Ranjan DattaMount Royal University | MT Royal · Department of Humanities
Ranjan Datta
PhD
Happy to be a collaborator in community disaster, climate justice, antiracist & decolonial community-based research
About
94
Publications
31,196
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520
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Dr. Ranjan Datta is Canada Research Chair in Community Disaster Research at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada. His research interests include community disaster research, decolonial climate change research, anti-racist theory and practice in climate change, community-based environmental sustainabilities, environmental justice, environmental risks and health well-being, food land-water rights in the Canadian Arctic, and cross-cultural research Methodology.
Additional affiliations
June 2020 - present
June 2018 - November 2020
Education
September 2010 - July 2015
January 2008 - December 2009
January 2000 - December 2001
Publications
Publications (94)
How does one decolonize and reclaim the meanings of research and researcher, particularly in the context of Western research? Indigenous communities have long experienced oppression by Western researchers. Is it possible to build a collaborative research knowledge that is culturally appropriate, respectful, honoring, and careful of the Indigenous c...
This paper seeks to explore the relational participatory action research (PAR) frameworks that have been developed to allow non-Indigenous researchers, along with Indigenous co-researcher participants, to learn and honour Indigenous stories. Specifically, in the context of PAR research in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, we outline: (a) po...
What may be achieved through taking up the complex exploration of nature, land, and sustainability is a growing field of inquiry in both science and social science, particularly for those who are interested in the local environment. Meanings of nature, land, and sustainability have been either misunderstood or misrepresented within disciplinary bou...
This auto-ethnographic article explores how land-based education
might challenge western environmental science education (ESE) in an
Indigenous community. This learning experience was developed from two
perspectives: first, land-based educational stories from Dene First Nation
community Elders, knowledge holders, teachers, and students; and second,...
Using traditional Western research methods to explore Indigenous perspectives has often been felt by the Indigenous people themselves to be inappropriate and ineffective in gathering information and promoting discussion. On the contrary, using traditional storytelling as a research method links Indigenous worldviews, shaping the approach of the res...
Despite its obvious significance, a land-based approach remains a neglected environmental science education (ESE) area. Following decolonial land-based learning as researcher responsibility, this decolonial auto-ethnography focuses on learning experiences:1) why and how are Indigenous land-based learning an essential research method in ESE?; 2) wha...
Even though autoethnography’s intent is to provide scholarly space to the lived experiences of the underrepresented, oppressed, and marginalized, academic publishing within this tradition remains limited to the white majority group in North America. However, decolonizing autoethnography illustrates the form that emerges when the colonial and postco...
Uses of feminist autoethnography as research methodology and methods started in the late 1980s, early 1990s, particularly in feminist sociology.
The inventor of the term “action research,” social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1946, 1952), described action research as proceeding in a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of planning, acting, observing, and evaluating the result of the action. Lewin’s deliberate overlapping of action and reflection was designed to allow changes in plans for a...
This book examines how current energy and water management processes affect Indigenous communities in North America, with a specific focus on Canada.
Currently, there is no known Indigenous community-led strategic environmental assessment (ICSEA) tool for developing community-led solutions for pipeline leak management and energy resiliency. To fil...
Cross-cultural community gardening as an Indigenist methodology: a learning ceremonial journey from a colour settler perspective.
For centuries, Indigenous Elders and Knowledge-keepers (IEKK) and their land-based stories have played a vital role in environmental sustainability. Following the Indigenist relational theoretical framework, in this article, I honor and respect IEKK as scientists for their community and their traditional land-based stories as scientific knowledge f...
This paper examines Indigenous perspectives on energy sustainabilities. We as Indigenous Elders and non-Indigenous scholars collectively explore how pipeline leaks that cost several Indigenous communities of the Treaty 6 region (known as western Canada). While the pipeline project has brought income to some, and wealth to the few, its impact on the...
Indigenous communities in Canada are at high risk of suffering damage from, and disproportionately impacted by pipeline spills. However, historically their opposition to pipeline development has largely been unsuccessful. Based on socio-legal applied research including a legal analysis, as well as twenty interviews with Indigenous knowledge keepers...
