Rethinking environmental sustainability education through land-based learning and practice with Woodland Cree First Nation, Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan, Canada

Environmental education often treats land as a resource to study or manage. For many Indigenous communities, land is a relative and a teacher. What can educators learn from a community whose land-based teaching was disrupted, and which is now working to restore it?

Led by a Woodland Cree knowledge keeper, the research team shared stories with Elders, knowledge keepers, residential school survivors, activists, and land-based educators at Lac La Ronge. They also joined cultural camps where youth learned on the land, such as preparing fish alongside Elders.

Community members described:

1. Land-based teaching was broken by force. One Elder described his family being forced at gunpoint in 1927 off land that became Prince Albert National Park. Ceremonies, which were key spaces for teaching, were banned. Families held them in secret and made them look like hunting trips.
2. Residential schools cut children off from the land. Children lost time on the land, their language, and family ties. One Elder said traplines are being forgotten, not because no one wants to trap, but because people were taken off the land. The community is now working to reconnect young people.
3. Mainstream teaching rests on different ideas. Community members named three habits: splitting the world into opposites, ranking knowledge from the top down, and putting humans at the center. In contrast, one knowledge keeper said learners already bring brilliance and ancestral knowledge, and the teacher's role is to guide. Another said the body is made of fire, earth, air, and water, which must stay in balance.
4. Nature is not property. One knowledge keeper called the idea of owning nature a foreign concept. An Elder shared his grandfather's teaching that Mother Earth would one day have a fever because her blood would be poisoned.
5. The community set out next steps. They called for land-based teaching that supports community self-determination, keeping Indigenous languages alive, respectful spaces for sharing sacred knowledge, more trust between government and communities, hands-on land-based training for educators, and openness to Indigenous knowledge in mainstream schools.

What this means for your practice:

• Learn the history of the land where you teach. Community members saw understanding past harms, such as forced removals, banned ceremonies, and residential schools, as the first step.
• Follow community protocols. The team followed the guidance of the community's land-based educator, sought each Elder's consent, and had land-based educators review the findings. Their relationship with the community had been built over 14 years.
• Treat learners as knowledge holders. Act as a guide on a shared journey, not as someone filling empty minds.
• Teach relationships, not resources. Frame land, water, plants, and animals as relatives that people depend on, with humans as one part of creation.
• Learn on the land with Elders. Cultural camps let youth learn practical skills directly from Elders and land-based educators.
• Make room for language. Where communities invite it, weave Indigenous languages into environmental learning.
• Ask before sharing. Check with knowledge keepers what knowledge is sacred and how it may be shared.
• Seek land-based training. The community recommends practical, hands-on training for educators.