Visualizing Climate Change: The National Indigenous Climate Compass (NICC) Workshop 

Iliana Loupessis developed and delivered a 2-day workshop with 40 Indigenous youth from across Canada in collaboration with IndigenousTech.ai. The workshop touched upon climate change impacts and enhancing participant’s skills for gathering and mobilizing new and existing knowledge, from global, local and Indigenous perspectives for climate change adaptation. 

This 2-day workshop was guided by open discussion and collaboration with the Indigenous youth, focusing on increasing participants’ individual and team skills to ultimately help serve their communities. Climate adaptation tools and their relevance to build community resilience were topics of discussion. Concerns regarding the changing climate, loss of traditional practices and food insecurity were recurring themes during the workshop. Nascent project such as The National Indigenous Compass (NICC) were presented as risk assessment tools for information dissemination around climate change. 

Some of the workshop’s guiding questions: 
How can we help build community resilience for adaption to a changing climate? 
How can we bridge the gap between different knowledge systems (scientific knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge) for effective climate solutions? 
How can communities utilize adaptation tools for effective information dissemination on climate change? 
How can adaptation tools be adapted to be more relevant and accessible to specific community needs?