Introduction and context

This is an excerpt from my upcoming hopepunk (Mancuso, Reference Mancuso2021) novel, Inbetweenness, where I bridge eco-social justice narratives and environmental education through the lens of climate fiction. The work weaves together stories that challenge Western-centric paradigms (Turner et al., Reference Turner, Rogers, Kneebone, Ramirez, French, Sawailau, Volavola, Baran, Matavesi, Newton, Luveniyali, Tela and Vakarewa2024) by foregrounding diverse voices and posthumanist perspectives (Badmington, Reference Badmington2003). Posthumanist thought invites a radical rethinking of anthropocentrism by foregrounding the agency, subjectivity, and communicative capacities of more-than-human beings, thereby challenging the boundaries of who gets to speak and who is spoken for (Barad, Reference Barad2003; Crinall & Stanger, Reference Crinall and Stanger2025; Lasczik & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Reference Lasczik and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles2022). In conversation with critical animal studies (Best et al., Reference Best, Nocella, Kahn, Gigliotti and Kemmerer2007) and decolonial frameworks (Sousa & Pessoa, Reference Sousa and Pessoa2019), posthumanist perspectives destabilise settler-colonial hierarchies of life and opens pathways for reciprocal, rather than extractive, modes of relationality with the Earth: “posthumanism shares a common interest with decolonial critique in that it directs our attention toward ‘that’ which is objectified, muted or rendered passive by a certain manifestation of anthropocentrism or human.” (Zembylas, Reference Zembylas2018, p. 254)

Central to this narrative is the tension between contemporary environmental crises and deeply rooted Indigenous knowledge systems (Snively & Williams, Reference Snively and Williams2016). Through characters like Joanne Penderwith, a graduate student at a local university who navigates the complexities of social justice, ecological connection, and decolonial praxis, readers are invited to reflect on the intricacies of allyship and positionality within activism over non-linear time frames.

The novel juxtaposes human-centric actions with the voices of other-than-human entities, embodying an integrated approach to ecological storytelling by using multi-species ethnography (Kirksey & Helmreich, Reference Kirksey and Helmreich2010). In this excerpt, the character SPÁ,EŦ (bear in SENĆOŦEN), a black bear mother, represents a future where large carnivores have access to their territories alongside human habitation. Readers are invited into a near-future that has engaged significantly with ecological and cultural restoration. The inclusion of other-than-human perspectives compels readers to reconsider the boundaries of consciousness and the relational obligations humans hold among other beings and ecosystems (de La Bellacasa, Reference de La Bellacasa2017; Wilson & Wilson, Reference Wilson and Wilson1998).

A pivotal segment details Joanne’s transformative experience at a salmon ceremony led by the W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations, a community that I have been working with as a researcher for nearly 15 years. This child-led celebratory ceremony of the first salmon run returning to the area includes special songs, dances, and community sharing that have been passed down since time immemorial illuminates the resilience of Indigenous practices that have withstood colonial impacts and highlights their potential to guide sustainable futures. The narrative underscores the symbiosis between cultural resurgence and ecological stewardship, advocating for the integration of Indigenous-led governance as essential to effective climate response (Vogel et al., Reference Vogel, Yumagulova, McBean and Charles Norris2022). To this end, I use SENĆOŦEN, the language of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, throughout the excerpt as a way to support language revitalisation, something that Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are encouraged to engage in (W̱SB, ). The language team at W̱SÁNEĆ School Board and Montler’s dictionary were highly influential in this work (Montler, Reference Montler2018). For pronunciation support please visit https://scalar.usc.edu/works/sencoten/senoen-dictionary.

This piece also critiques performative allyship through a reflection on academic spaces where well-meaning discussions sometimes centralise non-Indigenous guilt instead of amplifying Indigenous agency (Daigle, Reference Daigle2019). Joanne’s journey embodies the struggle of navigating these complexities, urging educators and scholars to pursue authentic, reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities (Gladue & Poitras Pratt, Reference Gladue and Poitras Pratt2024).

By employing hopepunk as a method, excerpts of this work can serve as a pedagogical tool that shifts discourse from dystopian defeatism to one of hopeful imagination through eco-social-justice orientations (Fettes & Blenkinsop, Reference Fettes and Blenkinsop2023). This work proposes that recentring narratives on relational accountability, respect for Indigenous knowledge, and the decentring of Western scientific norms can catalyse more inclusive and hopeful approaches to environmental education and climate action.

