On average, each Canadian discards approximately 37 kilograms of textile waste into landfills each year. Opening in Fall 2024, Sic Sox Circular is a textile recycling company that will offer a  recycling program for communities across Northeastern Ontario. By distributing collection bins in various locations and offering weekly pickups, Sic Sox Circular aims to make textile recycling accessible, convenient, and collaborative. They ensure that collected textiles – ranging anywhere from clothing in all conditions to gently used shoes and handbags – will be weighed, sorted, cut, and shredded back into cellulose fibers. Sic Sox Circular is working to further turn this cellulose fiber into an industry-approved blow-in insulation product called “Sic Sox Thermo.”   

To learn more, visit their website at www.sicsoxcircular.ca 

Using a unique ‘Train the Trainer’ Healing and Learning Circle model, Ayataway combines transformative healing Indigenous collective cultural practices with relationship support systems for ongoing deepening and widening of community engagement to dirsupt cycles of violence. Through Circles of Practice, relationship-building, and community collaboration, Ayataway aims to support and encourage the leadership of women, youth, and gender –diverse Indigenous community members. This teaching method is intentionally scalable, locally adaptable, and entirely Indigenous-created and led.  

To learn more, visit their website at: www.restoringcollective.ca. 

The Na’aabi Scale and Innovation Lab (NSAIL)’s innovative solution is low-cost, energy-efficient, "hot-pour" machinery that produces samples and full-sized products in compostable packaging for various  cosmetics, including balms, foundations, and lipsticks. The scalability and cost=effectiveness of this innovation aims to make hot-pour sampling accessible and affordable for small, local businesses, particularly those that are women- and Indigenous-led. 

To learn more, visit their website at https://satya.ca. 

Changing the Story - Mapping MMIWGS2+ in the Yukon  

This innovation will create a community-sourced Indigenous knowledge research database to map experiences of injustice and violence against Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people in the Yukon. This database will integrate Geographic Information Systems and traditional land use, incidences of violence, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit, Transgender, and Gender-Diverse+ (MMIWG2S+,) data and genealogy in a novel approach of community-sourcing and mapping data about violence in the region.  

Project Algae Bioreactor (PAB) is a solar-powered bioreactor which provides the ideal growing conditions for algae, which thereby sequesters carbon and produces algae that can be used for biofuel, among other things. Led by a gender-diverse group of Indigenous high school students, this innovation seeks to create a commercially viable, Indigenous-designed algae bioreactor that can be implemented in schools across Canada. The bioreactor creates the opportunity for high school youth to foster skills in leadership, entrepreneurship, and confidence building opportunities that result in growth for the individual and community.  The team also plans to engage with the communities, increasing visibility and leadership opportunities for gender-diverse Indigenous people, notably high school youth.  

Thematic areas: Land Story, Tech

Kisitoqsipn Nepisuna’tasik is a traveling indigenous initiative that delivers cultural healing through land-based learning and artistic exploration. With a community-informed curriculum designed around the 13-moon cycle by artists, knowledge keepers, elders and cultural practitioners, the initiative is strongly rooted in language learning and preservation. It seeks to build a sustainable model for  training, mentorship, and stewardship in artistic methods that are rooted in culture and support cultural preservation.  

To learn more, visit their website at: https://inspiringcommunities.ca/

Thematic areas: Land Story, Wellness

This innovation supports resurgence and healing for Métis Two-Spirit and LGBTQQIA+ community members. Mêtis Nation of BC's Ministry of Women and Gender Equity (MoWGE) will use an intersectional approach to elevate Métis women and 2SLGBTQQIA+ community members by creating resources, programming, and services that promote wellness, security, and safety. It is built on the recommendations of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community, MNBC’s 2SLGBTQQIA+ Advisory Committee, as well as the recommendations from the “It’s Time for Two-Spirit Reconciliation: a call for 2SLGBTQQIA+ Equity & Inclusion.” 

The concept for using established methods of traditional knowledge, best practices, and community connections as a foundation for Métis Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer healing, and resurgence is integral to revive ancestral knowledge and place in community that has been lost due to assimilation strategies and colonization. 