The COVID-19 pandemic, like a natural disaster, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant effect on the vulnerable portion of society, particularly on Indigenous and visible minority immigrants in Canada. While Indigenous and visible minority people
are very diverse and experienced the impact of Covid-19 very differently, both groups have a signi...
Decolonizing the Meanings of Research: A Lifelong Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning Journey
An Introduction to Indigenist Community-Based Participatory Action Research
Traditional Storytelling: An Effective Indigenous Methodology & Implications for Research
This project is a community-led collaboration between an interdisciplinary research team (including Indigenous and visible minority academics, health professionals and students working in health, and community disaster researchers) and First Nation leadership and community members. The project addresses two critical issues that affect Indigenous, v...
While there are many studies about the environmental impacts of climate change, the role of cross-cultural children and their activities for climate change solutions has been a lesser focus of inquiry on climate change resiliency research. This paper discusses our (father and daughter) collaborative conversation, Indigenous Elders land-based teachi...
Land-based learning is an integral part of environmental education, particularly for cross-cultural climate change resilience. It typically uses a cross-cultural and environmentally focused approach to education by recognizing the deep physical, mental, and spiritual connection to the land. Land-based environmental education provides the opportunit...
Indigenous trans-systemic approach is a lifelong unlearning and relearning process, with no endpoint. Indigenous peoples have long called for decolonizing minds so as to support self-determination, challenge colonial practices, and value Indigenous cultural identity and pride in being Indigenous peoples. Indigenous trans-systemic approach is also a...
The past several decades have been marked by an increasing occurrence of climate events worldwide, and consequentially, there has been growing study of the health impacts in exposed populations. While a plethora of studies have investigated the impact of climate change on health or migration, there is a smaller body of literature where these three...
The past several decades have been marked by an increasing occurrence of climate events worldwide, and consequentially, there has been growing study of the health impacts in exposed populations. While a plethora of studies have investigated the impact of climate change on health or migration, there is a smaller body of literature where these three...
Land-based learning is an integral part of environmental education, particularly for cross-cultural climate change resilience. It typically uses a cross-cultures and environmentally focused approach to education by first recognizing the deep physical, mental, and spiritual connection to the land.
This research focuses on how land-based environment...
This chapter engages with and widens Lorraine Code’s ecological thinking epistemological approach by using an Indigenous relational framework. It offers a bridge between Indigenous and Western-situated relational ways of knowing and doing environmental sustainability.
Food insecurity among Indigenous peoples of northern Canada is a significant public health challenge. To address this challenge, this paper is responding to community-led food sovereignty in Inuit communities in Canada. Drawing from a decolonial auto-ethnography research framework, I shared my learning experience regarding why the current food syst...
International law establishes who has rights to self-determination and outlines the rights of Indigenous people through the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Many countries who are United Nations members, such as those of our case studies, have not made changes to their laws to implement UNDRIP. This affe...
This chapter is responding to food security in Indigenous communities in Canada. Using an autoethnography research framework, Indigenous meaning was explored in view of community-based food security and why it became a challenging issue for many northern Indigenous communities. The ways of Indigenous knowledge have much to offer in support of resil...
For me, the meanings of research are relational accountabilities to reshape, rethink, relearn from, with, to, and by the communities. Research is not an event for me, but a lifelong learning, unlearn, and relearning ceremonies. Once you are reading my work, you are also becoming relationality responsible to you, your work, your research communities...
Indigenous people are overrepresented in the justice systems in both Alaska and Canada, especially when looking at incarceration rates (Alaska Department of Corrections, 2018; Canada Department of Justice Research and Statistics Division, 2019). Mainstream justice systems are focusing on punitive measures that do not reflect Indigenous Knowledge an...
The COVID-19 pandemic poses serious challenges to many vulnerable communities, particularly Indigenous peoples, new immigrants, and refugees in Canada and throughout the world. Some of these vulnerable communities experience poor access to mental and physical healthcare, food insecurity, or lack of access to essential services and other key prevent...
This book addresses the ethical and practical issues at stake in the reconciliation of Indigenous and non-indigenous communities.
