Elders Council Statement

Critical to AIR’s work of enabling social-ecological resilience through Indigenous resurgence and reconciliation is an inclusive vision of Eldership. This vision centres the realities and ecological leadership of Indigenous peoples, whilst drawing on and facilitating the qualities of Eldership and cultural heritages in other groups that are conducive to learning to live within the reciprocity of place in authentic and culturally grounded ways. We believe this vision honours our Indigenous Elders who are Traditional Knowledge holders and have maintained indigenous connection and guardianship of their ancestral lands and as such are at the forefront of Eldership, whilst also acknowledging the wisdom and skills of our Elders who are no longer Indigenous to place and working to revitalize Eldership within their own cultural groups. Approved by the AIR Board December 2018.

Dr. Liam Campbell Bio

Dr Liam Campbell is from Donegal and lives in the Sperrin Mountains. He is the Built and Cultural Heritage Officer with the Lough Neagh Partnership working with Queen’s University Belfast, the Dept for Communities and the five local councils managing the heritage programme. He has published and lectured widely on heritage and environmental issues especially on the Northwest. He wrote Twit Foyle and Swilly - A Heritage Guide (2014) and led the HLF / Foyle Civic Trust, Folyle Landscape Project which produced The Foyle Source Book - A Directory of the Heritage and Sources of Heritage Information for the Foyle Basin. Previously he worked as a producer in television for some twenty years before returning to academia. He holds degrees from NUI Maynooth, Queen’s University Belfast (M.Sc. Landscape Change and Management) and Ulster University. His Ph.D. thesis from UU was on the cultural and environmental history of the Foyle catchment. During 2018 the held the Basler Chair for Integration of the Arts and Sciences at East Tennessee State University where he is adjunct professor of Irish and Scottish Studies. He lectures regularly on landscape issues and has developed courses on Reading the Landscape. His book, Room for the River - Catchment, Heritage and Identity will be published in the autumn.

Nancy Turner Bio

Nancy Turner is an ethnobotanist, and Distinguished Professor Emerita, School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, Canada. She has worked with First Nations elders and cultural specialists in northwestern North America for over 50 years, helping to document, retain and promote their traditional knowledge of plants and environments, including Indigenous foods, materials and traditional medicines. Her two-volume book, Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge (July, 2014; McGill-Queen’s University Press), integrates her long term research. She has authored or co-authored/co-edited 30 other books, including: Plants of Haida Gwaii; The Earth’s Blanket; “Keeping it Living” (with Doug Deur); Saanich Ethnobotany (with Richard Hebda), and Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples, and over 150 book chapters and papers. She has received a number of awards for her work, including membership in Order of British Columbia (1999) and the Order of Canada (2009), honorary degrees from University of British Columbia, University of Northern British Columbia and Vancouver Island and Simon Fraser University.

Dr. Makere Stewart-Harawira

Waitaha Taiwhenua ki Waitaki iwi/tribe, Aotearoa New Zealand
Dr. Makere Stewart-Harawira is Professor, Indigenous, Environmental and Global Studies, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta. She is an enrolled member of the Waitaha Taiwhenua ki Waitaki tribe in Aotearoa New Zealand and has been actively engaged in issues related to global transformation, fresh-water governance and Indigenous knowledges and ethics for several decades.

Dr. Stewart-Harawira is an Expert Member on a number of Commissions for the International Union for the Conservation including the Commission on Ecosystem Management, joint Specialist Group on Indigenous Peoples, Customary & Environmental Laws and Human Rights and is a National Board Member for Keepers of the Water, Canada.

Makere’s engagement and research reflect her passion for and commitment to global transformation, climate change, freshwater protection and governance, multispecies justice and our co-habitation of planet earth. As global society struggles to transition to new modes of co-existence, the contributions of Indigenous communities and Indigenous traditional knowledge systems are critical to this process.

Her published work includes Troubled Waters: Maori Values and Ethics for Freshwater Management and New Zealand’s Fresh Water Crisis. WIREs Water, 2020; Resilient Systems, Resilient Communities, 2018; Returning the sacred: Indigenous ontologies in perilous times in Williams, Roberts & McIntosh, Radical Human Ecology: Intercultural and Indigenous Approaches, 2012; The New Imperial Order. Indigenous Responses to Globalization, 2005.

Youth Representatives