Learning on the Land: Reflections from a three day land based learning journey

In the early spring days of late March as snow and ice melted into running waters, a land-based learning event held over three days—Symposium on Indigenous Land-Based Educational Practices: Perspectives on Climate Action—took hundreds of us (virtually and in real life) through different social and ecological spaces: Concordia University, Kahnawà:ke longhouse and Regional Adult Education Center, and finally around a cooking fire in a small forested area at the edge of the Kahnawà:ke territory, bordering Chateauguay. The event was organized by Director of Decolonizing Curriculum and Pedagogy at Concordia’s Centre for Teaching and Learning, Kahérakwas Donna Goodleaf (with the integral assistance of Melissa Forcione, Project Coordinator at the Centre), realizing her long-term vision for Concordia: that land-based educational practices are vital to decolonizing pedagogy by enabling relational and experiential learning across social, cultural and ecological spaces. The event consisted of numerous Indigenous speakers, scholars and activists from various distinct Indigenous Nations. As a non-Indigenous participant (of settler Québecois and Japanese descent), I reflect here on these shared activities, how they shifted my own sense of understanding and responsibilities towards the land, and how allyship and collaboration are crucial to our shared futures on the planet.

Land‑based pedagogy, as experienced across the three days, challenges the separation of knowledge from place. Rather than situating land as an object of study, it engages the land as teacher—one that summons accountability, reciprocity, and attentiveness over mastery or extraction. Learning unfolds through embodied experience, protocol, and relationship, foregrounding responsibility to place and community as fundamental commitments. The event repeatedly challenged Western educational models in which knowledge is abstracted, regulated and distanced from the conditions of its emergence, inviting instead a mode of learning that is situated, ethical, and relational.

Concordia’s 4^th Space and SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation hosted the first day in their community spaces downtown, streamed online to viewers worldwide. A powerhouse of women opened the event through distinct yet intersecting perspectives. Convenor Kahérakwas Donna Goodleaf welcomed us with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Haudenosaunee nations Thanksgiving Address (in abbreviated form), meaning “words before all else.” This spiritual address centres the land— including waters, sun, moon, trees, plants, insects, fish, mammals, humans—within reciprocal relations of care, gratitude and responsibility. It did not go unnoticed that an event dedicated to turning us toward the land was taking place one month into the destructive war in Iran and the Middle East, precipitated by the United States and Israel. While my focus here is on climate implications, the dense black smoke of oil explosions and fires, dilapidated infrastructures, and the cascading consequences of fossil fuel dependency were ever present as a backdrop. Halted oil and natural gas production has impacted food production and driven inflation skyward, as global economies plummet—reminding us of the entanglements between militarism, fossil fuel capitalism, and climate fragility.

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, co-founder of Indigenous Climate Action, spoke powerfully about the threats of climate change, and about Indigenous communities on the frontlines—both as those most impacted and as protectors and resistors defending the earth’s futures. She cited the ravages of capitalism on the planet. Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel, spoke with equal urgency, about the need to return to Indigenous epistemologies and responsibilities, while Rebecca Webster, presented on Ukwakhwa (Our Foods), her farmstead on Oneida territory in Wisconsin as practicing food sovereignty. Lunch was catered by Chef Swaneige and accompanied by presentations of Indigenous Land-Based education courses that make up the twelve-credit Microprogram in Indigenous Land-Based Education, currently offered at Concordia in the First Peoples’ Studies program and Journalism with Ella Martindale, Mel Lefebvre and Kristy Snell, respectively.

Afternoon presentations transported us into different territories and land-based initiatives across Quebec. Katsi’tsaronkwas Brooke Rice, and her team, Wahiaronkwas Ashley Morris Lyons and GaäGwaGyehé Jeremy Thompson spoke about Tkà:nios—It Grows, a land-based initiative in Kahnawà:ke; and Waba Moko (Shannon Chief), Anishnabe – Algonquin nation, presented on moose studies and her work in La Vérendrye Park in northern Quebec, where she has organized moratoriums on sport moose hunting. Moose populations have been dwindling due to over-hunting, and are deeply affected by deforestation, which destroys habitats and increases exposure; Concordia students in the First Peoples Studies program have been interning at La Vérendrye since 2023.

The university setting provided publicity, resources and visibility, yet interestingly simultaneously revealed the tensions inherent in translating land‑based pedagogy into institutional form. Presentations took place indoors, mediated by screens and streaming software (including Zoom’s new dynamic emoji reactions that floated across the screen), with the land represented and conjured more than encountered. This tension was a productive friction that made visible the limits of institutional spaces in holding forms of knowledge grounded in land, protocol, and lived relation. Day One could be considered as performing pedagogically as a site of unlearning—highlighting how colonial structures shape not only what is taught, but how learning itself is organized, regulated, and presented.

