Hunting, healing & human-land relationships: A reflective inquiry into health and well-being explored through indigenous-informed hunting practices, land-relationships & ways of knowing

This research is based on the premise that strategies to address Indigenous well-being might well be best found within Indigenous teachings themselves. More specifically, it seeks to explore the question: How might human-land relationships, as developed through Indigenous-informed hunting practices and ways of knowing, facilitate health, healing, and well-being among North American Indigenous peoples? The Interdisciplinary nature of this research merges concepts, theories and ideas from First Nations Studies, Anthropology, Health Sciences and Health Geography disciplines. The thesis and accompanying website embrace land-engaged storying and an autoethnographic reflective exploration of health anchored in Indigenous-informed relationships with land, hunting practices and ways of knowing the world. The research project engages a land-privileging, anti-colonizing, methodological approach that is embedded in relationship driven, spiritually accepting, and emotionally felt Indigenous epistemological ideologies. As such, this inquiry is both explored and expressed through the lens of Indigenous-informed pedagogies of knowledge transition and dissemination.