An increasing number of researchers, educators, and social and environmental activists are eager to find ways to effectively support ongoing attempts to recognize, integrate and promote Indigenous perspectives and comm...
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a significant effect on the vulnerable portion of society, particularly on Indigenous and visible minority immigrants. We, as a minority family from Bangladesh who are on Indigenous land in Saskatchewan Canada, explore family-based pandemic resiliency, mainly focusing on Indigenous notions of resistance and reconne...
book, Reconciliation in Practice: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, is a compilation of essays, personal reflection and poetry written by immigrants, refugees and others. This compilation explores themes like building respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples, respecting Indigenous treaties, learning the roles of colonized education processes, a...
Many Indigenous communities, the original inhabitants of Northern Canada, have a rich history of a sustainable food source. However, climate change and ongoing settler colonization became serious threats to many Northern Indigenous communities’ traditional food security. Many Northern Indigenous people in Canada, notably the Inuit, Inuktitut, and C...
What does self-isolation mean when people live in one of the non-visible minority immigrant communities? What does social distancing mean when people live in poverty and do not have food? What are the cultural and social impacts on a nonvisible family during the COVID-19 pandemic? How can Indigenous land-based stories be beneficial for building imm...
“This book pulls together decades of invaluable field work to illuminate essential principles of practice for transforming “intractable problems” into challenges that together we can solve. This is crucial reading for all who feel compelled to lead, not because they have authority, but simply because they care deeply about their community and world...
He has a strong commitment to and passion for Indigenous environmental sustainability, environmental management, Indigenous land rights, antiracist theory and practice, decolonization, Indigenous reconciliation, and Indigenous research methodology and methods. Ranjan has developed a strong understanding of relational research frameworks from his 15...
Tense relationship between Indigenous people and immigrants inspires academics to bring groups together _ CBC News
The Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan transport their energy resources by pipeline to the eastern and western seaboards, and south into the United States. The used pipeline infrastructure reshapes the landscape and affects sustainability of the environment, traditional Indigenous livelihoods, and drinking water, particularly when spill...
Reconciliation: Cross-cultural Perspectives
It is undeniable that the global environmental crisis disproportionally affects individuals and communities, particularly Indigenous communities are among those most deeply affected. The history of Chittagong Hill Tracts Bangladesh colonialism is a history of the dispossession of Indigenous peoples of the lands that they and their ancestors have in...
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report designed to facilitate reconciliation between the Canadian State and Indigenous peoples. Among it’s recommendations was the reminder that “We are all Treaty People” - including immigrants and refugees living in Canada. The contributors to this volume, many of whom are themselves imm...
Speaking from my personal experience — whether from the education and activities, through research and a community garden, or from experiences of discrimination and marginalization — contributors share my stories of what reconciliation means in practice. My presentation focuses on building respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples, respectin...
Indigenous people, international students, immigrants, and refugee families are particularly vulnerable populations that experience a lack of sustainability for various reasons, including lack of belonging and networks, low income, mental stress, and discrimination. Following a relational participatory action research (PAR) process, this study expl...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reveal gaps in knowledge about energy industries, federal and provincial governments and indigenous communities’ energy management policies and practices, as well as to highlight areas requiring further research and knowledge development.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper used a scoping review frame...
This article presents an analysis of three uniquely situated garden-based research studies. As colleagues intrigued by the rich, intricate, learning dynamics playing out within the garden spaces, our collaboration explored the broader meaning and potential for garden-based programming. As we discussed the three garden studies, two themes emerged as...
Despite significant research in environmental sociology, environmental sustainability, and cultural geography, the following questions remain ambiguous for many Indigenous communities: What constitutes land-based research and what is its purpose? How are researcher and
participants situated in land-based research? Who has the power to select the re...
Amidst ongoing, contemporary colonialism, this chapter discusses the important of Indigenous perspectives on traditional land-water customs and practices in their sustainabilitties. The purpose of this chapter is to find ways to protect land-water, encourage the sharing of traditional knowledge when appropriate, enhance community education and assi...
