Western's new climate change course weaves in Indigenous knowledge

A new climate change course offered at Western University in London, Ont., brings together Indigenous knowledge and Eurowestern science to encourage students to put their learning into action.

The Connecting for Climate Change Action course was developed by 16 university contributors, led by Katrina Moser, an associate professor and chair of the department of geography and environment. After about five years of teaching Western's dedicated climate change course, she perceived a sense of doom and gloom among the students, which sparked the idea to reimagine the program.

"Students actually came and talked to me and said that they were depressed after taking my course," said Moser. "This is when we started thinking about how do we change that? How do we give students a way forward?"

The goal became to develop a curriculum that would allow students the opportunity to apply their learning and create solutions to climate change problems.

WATCH | Katrina Moser, Sara Mai Chitty talk about Connecting for Climate Change Action course on London Morning:

Moser said the new course goes beyond learning about the realities of climate change, to showing students they can take individual action and make choices that can add up to significant progress.

"This course is basically teaching students about the science behind climate change, but also encouraging students to take action and braiding into our science part of the course, Indigenous knowledge and perspectives," she said.

Sara Mai Chitty, the curriculum and pedagogy adviser for the office of Indigenous Initiatives at Western, was part of the course creation team, bringing her Indigenous background to the program.

"We have an assessment where students visit with a generation either older or younger than them to talk about what the climate looked like when they were younger or older," said Chitty. "So, bringing in different perspectives and people sharing what their gifts are and what they are bringing to climate change action."

Chitty said it's important to understand that a lot of Indigenous knowledge comes from the land.

"This course asked people to think differently about their relationship to the land. Especially for me as an Anishinaabe person, the land is very much considered not an it but like a being," she said. "Would you treat your grandmother this way? would you treat your mother this way? And people really resonated with this."

Adopting the new approach to teaching students about climate change has been well received, according to Moser.

"We had students saying, 'I'm gonna switch my major, I want to be looking at the world in a different way and approaching my future in a different way.' So it was incredibly inspiring."

Including Indigenous perspectives in the teaching also influenced an Indigenous student who completed the course, according to Chitty.