Sustainability as Wild Policy: Mobile SDG Interventions and Land-informed Policy in Education

ABSTRACT

This paper engages narratives from Tess Lea’s (2020) book ‘Wild Policy’ for how they help consider the messy or ‘wild’ nature of global policy interventions on sustainability, including in its latest formation as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We do so alongside data from research on education in the territory of Nunavut, as well as informed by our experiences as settler and Cree university researchers concerned with place and land-informed education policy. Engaging with a methodological framing of policy ecology, the article considers both policy artifacts and ‘ambiences’ or materialities, and their interrelations. We examine how a Saskatchewan university’s draft SDG plan manifests aspects of pre-fabricated globally mobile ‘wild policy’, including in its gaps in land-informed Indigenous engagement. Instead, we suggest how more systemic and decolonizing approaches to land-informed education policy, as in development in Inuit-based higher education in Nunavut, can inform both future policy decision-making and policy research.

KEYWORDS:

• Education policy
• SDGs
• land-based education
• Indigenous education
• sustainability
• climate change
• higher education

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge Kirstin Scansen-Isbister for her ethical and dedicated work during her work with the project in Nunavut, including completing all the Nunavut-based interviews and focus groups drawn on in this article. The time and knowledge contributions of the administrators, educators, students, and community members participating in the study are also highly appreciated. Their contributions were included with their informed consent, and with ethics approval granted by the University of Saskatchewan and the government of Nunavut (license #0101416N-M). We are also indebted to the colleagues who provided ideas and feedback in relation to the paper including anonymous reviewers and other members of the SEPN research team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We recognize that, in some Indigenous communities or Nations, cultural protocols or practices related to their ancestors and the spirit world may make the metaphoric or conceptual use of terms such as ‘ghost’ or ‘haunting’ seem disrespectful. For example, co-author Alex Wilson, who is Cree, was taught that spirits are a form of energy, inseparable from her and her people’s genealogy, land, and place in the larger universe. In her home community, people are mindful about how, when or where they might talk about spirits or ghosts, and some talk about them only when they want to call them forward. We also understand that there are many reasons not to draw on the work of non-Indigenous authors (a group that includes Lea) about issues affecting Indigenous peoples, but do so here without hesitation because Lea’s (2020) Wild Policy was developed in collaboration with Indigenous people and includes, as a primary data source, her interviews with Indigenous people.

2 Since the time of writing, three new signature areas of research have been added: communities and sustainability, health and wellness, and quantum innovation (Usask, nd-c).

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant number 895-2011-1025).