This chapter discusses Indigenous sustainability perspectives by focusing on policy and practice. This chapter’s discussion is centred on four main topics in relation to the Laitu Khyeng Indigenous community’s natural resource management and sustainability: the meaning of land and water, the understanding and practices of management, the impact of...
This chapter answers some key challenges that face us today: What can Western science learn from traditional land-water management? How can we bridge between Western and Indigenous land-water management? Do we have within us the necessary wisdom and knowledge to make this happen? To answer these questions, this chapter focuses on exploring the mean...
This chapter examines how an Indigenous community understands sustainability and analyzes these understandings in relation to the literature on the politics of nature as well as Indigenous and postcolonial studies. Particular emphasis is given to Indigenous world views, spiritual and relational practices, culture, lands, and revitalization.
Interest in Indigenous environmental sustainability has grown steadily in years, reflecting traditional cultural perspectives about the environment and developing research priorities. This book is vehicle for publishing up-to-date research on meanings and implications of South Asia Indigenous sustainability which focus on relationality, traditional...
Despite significant research in environmental sociology, environmental sustainability, and cultural geography, the following questions remain ambiguous for many Indigenous communities: What constitutes land-based research and what is its purpose? How are researcher and participants situated in land-based research? Who has the power to select the re...
This chapter outlines my lifelong decolonizing ceremony as a form of reconciliation, which involves an ongoing unlearning and relearning research journey. My ceremony is significant for me as it makes me responsible for sharing my stories regarding how my transformation has changed me from a Western scientific researcher to a relational and partici...
This chapter situated itself within this context and took a significant step in exploring identity and justice in relation to immigrant responsibilities for meaningful implications of reconciliation. This chapter also an invitation for all of us to work together—as Indigenist, to build relational networks to the important work of inter-cultural bri...
This book explores the ways one Indigenous community, in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, has reinvented the meanings of sustainability using traditional knowledge
to blend traditional sentiment with large-scale dislocations within their own communities and international economy. This book includes up-to-date research on meanings and
impli...
This paper my lifelong ceremonial journey about my decolonizing methodologies processes. In this article, I shared my decolonizing stories regarding how I have transformed from a scientific researcher to a relational and participant-oriented researcher. To do this, I situated my lifelong research training as a ceremonial metaphor for my unlearning,...
Indigenous people, international students, immigrants, and refugee families are particularly vulnerable populations that experience lack of empowerment for various reasons including lack of belonging and networks, low income, mental stress, and discrimination. Following a relational participatory action research (PAR) project, this study explores t...
WE EXPLORE THE WAYS Indigenous identity and practice were framed in relation to the politics of environmental resource management.1 We have examined two main questions: (1) How do Indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh view environmental resource management in relation to their own knowledge and practices? (2) And to wh...
This chapter endeavors to illuminate why and how the community’s youth wish to protect traditional land and water management practices in order to achieve environmental sustainability. Indigenous people of the community invited us all to understand the root causes of past and present problems and to take an active role in the healing process. They...
The observance of human rights, including land-water and natural resource management rights, participation rights, and non-discrimination rights, is critical to Indigenous environmental sustainability. Secure Indigenous land-water rights not only bring environmental benefits, they can also foster economic development (Corntassel, 2012; McGregor, ...
Interdisciplinary researchers and educators, as community members, creators of knowledge, and environmental activists and practitioners, have a responsibility to build a bridge between community practice, academic scholarship, and professional contributions aimed at establishing environmental sustainability. In this paper, I focus on an undervalued...
Community garden activities can play a significant role in bridging formal
and informal learning, particularly in urban children’s science and environmental
education. It promotes relational methods of learning, discussing, and practicing
that will integrate food security, social interactions, community development, environmental
activism, and cult...
This paper explores how to practice posthumanism in everyday life. This idea has increasingly come under scrutiny by posthumanist theorists, who are addressing fundamental ontological and epistemological questions in regard to defining an essential ‘human,' as well as the elastic boundary work between the human and nonhuman subject. Posthumanism is...
