ABSTRACT
A common truism is that communities that are contributing the least to carbon emissions are currently experiencing the most extreme impacts of climate change on a daily basis. This is especially the case for Indigenous communities. These communities have continued to pass on the knowledge that encourages acknowledgment of the relatedness between human communities and their environment that has allowed these communities to survive, despite the violence of colonialism for Indigenous ways of life and land relationships. This chapter will explore how Indigenous communities across three settings understand, and are responding to, climate change by drawing on religious lifeworlds: the Sikkim Himalayas, Hawai'i in the Pacific, and the Great Plains of North America. Local communities draw on longstanding relationships with the land and water to respond to climate change and the many impacts of climate change on sovereignty, and how this knowledge is a crucial resource for creating flexible and dynamic responses within and across communities and colonially imposed state lines.
