In Deeper Waters: Indigenous, Gendered Approaches to Sustainability

This work presents a decolonizing methodology toward understanding sustainability in time and place. Methods discussed are experiential and grounded in my own positionality. Therefore, I introduce an intersectional approach, with consideration given to the gendered nature of colonialism, and the centrality of Indigenous women within the strugglenot as an essentialist turn but as an acknowledgement of the links between lifes cycles, Indigenous belonging in place and time, and the ongoing renewal of Indigenous pathways. Specifically, I look at the worldview of the Haudenosaunee, my mothers roots, and attempt to illustrate the depths of Haudenosaunee knowledge in addressing sustainable relationality to place and deep time. I describe some of the ways that understanding sustainability through an Indigenous lens had to be done experientially, with brief discussion of methods including ceremony and drumming and a final chapter dedicated to research and community planning grounded in an Indigenous worldview.