On Day Two, the event moved offline to in-person only, traveling from the island of Tiohtià:ke across the Mercier Bridge to Kahnawà:ke and one of the territory’s two longhouses. The rectangular structure features two-tiered seating along the outer walls, and furnaces at either end for heating with fire. As I began to enter the men’s door, Donna called out to me, waving me to the other side of the building, gently reminding me of Kanien’kehá:ka nation protocols that I was inadvertently infringing upon, and that I was a guest on Kanien’kehá:ka traditional land, whether here, or across the river at Concordia. Simply being in this place—a Kahnawà:ke longhouse—shifted us into Donna and her community’s hospitality and relational pedagogy. Being rerouted at the threshold of the longhouse was, for me, a moment of embodied pedagogy: a reminder that learning on the land begins with humility and attentiveness to what we do not yet know. Learning happens through story, presence, shared space and lived exchange. For this slightly different audience, Rebecca Webster again presented on Ukwakhwa, this time emphasizing climate change and adaptive farming strategies in response to wetter, warmer springs that do not necessarily translate into longer growing seasons. She brought insights into corn seed adaptation as a microcosm of ecological resilience. The question period explored invasive insects such as Japanese beetles and mitigation strategies; diatomaceous earth was noted as effective, though requiring careful application due to their shard-like structures that can harm pollinators and humans; crushing them, we were warned, would release a pheromone that would attract more beetles. Kanien’kéha language and history teacher, Kanerahtiio Hemlock humorously recounted teaching a class required to have “cultural relevance,” (as dictated to him by the school’s director), resulting in student adventures and activities such as raising chickens, rabbits and bees, and building living structures for them. His reflections highlighted reciprocity and respect, and his role as facilitator within a community-centred learning process.

After another delicious lunch catered by Screaming Chef Cuisine and Aromatic Spirit, Waba Moko presented again on the Anishnabe Moose Committee’s work. Concordia’s director of First Peoples’ Studies, professor and filmmaker Nicolas Renaud, then spoke about two courses he has taught in collaboration with Donna Goodleaf’s Land-Based Education Initiatives program, supported by the Chamandy Foundation. These courses focused on the Saint Lawrence River and wampum belt, a traditional Haudenosaunee form of knowledge-keeping and oral history. Experiential learning prevailed: students studied wampum belts before making their own (following protocols), and learned river histories before visiting multiple sites, including immersing themselves in the Saint Lawrence at Verdun beach. A visit hosted by the Kahnawake Environment Protection Office (KEPO) followed, where presenters discussed projects related to aquatic habitats, water movement and invasive species in the wetland ecosystems of Kahnawà:ke. Day Two’s movement from Concordia’s institutional spaces into the community space of the longhouse offered a tactile understanding of how place reshapes education, responsibility, and what it means to learn with rather than simply about.

On Day Three, we were welcomed into Kahnawà:ke’s  Regional Adult Education Center, where a group of twenty of us became students. (This final group of attendees consisted of students and instructors from Concordia and Vanier College, as well as Indigenous presenters who spoke on day one). In the morning, Pinock Ish, from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, Quebec, narrated the engineering of a beautiful birchbark canoe before leading a hands-on workshop creating rattles from deer skin and bass wood, filled with stones, beans and other resonant materials. In the afternoon, the final session of the three–day symposium concluded with three hours of outdoor land-based activities located next door to the Center. This final session consisted of a short walk that brought us outdoors, where instructors Shakohahiiostha and David McComber—founders of Iontionhnhéhkwen Wilderness Skills in 2016—hosted us. Following a fifteen-minute “sit spot exercise,” we gathered by a sugar maple tree, drank maple water, and learned how to identify, tap and care for the tree at the appropriate time in the spring. Back at the fire, we were taught how to start a fire (even one-handed, in case of injury) and how to safely use a knife to prepare wood for fire-making. Day Three made explicit what had been building throughout the event: that land‑based pedagogy is fundamentally temporal, relational and embodied. Practices such as the sit spot exercise slowed learning down, attuning participants to seasonal rhythms, weather, sound, light, stillness. Instruction emerged through demonstration and story rather than abstraction, emphasizing safety, attentiveness, and care. Being on the land is the lesson.

We were nourished in body, heart, and spirit. During the fireside closing circle, one participant shared that the sit spot exercise was exactly what they needed and that they might have sat for hours longer with melting snow, trees, birds and sunshine. Another reflected on how learning about the cultural practices of other Indigenous territories expanded their sense of inter-nation and inter-community collaboration and solidarity. Others spoke of being honoured to be on Kanien’kehá territory, experiencing the transformative capacity of land-based teachings, and how David McComber’s teachings had quietly but powerfully shaped their lives over time. Throughout the days, we also learned about the significance of the strawberry, the three sisters culinary trinity, that northern cardinals and robins eat Japanese beetles and how Kanien’kéha language revitalization is a vital key to understanding Kanien’kéha cosmology, land and relations.