Storytelling and good relations: Indigenous youth capabilities in climate futures

Abstract

How can we support young citizens facing chaotic climate futures? This question is urgent, particularly for Indigenous communities who face disproportionate risks and impacts of climate change. For the past three decades, climate-related education has focused largely on the acquisition of scientific knowledge in instrumental ways, while encouraging individual behaviour change. This approach centres the problem rather than human capabilities to generate solutions, which is especially misaligned with the increasing practice and significance of Indigenous communities’ regenerating self-determining capabilities. This article reports on a pilot study that uses intergenerational storytelling methods or pūrākau to support leadership capabilities among Indigenous Māori and Pacific young people aged 10 to 14 years in communities at high risk of flooding in Ōtautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand. The study showed how storytelling locates and scaffolds Indigenous young people into positions of individual and collective responsibility for grappling with “wicked problems” such as climate and injustice and climate-related challenges as part of the future they will inherit and shape within a broader intergenerational journey of resilience and reclamation.