Professor Valentine Cadieux is Director of Environmental Studies and Director of Sustainability at Hamline University in St Paul, Minnesota. She studies collaborative knowledge practices related to food, agriculture, and land in the context of settler society cultures in Canada, the United States, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Talking points.
Incentivised to explore the woods behind my house.
How to colloboratively define rural environments
Imagination of wilderness
People describing themselves as “rural people at heart” but don’t know any farmers.
Questions around what keeps people in the city when they’re living in rural areas?
Say your objectives out loud – in time you can hear them
Embedding sustainability across the curriculum
Validating what people are doing already.
Pieces of sustainability that dwarf the carpooling. Social justice, transformative change.
Sustainability has been “owned” by the environment, but more and more people are realising that it’s the connection to people – social justice, processes of change – that makes that special.
Institutions of higher learning promote value sets that are more consumerist than they intended. So we have to teach them (students) what is excessive.
Making food access and food liberty a part of being educated.
Students are so anxious about the future of the world. We’ve seen a huge reduction in scare tactics – they’re scared already, we have to present positivity as a message.
Permission to do the things you find pleasure and joy in.
A course: Planetary Home Care Manual.
How do you contribute as much as you take in a collaboration?
Definition: Conditions under which all can thrive
Activist: Social relationships are core – without them the technical won’t work.
Motivation: A surprisingly cheerful reaction to adversity.
Challenge: Not getting boxed in to recycling. Although that is a springboard to energy conversations.
Advice: Work with people who are joyful and find joy in the work. Be joyful and creative.