Rolf Jucker and Reiner Mathar (Eds), Springer, Zurich, Switzerland, Volume 6 (2015), 380 pages, $99.00 (paperback). ISBN: 978-3-319-09548-6. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-09549-3. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319095486
As scholars working both individually and collectively, we are interested in exploring what may be achieved through taking up the complex notion of culture in sustainability education research. In this article, we present a bricolage of research, drawing on empirical and theoretical sources that collectively establish the kind of capacity we see as...
Sustainability education policies are widely focused on modern technologies, green profits, and development projects in many Indigenous communities. However, there has been minimal attention given to critical areas such as: Indigenous world views, spiritual and relational practices, culture, lands, and revitalization. This imbalance, combined with...
Sustainability education policies are widely focused on modern technologies, green profits, and development projects in many Indigenous communities. However, there has been minimal attention given to critical areas such as: Indigenous world views, spiritual and relational practices, culture, lands, and revitalization. This imbalance, combined with...
L. Methta’s book, The Limits to Scarcity, provides an opportunity to the reader to understand
local and global crises and injustice through the contributions and experiences of
different activists, scholars, and researchers. This volume’s 14 papers by various international
authors together create powerful narratives of a politicised, naturalised an...
There has been a growing trend among the indigenous people of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh to migrate from their traditional occupations and take up new activities in the suburban and big cities. These changes have led to critical shifts in the social relations and institutions of the indigenous people.
Questions
Questions (66)
As earth quack happens, but disaster created by humans. Here is an example of how greedy companies violated the disaster code: https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826?fbclid=IwAR0LajzdJQjfViu3rKL_CUO0CJLj2f9GCy3LAR6awLQcPndbEzcW1Fvq5Sc.
So many lives... Many could be preventable
Interesting to read how non-humans can teach humans a stress-free life, including human-created stresses, pandemic and climate change stresses (anxiety and mental health stresses in recent years). In many aspects, humans and non-humans are alike (although humans may be worst beings than non-humans); we (humans) have many things to learn from them. https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/the-nature-of-things/why-rats-can-teach-us-a-lot-about-relieving-stress-1.6711679
As a climate change researchers are we hopeful Breakthrough in nuclear fusion energy announced (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63950962)? If yes, how long do we need to wait?
How long it will take to transform fossil fuels industries?
Projects
Projects (23)
This project aims to decolonize Community-Based Research methodologies from and within a community-engaged and community-led perspective. This project offers to understand the meanings of decolonial research within and from self-reflective learnings, responsibilities for decolonial research, anti-racist perspectives in research, and responsibilities to learn and practice community-engaged research.
Although many studies discuss community gardens, there is a significant lack of research on cross-cultural children’s activities in a community garden and climate change solutions (Author et al., 2022; Trott, 2020; Walker, 2021). There is also a lack of research on how cross-cultural children can take responsibility for climate change resilience through community garden activities. Moreover, there is limited information on how community garden activities can help cross-cultural children take responsibility for climate change resiliency. This study aims to fill these gaps by exploring how the cross-cultural children’s community garden helped shape children learning cross-cultural opportunities such as land-based learning, intergenerational learning, decolonial learning in response to climate change.
The COVID-19 pandemic, as a Natural Disaster, has had a significant
effect on the vulnerable portion of society, particularly on Indigenous
and visible minority immigrants in Canada. As a visible minority
immigrant family in Indigenous land in Treaty 6 territory, we explore
Indigenous land-based education (ILBE) from Indigenous Elders and
Knowledge-keeper’s land-based stories, traditional knowledge, resiliency, and practice. As a family, we have been learning and practicing ILBE to
develop resiliency during a natural disaster, such as during the COVID19 pandemic. This paper used a land-based decolonizing
autoethnography as a methodology for understanding wellness from an ILBE perspective. We discussed why ILBE matters for building resiliency, resistance, and self-determination within a family and community; how can it help others? We have seen how COVID-19 has created serious negative impacts on both mental and physical health. During the high climate change era, there are many pandemics yet to come. However, the ILBE can offer us many opportunities to build our resistance and resiliency through decolonizing our ways of knowing and doing.
