Project Brief

This project involves a Summer Institute to be held in the traditional unceded territories of the Maliseet and Mi’kmaq Peoples in New Brunswick, and part of the institute will be spent learning from renewable energy leaders in Tobique First Nation. The purpose of the Summer Institute is to bring together Indigenous leaders/champions in renewable energy, along with those who are affiliated with A SHARED Future to (1) develop a richer understanding of the relational ethics that drive our research together; (2) increase our knowledge of cutting edge renewable energy practices; (3) understanding intersectoral partnerships; (4) engage in reflexive praxis concerning equity and diversity in renewable energy; (5) generate synergistic opportunities for co-learning across projects; and (6) experience, first-hand, the renewable energy initiatives that are ongoing/developing in Indigenous communities. We see the Summer Institute as an opportunity to share the knowledge that is gained there with the whole of A SHARED Future’s team by creating a variety of arts-based outputs.

We posit that by bringing A SHARED Future affiliates together for a Summer Institute we can better understand the experiences and challenges of implementing renewable energy initiatives in communities, including sex and gender considerations, that could then be shared widely as part of our equity-focused knowledge translation (EqKT) programmatic objective. We anticipate that this and our subsequent Summer Institute(s) will generate important learnings for current and future intersectoral partnerships in renewable energy, and how the A SHARED Future program can continue to assist Indigenous communities in efforts they are leading to facilitate the implementation of renewable energy initiatives.

Project Updates

The A SHARED Future Co-Directors and Josh Lyon (FLK Productions) are thrilled to share a new short film from our Summer Institute in the unceded territory of the Wəlastəkwiyik (Maliseet) and Mi’kmaq Peoples in Fredericton, New Brunswick in August 2018. You can watch the video here and on our new website.

The video features interviews with Summer Institute participants who reflect on the value of their experience and the linkages formed by bringing together such a diverse and dedicated team. The A SHARED Future Co-Directors would like to thank all of those who attended the 2018 Summer Institute and took the time to share their thoughts with Josh and the production team. We look forward to hosting another Summer Institute in the near future. Stay tuned!

Objectives

  • Cogitate on the ethics of A SHARED Future research, surfacing ethical tensions and dilemmas through the domains of knowledge, relationality, and space and time;
  • Raise our collective understanding of the types of renewable energies available, their strengths and limitations, from technical, legal, and policy perspectives;
  • Profile Indigenous-led/participation in renewable energy initiatives in Indigenous territories from the perspectives of those community leaders/champions, learning directly from them;
  • Identify and better understand the successes, challenges, and opportunities amongst those communities that have identified renewable energy initiatives as a community priority;
  • Explore avenues for increased awareness of culturally-relevant sex and gender-based analysis and equity-focused knowledge translation considerations in A SHARED Future and beyond, across academia, government, industry, and community;
  • Determine the level of interest in what, if any, outcomes and actions participants would like to realize beyond the Summer Institute through A SHARED Future and ascertain mechanisms for doing so;
  • Consider pedagogical (and methodological) implications of land-based/community-based/ place-based/experiential learning as a mechanism for achieving the broader objectives of A SHARED Future.