“We still have relatives on the planet and places on the planet that can teach us about how to be competent human beings.”
–Daniel Wildcat
Learning to Listen is a “phd” “dissertation” journey being undertaken at UVic that explores place-based relationships and how settlers who form relationships with the land under Indigenous guidance can better support Indigenous Resurgence, Sovereignty, and Wellbeing in ways that are important to Indigenous peoples, while mitigating climate change locally.
To do this, the project is gathering a Project Community of settlers living on unceded W̱SÁNEĆ and lək̓ʷəŋən territories who are called to spending time in Indigenous-led spaces, specifically around Indigenous-led ecosystem restoration. Since 2021, Learning to Listen’s project keeper, Kikila Perrin, has been volunteering at the W̱SÍ,ḴEM Ivy Project, hosted by Sarah Jim (W̱SÁNEĆ).
Members of the Project Community will spend time participating at Indigenous-led ecosystem restoration events, and then reflect on that time, what was experienced, what work we did. We will also implement protocols, and other appropriate Ways of Doing (as shared and recommended by our Indigenous hosts) into our daily lives in a number of ways. This is to see if who we become in those spaces supports our own unlearning, challenging our settler ideas of what we do (right/wrong), the importance of the land (resource/relation), and our understanding of how we can support Indigenous Resurgence on Indigenous territory.
Much of this work, and the ideas that were the seeds that sprouted the various threads of this project have been informed by Indigenous authors, scholars, and practitioners. Some of these include: Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi Nation, Braiding Sweetgrass 2013), Jay T. Johnson (Lenni Lenape/Tsaligi, writing with Soren C. Larsen, Being Together In Place, 2017), Epeli Hau’ofa (Tongan/Fijian, We are the Ocean 2008), Glen Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene, Red Skin, White Masks 2014), Winona LaDuke (Ojibwe White Earth, Recovering the Sacred 2005), Lewis Williams (Ngāi Te Rangi) and Nick XEMŦOLTW̱ Claxton (Tsawout, “Recultivating Intergenerational Resilience: Possibilities for “Scaling DEEP” through Disruptive Pedagogies of Decolonization and Reconciliation” 2017), Leroy Littlebear (Blackfoot, “Jagged Worldviews Colliding” 2000), Jeff Corntassel, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, to name just a few. Please read their works if you have the time, and if you are a settler on Indigenous territories.
Below you will find some updates to how the project was initially visioned and imagined, and a series of updates that come from different stages of the project. If you ever have any questions or comments, please contact me, the project keeper Kikila Perrin. My information can be found on the Contact page. Contact information for my supervisors, and the Human Research Ethics Board are there too if you would rather contact them.
Weaving, Tying off and the Story Season: Update (Spring/Summer 2025)
This path has been as long as it has needed to be to this point, and it is with more than a little sadness, and with more gratitude than can be explained with the written word that Learning to Listen is nearing its final phase. For the past few months, the weaving (aka writing, though writing feels like such a term that doesn’t quite cover everything involved) has continued intensely, and with a draft sitting with the committee overseeing this project, it is time to begin planning for the summer and the Story Season.
Summer begins on Friday, meaning Sarah Jim’s W̱SÍ,ḴEM Ivy Project (WIP) and Cheryl Bryce’s Lekwungen Community Toolshed (Toolshed) are both already in full land stewardship swing, with each having already hosted several events so far this spring. The solstice brings that summer energy to their works, and it also brings some great local events taking place on both W̱SÁNEĆ territory, like the Honouring Wətanmy Powwow, held by the Sampson Family that is taking place from 25-27 July.
If you are looking for ways to get involved with any of these amazing projects, and to take up your responsibilities for being a settler/occupier on these beautiful Coast Salish territories, then please see the Habitat Acquisition Trust events calendar. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been possible for me to keep that part of the site up to date this year because of the need to focus on weaving.
The hope at this point is to get a draft into UVic’s Graduate Studies before the end of June, and to defend the dissertation that is being written about this project in early August, with celebrations for both the WIP and Toolshed communities before the beginning of September. There is also a plan to get the members of the Circle together, our friends listed on the Project Community page, to tie off our participation in this project in a good way.
There is still so much to do – for this project, to learn how to be accountable to the Indigenous peoples’ whose lands we occupy. My understanding at this point is that this work will never be done. This season of it might be tied off, a bundle of medicine and teachings that can be (re)turned to again and again when needed, but that is by no means the end. This is life-long work, and realizing you stand on stolen land is not something that will be remedied by any one action, by any one event, or probably within any of our lifetimes. That doesn’t mean we don’t try.