This fiction-based research is tied completely to my work with communities in and around the Salish Sea. It is in line with arts-based approaches to social sciences as described by Patricia Leavy (Reference Leavy2013), Fiction as research practice: short stories, novellas, and novels. On writing this excerpt, and the longer novel, I am noticing I am actively steering away from doomism and despair, as best I can. It is not that hopepunk must paint a cheerful and unfounded optimistic future. This orientation resonates with queer death studies, which resists normative narratives of loss and instead explores death, grief, and endings as spaces for alternative worldmaking (Radomska et al., Reference Radomska, Mehrabi and Lykke2020). In this way, the work unsettles dominant scripts of despair, aligning with speculative and hopeful modes of imagining otherwise (Eliott & Olver, Reference Eliott and Olver2009). The overall vision of the future may still be gritty but it can also be one full of thriving human and non-human communities (Kelsey, Reference Kelsey2020). Hope, though, is a fracturing concept, one that must acknowledge its entwining with (neo)colonisation (Watego, Reference Watego2021). How might we adopt hope as a critical stance - a way of engaging with the world that challenges the negativity bias? With this question in mind, this novel is written in a disjointed style that encourages readers to explore the perspectives from different characters over time. Therefore, it might read differently than a hero’s journey or narrative arc. It could even feel uncomfortable at times to not know what is going on:

Joanne 2030

Joanne Penderwith found herself standing at the back of her car share, hatch open, staring at nothing. She was mildly aware of the damp cloth of her grocery bag as it clung to her wrist. She was thinking about the book she was reading, where the main character was boiling twigs and leaves for sustenance. It was a not-so-subtle dystopian climate fiction with hints of a massive disaster that rendered all mega-agricultural systems dead. It put the human race into a perilous spin of self-preserving violence.

The chapter she started reading last night hinted at the next phase of the storyline: bands of people traversing the world in murderous nomadic groups and eating the bark off of trees.

Not for the first time, Joanne was experiencing a sense of time travel. Not in The Outlander sort of way. Rather, the experience of non-conformity within a 24-hour period. The bleak fictional future in her book felt entirely juxtaposed to the feast she had experienced this afternoon with the tribal school just down the road. She had witnessed ceremony, language, and joy within the younger community. It was the salmon ceremony, led by the young people and celebrating the return of the chinook salmon run this year. Certain dances, protocol, and feasting must occur before more salmon are harvested within this moon WEXES (moon of the frog). This ceremony, and this salmon run has been going on since time immemorial. Passing on the ceremony from adult to child, even during times of residential schools, has helped the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples connect to their culture and human and other-than-human relations.

As she entered the big house, a recently built great hall designed to bring the community together to practise ceremonies such as this, she looked up at the yellow cedar walls, the welcome figures with their arms extended. She let her eyes scan around the massive room, as big as a large gym, but far more inviting. There were the 13 moons of the year presented on the walls as carvings. Each moon represents seasons for cultural and ceremonial activities, indicators of which plants and animals are to be harvested.

Each strip of cedar used for carvings, benches, and wall coverings had been carefully selected, harvested, and treated with respect as this space was built. Even the fire in the middle was real. Through the light haze in the air, Joanne could see many families she knew from the school. Many of them were laughing, clutching drums to their fronts, drum skin towards their heart to warm them up. Many were also supporting the children with their last-minute regalia changes. Each child had hundreds of tiny cedar paddles hanging off of their black, red, and white clothing. Details of ermine fur, copper, and red ribbons were apparent. Joanne also loved seeing the recent integration of rainbows into the regalia, something to celebrate two-spirited individuals in the room.

To get to the point of (re)building not only the big house, but also the community pride, the knowledge, and the relationships to the land, countless legal cases challenged the early James Douglas Treaty. These cases tipped the balance of self-governance and self-determination, so that their communities operated on W̱SÁNEĆ SḰÁLS (values) as the primary governing principles. The SḰÁLS helped centre Indigenous Knowledge and First Nations governments as the primary systems to support the Land, the Sea, and the peoples in their territories. Of course, the colonial governments were gaining something in this process too. Recent challenges of rising waters, forest fires, and costs for constant maintenance of park and private land had left the BC and Canadian Governments with an overwhelming stewardship problem. Yet, the capacity of the W̱SÁNEĆ Nations, of which there are four, had risen to a level where the colonial government was not relied on anymore.

Joanne had left the ceremony feeling hopeful. It was a funny feeling, hope. It left an unfamiliar taste in her mouth, one of indulgent guilt. How can she be hopeful in this time still so fraught with despair? She was also not entirely sure why she felt hope since it wasn’t her own community, but she was excited to witness a community that was figuring out its own identity in the face of the catastrophes and crises that she knows are real.

Joanne also realised she was staring into space. Perhaps this was a classic affect of a struggling academic, to be caught up in her head; she forgot what she was doing. She glanced down at her grocery bag, a grubby reusable cloth vessel full of cartons of chai tea mix, bananas from Ecuador, granola from Belgium, organic berries from California greenhouses, and milk from who-knows-how-many thousands of cows. Not for the first time, she thought:

She picked up another bag that contained a heavy jar of canned salmon, a gift from Elder Max, one of the Elders where Joanne worked. During the feast, Max had grabbed Joanne’s wrist as she went around the group thanking them for inviting her to the ceremony. It was a fortuitous day because earlier that day the first W̱SÁNEĆ University courses were being offered in the community.

