Contribution short abstract:

Based on a research collaboration with a Canadian First Nation, this paper explores how the concept of healing as commoning can be used to reconcile relationships between different actors, while also examining the risks of reinforcing exploitative relations in Indigenous territories.

Contribution long abstract:

The concepts of commoning and healing both appeal to ideas of re-structuring and re-thinking (exploitative) relationships in order to create healthier, more just forms of relating to humans and non-humans. This paper emerges from a research collaboration with a Canadian First Nation, working on one of the prime tragedy of commons scenarios – fisheries. It will explore where ideas of healing as commoning can reconcile exploitative relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors, the state and more-than-human environment as well as where commoning might challenge and contradict Indigenous approaches for healing. In a time of planetary crisis, commoning can be a powerful initiative to question current management of areas such as fisheries, however, it also bears the danger to re-impose colonial thinking that ignores Indigenous ownership and creates an open-for-all commons. The devastating effects of colonial politics in Canada still impact Indigenous people’s individual health, the health of their territories and their more-than-human inhabitants and on a larger scale the health of the planet. For coastal First Nations, these effects manifest in the state of fisheries, which have direct consequences for local diets and health, economies and more-than-human environments locally and globally. Here, healing is explored as a process that starts with the acknowledgement of what went wrong in order to find a joint way forward which underlines a cooperative aspect. This understanding expands to the research this paper is based on in its approach to acknowledges (historic) exploitative research practices and negotiate meaningful collaboration in partnership with an Indigenous community.