More updates will come before this website becomes more of a resource for our emergent community. Until then: HÍSW̱ḴE SÍAM HÁLE to all of the people who spent time with me on the land, sitting somewhere chatting, pulling invasive species and carrying the “bio mass” to the pile, to the Coast Salish and other Indigenous people who shared teachings, kind words, to those who shared guidance. Thank you all.
Weaving: Updated Project Path (Winter/Spring 2025)
Once again, the path this project meanders on has made it a little difficult to sit down and write an update. At this stage, with spring approaching and the restoration season about to get going (today is the first day of the WEXES moon), it’s feeling like a time to get excited about being on the land, and for me (Kikila) its a time to get to writing this update.
Since the Project Community (let’s call them the Circle) formed in late summer 2023, a second community joined in the witnessing (and experiencing) that this project represents. Starting in fall 2023, many of the employees at Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT) agreed to share with me about their experiences on the land, under Coast Salish guidance, and working within their organization to “Indigenize” both the way conservation impacts and is performed on stolen land, and to unlearn in their own lives. This meant a great deal to me as I had been working at HAT at the time, and the relationships we’d cultivated as staff, cultivated around our collective unlearning and desire to shift what settler conservation groups do, added so much to the knowledge being witnessed by this project.
(Conservation is an inherently racist way of approaching environmental relationships, see https://www.survivalinternational.org/articles/racism-in-conservation for an international perspective, and here for a Turtle Island context, not written by an Indigenous person it looks like: https://earth.org/conservation-indigenous-people/)
With the addition of the HAT Community, and the intermingling of both them and members of the Circle, the gathering period began to take on an agency of its own, and – like so much of this project – has relied on the guidance of our Coast Salish “hosts” and the agency of the land. It also expanded what guidance we witnessed and received.
Since the last update in Winter 2023, the Project Communities (since there are now two) have been continuing our support of Coast Salish-led ecosystem restoration and other acts of Resurgence, primarily under the guidance of Sarah Jim and the W̱SÍ,ḴEM Ivy Project, Cheryl Bryce and the Lekwungen Community Toolshed, and our friends at PEPAKEṈ HÁUTW̱ as well as the stewardship of Tracey Underwood (W̱SÁNEĆ) through her teaching in Indigenous Studies and bringing her students on the land throughout the restoration seasons. Members of these Project Communities have also been seeking opportunities to support in a number of other ways that include ongoing support for other forms of Indigenous-led resistance to the colony, and through daily acts. Without trying to speak for everyone in the Project Communities, it’s my witnessing that the time that our Coast Salish friends take to guide us, to educate us on protocol, on being on the land in a good way, and for their continuing to invite us as individuals into their spaces is invaluable to our personal unlearning, and to our understanding of how to support Coast Salish sovereignty and jurisdiction in as good a way possible for settlers. They have my deepest gratitude, for their friendship, for their guidance, and for their patience in outreach to many communities as leaders and conveners on their lands.
For the settler side of things, HAT has already been supporting Coast Salish-led ecosystem restoration for a while now, thanks to Paige Erikson-McGee, HAT’s Program Manager. Paige has been a long-time volunteer and supporter of the Lekwungen Community Toolshed, and through her time at HAT has always sought to do things in a good way and has been a leader at that organization. My hands go up to her as well for what she teaches me, and for sharing her friendship and experiences with me and her settler community.
Jessica Hum and Talking Circle joined HAT to support the unlearning being done there, providing experience, wisdom and a new perspective that is based in supporting this sort of reflection on a professional level. Jessica (who is a fantastic human being, and someone who will always get my recommendation as a facilitator and guide) facilitated two days of unlearning for the HAT Community, and several days of pre- and post-work that supported the staff-led process. More will be discussed as the Weaving season is wrapped up (see below) and the Sharing or Story Season begins later this year.
Extending and hopefully amplifying our time on the land and in relationship with our Coast Salish friends, the past year for the Circle (see the Project Community page) has been filled with some exciting gatherings, and a few sharing circles. Together we cultivated a community map that has since become a Story Map that Neal created. We talked place, about the importance of the territories we have moved through in our (colonially privileged) lives, and the experiences that brought us to this work.
The Circle also gathered to work on Relationality Timelines. These sorts of “maps” (suggested by a great article by one of my guides, Crystal Tremblay and her colleague Gutberlet, see this article) can express how individuals are experiencing what the western world and our colonial worldviews might see as “subjective” notions like feelings of connection to more than the self.
Since the turning of the seasons into winter (in 2024), my responsibilities as project keeper have led me to understand that while the work continues on the land and in each of us as community members, the seasons of this project are changing too and the gathering season was waning and giving way to the Weaving Season. This season is one that is unfortunately more tied to a computer than the land, and involves a lot of sitting with the stories we’ve shared, the visits that have been recorded and transcribed, as well as the timelines and maps, and to vision, dream, reflect, and continue what Shawn Wilson describes as the ceremony of research in a way that honours what has been shared, and honours the time, effort and wellbeing of our hosts and the lands.
