Abstract Body

The British Columbia Institute of Technology adopted an Indigenous Vision in 2019 and a Sustainability Vision in 2020. Both visions advance social justice. The Indigenous Vision provides a framework for action and accountability in building awareness and understanding around Truth, Reconciliation, Indigenization, the legacy of colonization, and the contemporary reality of Canada and Indigenous peoples. The Sustainability Vision aims to enable people to lead socially just lives within ecological limits while building a contemporary understanding about how inequitable access to resources perpetuates unsustainable outcomes, including climate change.

Efforts are now underway to share, learn, collaborate, and build a culture of understanding that brings the Indigenous and Sustainability visions and their core issues together to make their connections clear. Engaging faculty, students, and staff on a shared journey of learning and actions for implementing the Visions ensures the ongoing promotion of social justice as a unifying element in a ‘Just Transition’ towards a sustainable future.

In this presentation, participants will learn about the content of BCIT’s Indigenous and Sustainability visions, and how the foundation of ecologically healthy cities must incorporate both an Indigenous lens and a Sustainability lens. We will demonstrate the social and physical system interconnections of reconciliation and sustainability to ecologically healthy cities. The path to a sustainable and equitable future must include all voices and be rooted in systems and structures that are reflective of all peoples and cultures. The status quo is inequitable and therefore unsustainable and a comprehensive, inclusive and wholistic world view is required for ecologically healthy cities. The foundation of an ecologically healthy city must be grounded in the history of place with a vision for the next seven generations.