Max’s twinkly-pierce-through-your-soul eyes were in full force, as well as her incredibly strong, knobbly hands. One of Max’s hands was holding onto Joanne’s wrist like it was a salmon about to squirm away, while the other hand was waggling a finger at her as if she had just been caught stealing berries. She was speaking in SENĆOŦEN (the language of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples) so fast that Joanne leaned forward as she tried to hear harder. Max eventually translated:

Joanne realised she was saying this loud enough for other Elders to hear. She quickly understood that this was about Elder Max broadcasting her trust in this white young woman amongst the group. Still some of the other Elders eyed her with distrust.

On the drive home, Joanne was stunned. She didn’t turn the radio on, which was unusual, because Joanne was one of those people who has the news on all the time. She wanted to stay in ÍY, ŚW̱ḰÁLEȻEN, that good feeling in her heart; she was beaming from ear to ear. At least for a little while. Halfway down the peninsula, her mind drifted back to one of her Vic-U professor’s recent discussion questions.

The discussion had been fraught. Joanne was the teaching assistant in this masters of Education class on social justice and environmental education while completing her PhD in settler-Indigenous relations. The class consisted of a diversity of students, though it didn’t take long to scratch the surface to find privilege under many of their positionalities. Especially the loud ones.

After some initial silence, an argument broke out, or at least the way that arguments happen between mostly white students. The passive aggressiveness and righteousness started with white guilt and then went to how enlightened everyone was - but in different ways. She got a chuckle out of one of the student’s comments:

It was a race to figure out who felt the greatest anguish and who had most atoned for their sins.

I used to play Indigenous wayfinders in my canoe on the lake and loved pretending to be Moana. Oh how I wanted to have magical powers to read the ripples in that little lake.
	Oh yeah, well, I built a tipi in my backyard and lived in it for two whole weeks while I stink-eyed my parents for not eating more local foods and not buying me a bow and arrow.
Ha! You think you two have guilt? My great-uncle worked as a priest in one of the residential schools. My family is inexorably linked to the cultural genocide of First Nations.
	I have been donating to the Friendship Centre since I was a teenager.
Yeah, but money doesn’t buy reparations! I convinced my grandma to give her urban property to the local First Nation.
	Isn’t that just money in the end? The Nation will likely flip it or develop it!
No it is Land. And that is what they want.
	They!? who are you talking about, the Hereditary Chiefs or the elected council?

Maybe this is what Joanne’s professor wanted in the first place? It was odd watching him stand awkwardly to the side as all this played out. Perhaps his question was misleading.

Joanne did a little stink eye of her own at the professor to try to convey her thoughts. Maybe this well-intentioned, greying white guy thought he was doing a good job of situating today’s discussion around action. However, he did it in a way that was totally unsafe for the two Indigenous graduate students in the class.

Joanne came back into the present. She shook her head as she looked down at the steering while she saw the smug greasy-haired professor in her mind’s eye.

There was no grin on her face anymore. Somehow, she had made it home and was on her street in one of the designated car-share spots.

Joanne gathered up the rest of her groceries in a heroic, one-trip-from-the-car effort and entered the fray of her home. Despite being a 35-year-old PhD student and administrator in the Office of Indigenous Research at Vic-U, Joanne lived with her mum and brother. Housing was still outrageously expensive in the city; the real-estate bubble still hadn’t burst. It was more like a blob now. And furthermore, she liked living with her family…sort of. She was trying to be more relationally accountable than just sharing a house. This concept was something that she had learned from working with Elder Max. It is important to look after our Elders, and those can be parents too.

Joanne’s hackles went up. She had been burned too many times when she poured out her heart to her mum only to receive negative, sceptical commentary in return.

Joanne could never quite say this thought out loud — it was more of a felt experience. Joanne’s relationship with her mum played right into her feelings of guilt. Sometimes she felt more connection to her work and her research than being at home.

Joanne 2035

Joanne felt terrible, understandably. Her mother had just died of pancreatic cancer after years of undiagnosed stomach pains and resistance to medical support. She remembered the phone call. She had been walking with a friend in a park that protected a very important spit in the Salish Sea. Her phone buzzed and sang a Bewick’s wren song in her pocket. It was odd that she was carrying her phone, but she had promised her wife that when she went on hikes she would bring it with her. She often would set the ringer to ‘off’ when walking, but not that day.

Joanne could hear her mum choke back a sob.