Part of this transformation has been the closing off of the Circle and the HAT Community, and each of you have my gratitude and thanks for the time you’ve taken to sit with me, answer my questions, and reflect deeply on your experiences.
The Weaving Season will continue under the supervision of my academic Guides, and my guides on the land, and as words become sentences and sentences become stories, there will be many opportunities for accountability, including sharing the emergent weaving publicly, and with community.
Once the Weaving is done, the season will change again to the Story Season, which will see the time where the story of this work, of these shared experiences, gets shared broadly with the communities that host(ed) us, and with the settler environmentalist community, who (myself included) continue to cause untold harms through our ignorance and through our blindness to the problems of our worldview.
HÍSW̱ḴE SIÁM HÁLE W̱UĆISTENEḴ. EQÁTEL TŦT MEQ.
Gathering: Updated Project Path (Winter 2023)
Currently, Learning to Listen is in its gathering phase (huy ch q’a to my friend Danielle Alphonse for sharing that term with me). This is an exciting time for the project community, and for the work we’re doing. It means a few things, and says a few things about the way this project is being carried, it’s importance, and offers some guidance on how we will be moving forward.
Since updating the project path in 2022 (see below), early-2023 was spent on the land, supporting projects and strengthening relationships with the W̱SÍ,ḴEM Ivy Project and Sarah Jim, and the Lekwungen Community Toolshed and Cheryl Bryce. The importance of these relationships and the role they play in my life are hard to express in this format, and my hosts have my deep gratitude for allowing me to spend time on their lands with them, and to learn from them through doing.
This period (Winter-early Summer 2023) not only taught me the importance of holding relationships in a good way, but also the importance of relationships grown and nurtured on the land. It has also exposed me to the importance of Coast Salish means of teaching, or sharing information, and how community can be cultivated in very specific ways (these are going to be academic, but Beckwith, Halber, and Turner talk about how this works as concentric experiential learning in this chapter and Elliott explores how settlers can start to learn to be taught in a Coast Salish manner in this article <- this link opens a PDF). These relationships guide me, my thinking around this project, and offer pathways for settlers to “turn away” from the state/colonial culture (like Ganohalidoh writes in this article <- this link downloads a PDF) and offer a model of learning that offers insight into different ways of being where we live.
It also brought me into relationship with a number of really great people. The conversations held on the land, and what we share in the many opening and closing circles Sarah facilitates when gathering us for this work, have led a number of us cultivate relationships with each other, consistently, and in intimate and embodies ways. These interactions, these friendships are where most of who would become the Project Community started to take shape.
Summer through Fall (2023) saw the Project Community start to work together. Even though most of us knew each other from our time spent on the land, under Indigenous guidance, this period saw individuals learn more about this project, what their role could be in it, and start to have conversations about what working together as co-researchers might look like. While we continued to spend time supporting our hosts’ projects, we also held our First Project Circle in August.
This circle marked the opening of the Learning to Listen’s “Gathering” period, where members of the Project Community began gathering information, reflections, experiences, and moments. Some of these experiences we shared with each other at the Second Project Circle in November, where we worked on a community map, and set some of our intentions for the late-Fall and Winter period – that period where restoration events make way for cultural events and the ceremonial season in W̱SÁNEĆ and lək̓ʷəŋən law and practice, and when people come together in community, around the “fire”, and share what knowledge and learning we can.
Have a safe winter everyone, and a Happy Solstice! The Project Community will be spending less time on the land for the next month and a bit, and will be turning to the knowledges we have been exposed to while reflecting on our experiences, and inviting more “daily practices” into our lives.
Updated Project Path (2022)
Since beginning this project in community in 2021, it has been my (Kikila’s) goal to connect with and strengthen relationships in the Land Back or Decolonization community based in METULIE (aka Victoria, BC), and to work with those relations to better understand how settlers of European descent can better support Indigenous resurgence on these territories, unceded lək̓ʷəŋən, W̱SÁNEĆ, T’sou-ke, Pahceedaht, and Sc’ianew, as well as the broader Coast Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Kwakwaka’wakw territories.
Because of connections through my day job (at Habitat Acquisition Trust, HAT), it was possible for me to begin building relationships with members of the W̱SÁNEĆ community who lead ecological restoration and cultural resurgence work on their territories, and who invite settlers to participate.
