Indigenous peoples globally have high exposure to environmental change and are often considered an ''atrisk'' population, although there is growing evidence of their resilience. In this Perspective, we examine the common factors affecting this resilience by illustrating how the interconnected roles of place, agency, institutions, collective action, Indigenous knowledge, and learning help Indigenous peoples to cope and adapt to environmental change. Relationships with place are particularly important in that they provide a foundation for belief systems, identity, knowledge, and livelihood practices that underlie mechanisms through which environmental change is experienced, understood, resisted, and responded to. Many Indigenous peoples also face significant vulnerabilities, whereby place dislocation due to land dispossession, resettlement, and landscape fragmentation has challenged the persistence of Indigenous knowledge systems and undermined Indigenous institutions, compounded by the speed of environmental change. These vulnerabilities are closely linked to colonization, globalization, and development patterns, underlying the importance of tackling these pervasive structural challenges.
A systematic global stocktake of evidence on human adaptation to climate changeAssessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthesis of the resulting 1,682 articles presents a systematic and comprehensive global stocktake of implemented human adaptation to climate change. Documented adaptations were largely fragmented, local and incremental, with limited evidence of transformational adaptation and negligible evidence of risk reduction outcomes. We identify eight priorities for global adaptation research: assess the effectiveness of adaptation responses, enhance the understanding of limits to adaptation, enable individuals and civil society to adapt, include missing places, scholars and scholarship, understand private sector responses, improve methods for synthesizing different forms of evidence, assess the adaptation at different temperature thresholds, and improve the inclusion of timescale and the dynamics of responses.
This article outlines the methodological process of a transdisciplinary team of indigenous and nonindigenous individuals, who came together in early 2009 to develop a digital narrative method to engage a remote community in northern Labrador in a research project examining the linkages between climate change and physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being. Desiring to find a method that was locally appropriate and resonant with the narrative wisdom of the community, yet cognizant of the limitations of interview-based narrative research, our team sought to discover an indigenous method that united the digital media with storytelling. Using a case study that illustrates the usage of digital storytelling within an indigenous community, this article will share how digital storytelling can stand as a community-driven methodological Qualitative Research 13(2) 127 -147 Downloaded from 128 Qualitative Research 13 (2) strategy that addresses, and moves beyond, the limitations of narrative research and the issues of colonization of research and the Western analytic project. In so doing, this emerging method can preserve and promote indigenous oral wisdom, while engaging community members, developing capacities, and celebrating myriad stories, lived experiences, and lifeworlds.When I was a child growing up, we had lots of fun in the snow, dragging our sleds behind us, and finally getting to the top of our roof. It seemed like an eternity to get there. We would slide down off our roofs into deep snow. When we got tired of playing with our sleds, we would build huge snow tunnels. Our tunnels would be big enough to fit five or six of our friends in it. We would play for hours and hours at a time. I clearly remember when everyone in Rigolet used to put on the warmest winter clothes and put on our skates to go out on the cove to play hockey and figure skate. Them days was good. We had lots and lots of snow and ice to play with.
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