-making in order to have credibility and to avoid compounding the harms that underlie current resource extraction systems and land relations. Recent moves to streamline major projects in policy threaten reconciliation in Canada and set up communities for ongoing conflict with extractive interests.

On the summer solstice, during Ode’min Giizis, known by Anishinaabeg and others as the strawberry moon, RAD Network invited our community to a virtual gathering for discussion about what right relations might look like in the current global context. Surrounded by conflict and chaos, we chose to intentionally call our network together on the day when the healing light of the sun stays with us the longest, to honor recurring cycles of the natural world.

We also sought to deepen our commitment to advancing Indigenous-led nature-based solutions. This commitment requires transformative change—we believe in redistributing power and returning decision-making authority to Indigenous nations. Indigenous-led governance over land and water is an achievable reality that will benefit people, ecosystems, and all our relations.

Questioning Jurisdiction in a Context of Heightening “Nationalism”

Since our Solstice gathering, tensions have continued to rise with controversial legislative developments including the passage of Bills 5 and C-5 [1]. As Canada recently celebrated its founding holiday, Indigenous nations were speaking back to the Canadian nationalism that has accelerated in recent months [2]. Treaty and Nation-to-Nation relationships are the foundation that Canada was founded on, even if provincial leaders and politicians remain uneducated about their relevance. Crown governments must honour and respect treaties in their original spirit and intent of nation-to-nation relationships.

In both Treaty and unceded territories, Indigenous Peoples’ inherent and legal rights are affirmed by Section 35 of the Constitution Act, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and a growing body of common law, with legal pluralism as a baseline.

Former Chief/Ogema Dean Sayers, of the Anishinabek Nation Crane Clan, spoke to this issue at our Solstice Gathering, highlighting the failures of provincial and federal governments to respect original jurisdictional agreements, continually forgetting their roles and origins:

“The governments on these lands have run amok and are way outside their delegated authority that we gave them. We are still the party that gave them rights. Canada and Ontario don’t give us anything, we provide to them, we give them what they need, and it’s been all turned around. And that’s important because we need this water, we need this air, we need these trees, we need these animals for the next seven generations. So it’s good that we talk about relations, our relatives, and how we need to always reflect on that as we contemplate and make decisions.”

— Dean Sayers, Batchewana First Nation

Dean Sayers, Batchewana First Nation, Your Content Goes Here

Reconciliation in Action

Ten years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its Ten Principles for Reconciliation [3] and 94 Calls to Action [4] for improved relations between Indigenous nations and the Canadian state. Canada continues to fall short—especially on the foundational questions of land and jurisdiction, and after what some might call a “decade of disappointment” [5] countless Canadian institutions and members of the public still do not know the full history of Canada.

Many are unaware that through intensive collusion of church, state, and an under-educated public, stories about the need to restrain, manage, and eliminate Indigenous people have been firmly woven into the fabric of Canada’s founding. The very origins of Canada’s legal and political systems are rooted in doctrines that deny Indigenous sovereignty and facilitate dispossession. Until these are addressed, true reconciliation and climate justice will remain out of reach.

The TRC’s Ten Principles of Reconciliation were always about documenting and honoring survivors.Thousands of pages of reports detail the ways that the Canadian state sought explicitly to remove Indigenous families and governance structures from the land itself. Reconciliation must meaningfully address questions of land and jurisdiction.

Yet, Calls To Action have not been widely implemented for meaningful return of decision-making and land title. Where applicable, Treaty implementation on the terms of Indigenous nations remains an aspiration and not a lived reality. Specific TRC Calls To Action (45-47 and 49) point to the racist and shaky legal underpinnings of the jurisdictional arrangement in Canada. Through the TRC, there was public admission of Canada’s claimed right to land being wedded to racist and dehumanizing thought. Among the most urgent—and least implemented—TRC Calls to Action are those that challenge the racist legal foundations of Canadian jurisdiction:

Calls to Action 45-47:
These calls urge religious denominations and faith groups to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius, which were used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous lands and peoples.
Call to Action 49:
This call urges the federal government to develop a Royal Proclamation of Reconciliation that would reaffirm the nation-to-nation relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown, including a repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius.