To learn more, visit their website at: www.mnbc.ca

Thematic area: Wellness

The Lake Winnipeg Environmental Monitoring Network aims to strengthen relationships among various Indigenous monitoring programs that work to build Indigenous-led environmental action movements and community resilience. As part of the Lake Winnipeg Environmental Monitoring Network, organizations will collaborate on lake-wide monitoring and share resources, information, and climate adaptation strategies. Their community-centred approach aims to build and maintain open communication and relationships to ensure the network’s success in promoting Indigenous Knowledge and sovereignty.   

To learn more, visit their website at www.lwic.org. 

Thematic areas: Wellness, Tech

NiGiNan Housing Ventures seeks to establish an Indigenous Centre of Excellence as a social enterprise, offering training to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups on leadership skills, particularly for women, with an approach for decolonizing leadership that will take away hierarchical relationships. NiGiNan integrates neyhiwak ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐊᐧᐠ natural law, land-based learnings, and ceremony into the ways of caring for Indigenous residents. Through the Indigenous Centre of Excellence will develop programs for Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups to support individuals who are the most difficult to house This innovation intends to share this knowledge in a caring way that protects its ancestral knowledge by working with non-Indigenous organizations to decolonize their ways of working with Indigenous people. 

Thematic areas: Land story, Wellness

IndigenEYEZ aims to increase community cohesion trainings and land-based camps that support frontline workers, emerging leaders, and youth in developing skills to drive collective change. Their facilitation method is community-driven and rooted in Indigenous principles and practices. IndigenEYEZ seeks to build their trainings into an ecosystem with micro-credentials and learning pathways in preparation for launching the IndigeRISE Institute.  

To learn more, visit their website at: https://indigeneyez.com/. 

Thematic area: Wellness

Hardy Giles Consulting, operating as ORIGIN, has developed and tested ImmersiveLink 7 (IL7), a customized VR training course designed to share the Seven Sacred Teachings from the Ojibwe nation, presented in both English and Ojibwe. Each teaching—Love, Honesty, Respect, Wisdom, Humility, Truth, and Courage—is associated with a specific animal. The VR experience guides users through various land-based environments, teaching them about these values and their animal connections. This innovation aims to advance economic reconciliation by connecting Indigenous youth and job seekers to cultural knowledge and meaningful career pathways. 

To learn more, visit their website at: https://immersivelink.ca/

Thematic areas: Tech, Wellness

sməq̓ ʷaʔ xeł, the Great Blue Heron Way, is the vision of scəẁaθən məsteyəxʷ (Tsawwassen First Nation) Elder xʷasteniya (Ruth Mary Adams) to reconnect the First Nations Communities of the Salish Sea and along the Stó:lō on new and existing pathways. This initiative brings together First Nations organizations and governments to build greenways with good transit access for safe everyday walking, cycling, and rolling needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, facilitate meaningful reconciliation for First Nations and their neighbours along a healing pathway, and advance  Indigenous-led cultural awareness  across BC and  Canada.

The Great Blue Heron Way joins multiple First Nations in traditional ways that were severed by modern roads and routes. It is a trail system that is uncovering the historic traditional pathways and waterways that has not been developed in Canada at a similar level. There is a revitalization of the memory of these ancestral routes while sharing the histories both culturally and traditionally.

To learn more, visit: https://trailsbc.ca/ 

Thematic areas: Land story, Wellness

Health Nexus, in collaboration with Elder Kerrie Moore (the creator of the Indigenous Relational Science framework) and Arlene Vandersloot (registered psychotherapist), aims to create a guidebook for Indigenous and non-Indigenous human services professionals on offering services to Indigenous clients. The guidebook is Elder Kerrie Moore’s translation of Brain Science for community, led by communities. This guidebook was created so that caretakers and their families can share the knowledge in an accessible and culturally relevant way. Through this program, training will also be offered to Indigenous communities and Elders who will be contributing stories relevant to their nations to support the guidebook. 

To learn more, visit their website at: https://healthnexus.ca/