Apt’sqi’gnn
Abstract
Abstract
Grounded in Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Doing and Two-Spirit Ways of Knowing and Being, this article explores how the climate crisis is hypothesized to impact the mental health of Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, Trans, and Gender Diverse (2SIQT+) Indigenous young people. Framing the climate crisis as an extension of colonization, land theft, and resource extractivism, this article critiques how Euro-Western biomedical traditions pathologize the climate crisis-related distress and suicidality experienced by 2SIQT+ Indigenous young people; instead, this article proposes that this distress is an embodied personal, spiritual, and collective experience. Climate-induced emergencies act as force-multipliers for existing colonial violence. In response, 2SIQT+ communities cultivate living ecological infrastructures of care built on mutual aid, chosen kinship, harm reduction, and self-determination. Ultimately, this article hypothesizes that addressing 2SIQT+ youth mental health distress requires shifting away from pathologization toward equitable resource allocation, data sovereignty, and non-carceral, land-centred community supports that restore social and ecological balances.
