DRAMATIC REPORTS AND IMAGES of wildfires, evacuations, record summer temperatures, atmospheric rivers, storms, and flooding—such extreme events have become all too common for many regions around the world. Yet even as it becomes more apparent globally how climate change impacts lands, waters and human infrastructure, for Indigenous communities, its associated extremes often layer onto existing challenges with settler colonialism and socio-technical institutions and systems.
The Gathering
A special gathering of Indigenous storytellers working to document and depict how Indigenous peoples contend with climate change, Beyond Fires & Floods (BFF): Indigenous Narratives in an Era of Extremes brought together over three-dozen journalists, experts, and storytellers—drawn mostly from North America and the greater Pacific region—for a series of discussions animated by three core questions:
- What would it mean for our storytelling were we to approach climate change not so much as a problem, but as a symptom?
- How do Indigenous narratives of climate change intervene, disrupt, and/or heal?
- How can Indigenous imaginaries/narratives help ready us for what’s coming, and help us navigate it once it’s here?
Co-convened by Candis Callison and Rick Harp, BFF took place over three days last October at the UBC-Vancouver campus on the unceded territory of the Musqueam Nation. Together, our conversations generated greater understanding and further articulations of what climate change means on Indigenous terms, surfacing new ideas and approaches to covering and contextualizing events. Offering best practices for storying with knowledges rooted in the needs and priorities of Indigenous communities, BFF showcased the power of these narratives to inform and assess actions and policies related to climate change.
The Podcast
With all three days’ insightful interactions recorded on site, we have begun to share them as part of a free, special MEDIA INDIGENA podcast series, to be released over the coming weeks and months:
⛭ BFF PART 0
MI 365 // An overview of BFF’s origins, contents, and objectives
• SYNOPSIS
• LISTEN
⛭ BFF PART 1
MI 366 // The formal kick-off to our extended series starts with a panel of veteran Indigenous journalists at MOA at UBC
• SYNOPSIS
• LISTEN
⛭ BFF PART 2
MI 367 // The back half of our live MOA panel, the only public portion of BFF
• SYNOPSIS
• LISTEN
⛭ BFF PART 3
MI 368 // ‘Storytellers Without Borders,’ the first of our second day’s sessions, where we discuss how our narrative lens(es) on climate change must be commensurate with the scale of global forces driving it
• SYNOPSIS
• LISTEN
⛭ BFF PART 4
MI 369 // The back half of ‘Storytellers Without Borders,’ the lead-off to BFF‘s second day
• SYNOPSIS
• LISTEN
⛭ BFF PART 5
MI 370 // Coming soon!
Sponsors & Supporters
BFF was made possible through the support of grants from fellowship funding through the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation (with whom Candis was a Fellow in 2019–2021), and the Global Journalism Innovation Lab at UBC (where Candis is a co-investigator, and Rick a partner/collaborator). Their generous funding and support enabled us to fund participants’ travel, accommodations, meals and honoraria. We’re also grateful for the tremendous in-kind contributions of the UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and the Museum of Anthropology at UBC.
We’re also thankful for the enduring financial support over the past decade-plus of our patrons on Patreon, along with the many other listeners who’ve invested their resources into our work. It’s they who got us to the point where a dream series like BFF was even thinkable.