Since then, the focus of this project has transitioned away from its original focus on so-called “activism” as a space where meaningful cultural exchange can happen. Feedback from Grandma Losah (Rose Henry, Tla’amin Nation), an Elder and Knowledge Keeper who has long advocated for Land Back and Decolonization in METULIE, as well as support for people marginalized through poverty, and my personal experiences at the Ada’itsx or Fairy Creek Blockade, the nature of Indigenous-settler interactions in spaces created at “events” like Fairy Creek are not always equitable for Indigenous land defenders. If those spaces are not equitable, then it makes it difficult to challenge inherent and deep-seated white supremacy.
One of my guides, Jeff Corntassel (Tsaligi), invited me to participate in ecological restoration as Indigenous resurgence on the Songhees (lək̓ʷəŋən) Reserve at a time when I was sitting with some of my experiences at Fairy Creek. This was about the same time late last summer where my work at HAT put me in a position to assist in ecological restoration on the Tseycum reserve with Sarah Jim. Through experiences working with Sarah Jim (W̱SÁNEĆ) on her ancestral land, in Indigenous-led ecosystem restoration, my understanding of the spectrum of “land defence” has changed to include less openly intense experiences that place Indigenous land defender in relationships with settler supporters.
Luckily, work and school and her willingness have gifted me the chance to share a variety of spaces with ŚW̱,XELOSELWET Tiffany Joseph (W̱SÁNEĆ) and learn from her outreach to settlers in the METULIE community. Tiffany’s work has helped me to start to see that ecological restoration, language revitalization, and cultural, political, and spiritual resurgence are all woven together, and depend on access to and a relationship with the land. She has also shown me that how settlers show up is equally important to showing up, and that we carry the responsibility to do the work we need to do, and not rely on Indigenous peoples to make settlers safe for Indigenous people to work with.
Working with Lewis Williams (Ngāti Rangi) and Danielle Alphonse (Cowichan Tribes) of the Alliance for Intergenerational Resilience (AIR) to support their organizing of two Intergenerational Wisdom Councils that included Indigenous Elders and Youth from Aotearoa and all across Turtle Island (the first video is available here, and the second will be posted when I can find it) through 2021 and spring of 2022 also helped guide this project and its current perspective. Participating as a Witness gave me the opportunity to hear directly from Indigenous youth and Elders who are doing a great many place-based, localized, and what settler academics and activists might call “small scale” projects that are having huge positive impacts in their communities, and in how they see themselves participating in resurgence. Their wisdom and guidance have helped inform my understanding of the language of the land, learning to listen, and the importance of witnessing as a process of relationships.
These experiences, and in reflecting on the teachings shared with me while spending time supporting Indigenous-leadership, have both led to a different perspective on where this project is leading.
Currently, beyond supporting Indigenous-led restoration work directly, this project is looking at a number of different paths to supporting Indigenous resurgence in a way meaningful to Indigenous peoples. Working with two settler academics who also have experience supporting Land Defence in various ways (Keith Cherry and Jen Argan), this project is learning through our experiences as front-line activists, and in working for a Nation directly.
The project team has also grown to include a settler storyteller and expressive arts therapist (Nadine Wildheart), who has worked with Indigenous nations directly, and has a decade of experience in front-line activism, Elder support, and as a student of Woody Morrison, Jr. (Haida). Nadine’s involvement comes directly from calls our Indigenous leaders and guides have made for settlers to learn about our own lineages, to challenge our colonization through storywork and bloodwork.
The community-based aspects of this project have not changed, and a few settler activists, forest protectors, and concerned relatives from the Fairy Creek Blockade are helping to identify their own experiences as participants and witnesses within Indigenous leadership.
As Fall arrives on these territories, the plan for this season and into the winter is to connect with Indigenous guides and land defenders, and to continue our work on the land (removing invasive species and supporting native species), behind the scenes (supporting legal defence of front line land defenders at Fairy Creek), with capacity as volunteers and paid staff supporting Nations and their self-determination, and to simply be present and listen to the Indigenous guides who are willing to work with us.
The Plan pre-Winter 2021
The Project Plan is basically to Gather the Project Community (the co-researchers taking part) from the Indigenous Land Defence and settler environmentalist communities, guided by a project Elder. We will then work together to cultivate spaces of cultural exchange through a variety of methods (ceremony, protocol, ethical spaces, two-eyed seeing, see the sections under Learnings & Teachings and Pathways for more on the methods) in order to evaluate the impact of these various methods on reaching through the colonial worldviews of settler participants. We will compare these experiences with the experience of community & others at Indigenous-led land defence and while being on the land in intentional ways. This will all lead to the process of self-reflection on the time spent in these settings before gathering the project community to reflect on them together. A circular process, we then continue to move through the circle, constantly negotiating our relationships with each other, these methods, and the places we spend time with.