Rethinking Transformation: Centring Msit No’kmaq for Just and Equitable Climate Action is a project funded through Transforming Climate Action, part of Canada’s First Research Excellence Fund. It responds to a real limit in how climate action gets done today: top-down approaches, driven by institutions and governments, often move quickly but arrive disconnected from the people and places they affect, while bottom-up, community-led efforts carry deep knowledge and legitimacy but struggle for the resourcing, recognition, and institutional support needed to act at scale. The Rethinking Project searches for new models of action and collaboration in the space between these two approaches, positioning Mi’kmaw worldviews, values, and principles at the, as well as the importance of place, at ‘Step Zero’ for climate action and research.
Grounded in Mi’kmaw worldviews, the project treats relationships as the foundation research and governance are built on, extending outward into community and relationships, into research practice, and into the structures and funding that support this work. This orientation asks what it means to be heart led researchers and practitioners, people who understand relationship building itself as a form of labour worthy of time, recognition, and resourcing.
The work unfolds through gatherings across Mi’kma’ki and beyond that bring community leaders, Elders, students, and researchers together to reflect on how relationships stay alive at the heart of research, whether led by community or by university. The Rethinking Project is organized into four interconnected areas of work, each rethinking a different piece of how climate action and coastal research gets done: Msit No’kmaq, Rethinking Science and Knowledge, Rethinking Policy and Planning, and Rethinking Training and Education.