The Federal and Provincial courts continue to be a forum of decision-making and debate on pressing questions of underlying land title and jurisdiction, while others in Canadian society root firmly into stories that do not honor Indigenous territories and peoples. In the context of escalating separatism and chaos spurred by US political conditions, global wars, and other factors, concern for the health of the land and the planet at large has been eclipsed by divisive politics and instability.

Climate agreements are taking the back burner and environmental actions are being walked back. The Crown’s commitments to Indigenous rights – already fragile-are now even more precarious. Indigenous communities involved in the protection of their lands continue to stand as front line defenders, facing the threat of state repression, violence, and other tactics that flow from the logic of Crown superiority and underlying title. Centralizing the jurisdictional conundrum is not just a legal or symbolic act; it is a necessary step for climate resilience and for the flourishing of Indigenous-led, place-based solutions that benefit all life on Earth.

Our Call to Action

Moments of choice occur every day, in everyone’s life: what kind of future are individuals working toward? The primary reason nature-based solutions in Canada has not advanced is due to jurisdictional issues. For those of us who work in this space we have to be continually rooting out unresolved jurisdictional issues and centering Indigenous rights and responsibilities. At RAD, we invite all—Indigenous and non-Indigenous, individuals and institutions—to reflect on how we can live in right relations with Indigenous communities, ecologies, and the planet. What does it mean to support the return of jurisdiction to Indigenous peoples, and how can we each contribute to this transformative process? Anyone can ask this of themselves in personal and professional capacities.

RAD seeks to engage these types of reflections:

How does one form a personal and collective understanding to live in “right relations” with Indigenous communities, ecologies, and the planet at large? What does right relations look like in practice?
How can collaborators work meaningfully with Indigenous peoples while constrained by institutional mandates, inaction, and ineffective strategies for transformative change?
How can we collectively center right relations in the emerging sphere of natural climate solutions and nature finance, where there is both immense opportunity and risk relating to Indigenous rights and jurisdiction?

RAD is not a decision-maker, but we are committed to and support wise decision making to create space for transformative change. Our call is for each of us to unlearn the colonial story of Canada and to build a future rooted in right relations, shared governance, and nature stewardship.

Following another iteration of a business-as-usual via Canada Day, RAD issues a call to deepen our engagement and we invite all to join us as we take action to Restore relationships, lands and Indigenous knowledge systems, Assert rights and responsibilities, and Defend lands and waters. Together, we can shine a light through the current jurisdictional conundrum and advance Indigenous-led nature based solutions in Canada for the benefit of the generations yet to come.

Upcoming event: Fall Reading Circle

Want to learn more? Continue your (un)learning journey! Pick a title from the following suggested reading list to read over the summer.

Krawec, Patricia. 2021. Becoming Kin.
Manuel, Arthur & Derrickson, Grand Chief Ronald. 2017. The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy. James Lorimer & Company Ltd
McIvor, Bruce. 2025. Indigenous Rights in One Minute: What You Need to Know to Talk Reconciliation. Harbour Publishing.
Yunkaporta, Tyson. 2021. Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. HarperOne.
Krasowski, Sheldon. 2019. No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous. University of Regina Press.
Gobby, Jen. 2020. More Powerful Together: Conversations with Climate Activists and Indigenous Land Defenders. Fernwood Publishing.

On September 25, 2025 we are holding our first RAD reading and discussion circle. You don’t need to have read the books to come. Come ready to share your thoughts and ideas, even if you haven’t had a chance to read them all.

We will plan a discussion that honors complexity while keeping our commitment to RAD values and looking for actionable steps forward. Together, we’ll reflect on what we can learn from these resources that can inform the advancement of Indigenous-led nature based solutions in Ethical Space that respects Indigenous jurisdiction, laws and sovereignty.

Click below to register:

Stay tuned for further opportunities as we continue to attune to right relations in the emerging sphere of nature finance and identify ways to confront and address unresolved jurisdiction.

RAD VALUES:

Ground our work in Spirit and ceremony, upholding the wisdom of Elders and ancestral teachings
Prioritize integrity
Centre Indigenous languages, worldviews, and guiding principles
Honour cultural and kinship ties
Develop relationships rooted in reciprocity and respect
Work in Ethical Space