Joanne’s mother died 10 weeks later in hospice. She had not been going to the doctor often enough to receive detection. That was the trick with the new epigenetic diagnostics, you had to be tested often, and many people still couldn’t get access to a general practitioner.

The loss of her mother was devastating for Joanne. She had finally finished her PhD, and her mother died a few weeks later. What was supposed to be a celebratory time in her life, ended up being filled with grief and the complexities of settling estates and wills. Joanne’s brother wasn’t really around to help much after he had moved to Australia to work as a plumber. He had come back for the funeral but needed to get back to Brisbane to help build for the massive refugee influx there.

Joanne was feeling sad and conflicted, her mother, who had raised her to love life, be curious, be kind, and stand up for her values was now gone. Yet in those last number of years, her mum had drifted away from these values. She had become less interested with what Joanne was working on and more concerned with how much money Joanne was making. Her mum had also become obsessed with being online and this was taking the place of quality family time. Many of her friends and relatives had become sucked into their devices, and despite Joanne’s wife’s sympathy, she was feeling very alone.

Something changed for Joanne that day 5 years ago, when she had gone to the Salmon Ceremony. Over the years of being with her family, she noticed them being less and less connected. They were more attached to their phones, VR headsets, smart glasses, and implants. It was less about interacting with each other and the world around them and more about interaction as online personas.

Joanne started joking that they were all dividing from nature and from the world around them. Well, at first it was a joke. In the past number of years, research had shone a very bright light on the importance of disconnecting from devices. Device addiction was causing a lack of connection to tangible communities, leading to epidemics of depression and loneliness. Joanne was not as interested in listening to the news. She found herself joining up with friends and colleagues in digital detoxes, nature walks, and community-organised projects. News from the outside world did still filter in, of course, but she was able to limit its influence on her mood.

Joanne headed off for a walk up ȽÁU,WELṈEW̱, a sacred place for the W̱SÁNEĆ, the emerging people. Spring brought fireworks of flowers there, fawn lily, camas, spotted fairyslipper, rattlesnake plantain, sea blush, and sedum. Pinks, purples, mauves, and creamy tickles of light scattered across the landscape. Spring was a magical time in the Garry oak ecosystem. It was an important time to be alive, to see and be seen by the other-than-humans all around.

As Joanne rounded the bluffs, resplendent in liquorice ferns and sedum, she saw two women in the distance, off the path. They were bent over amidst the sea of purple camas flowers. Joanne knew from her research that they were marking the poisonous white death camas plants so that the bulb’s didn’t accidentally get harvested with the regular camas for the feast later in the season. The challenge is, the bulbs look the same, but luckily the flowers don’t. Marking the flowers in the Spring is an important job to do in preparation for the harvest.

Joanne recognised the two women from various functions in the Nation, but she didn’t know their names. Joanne decided to practise some of her SENĆOŦEN.

Joanne continued on the walk. She loved hearing the Pacific wren’s trill. It reminded her of those music devices from long ago, tapes, but played backwards. The walk had lulled her into nostalgia. She started thinking back to the early days of her PhD, and remembered her professor and his clumsy questioning. She remembered Elder Max, whom Joanne had maintained a good relationship with over the years and with whom she would often seek counsel. She remembered the pure thrill of seeing the community supporting each other starting a new University.

And yet, Joanne felt like she was still performing scholarally in many ways rather than being one to stand in solidarity. She felt like she was pulling the line for the larger institution so it could report on the number of Indigenous students it matriculated, the number of projects it had with local First Nations and Indigenous communities, and the number of research dollars pouring through the university.

What Joanne felt like she was missing was being on the Land and Sea. She, too, had become a disconnected one, but in a different way than her family. Despite intentionally getting outside in the evenings and weekends, much of her work was focused on supporting others to conduct research in collaboration with First Nations communities.

She knew something was wrong in heart. And her gut had been telling her for a while that it, too, had been hurting. She had seen a bunch of doctors about it over the years, unlike her mother, but most of them attributed her issues to stress.

One day, when Joanne was at work, she visited with Elder Max, who happened to be the Elder in Residence that day. Joanne told Max about her heart, about her mum, and about her worry about living a life in the office.

Max said:

Joanne’s attention came back to the moment on the trail. She stepped around a big old Garry oak, lost in thought about what she should do.

The next day Joanne requested a leave of absence from work. She had already trained some staff in her work at Vic-U. She felt confident in passing it on to a young, Indigenous, 2-spirited graduate student. They were from Treaty 6 Territory and had been slowly creating a community at Vic-U, but it was hard for them to be so far from home.

The next day, Joanne headed to Elder Max’s house, where she had been instructed to come with just a few belongings for the trip.

Elder Max then drove her to the new University. Joanne was already feeling better. She was on a good path. Elder Max and the bear had both helped her see that this was the right way to go.