The alternative is to acknowledge the harms of settler violence and repatriate indigenous land

Indigenous peoples need to be listened to and their values and knowledge must be acknowledged and honoured.

Settler societies are grappling with the violent legacy of colonization, as well evolving types of colonialism in technocratic, market-oriented, neo-liberal environmental policies and practices. Mascarhenas writes that ‘neo-liberalism represents a new, more subtle, style of colonialism; one where the discourse of expertise plays a far greater role than in previous assimilationist and displacement-type policies’ (Citation2007, 571). This is yet another attempt to silence Indigenous voices. And while Mascarhenas is writing about water rights of First Nations peoples, policies such as reconciliation, which we see taking place in Canada, will not likely be liberatory. Such policies continue to centre settler interests, primarily aimed at alleviating settler angst, or guilt. We agree with Tuck and Yang (Citation2012) analysis that decolonization cannot be a metaphor, but rather must continue to centre the repatriation of Indigenous land, upon which Indigenous cultural values are based – the restoration of Indigenous peoples to Indigenous land is the path to liberation for all peoples marked by the trauma of colonization. As Mascarhenas writes, ‘First Nations speak not only of injustice in terms of equity but also of injustice in terms of recognition – recognition of harm, and recognition of other ways of knowing’ (Citation2007, 571). Our project begins to acknowledge the harm that colonized ways of knowing and being cause, as well as to honor, and support Indigenous ways of knowing and being.

This Indigenous-centered examination of the hidden values in Western institutions is necessary to understand the damage inflicted upon all people, and the environment, by actions and decisions based on white-settler-values that at times intersect with heteropatriarchy and other forms of oppression. In this way, Indigenous values can be reclaimed and re-centred in the institutions that serve Indigenous peoples, and all peoples, on Indigenous homelands. We invite environmental sociologists, activists, and those working for justice in health, legal, education, and related academic spaces to engage Indigenous cultural values in efforts to challenge the exclusionary white spaces and counter the settler colonial violence that plagues all peoples. Doing so will allow for healing humans’ relationships with the environment, our more than human relations, and with each other.