Redvers’ thesis focuses on the growing frequency of land-based practice (e.g. on the land youth programs) in Aboriginal settings, its potential for revitalization, wellbeing, and youth resilience, and the value of land-based practice for other activities such as research. She begins to address a gap in the literature regarding the development, implementation, and evaluation of land based practices.

Redvers’ work describes the health benefits and other positive outcomes that being on the land (and spending more time there) can have for all generations of people. As her work is framed, in part, as a response to high suicide rates in northern Canada, she has a particular emphasis on youth resilience. Redvers works with a land-based understanding that sees the land itself as healing. This has been traditionally known for a long time and only recently has been complemented by biomedical research. Not only does being on the land improve cultural, social, physical, and psychological wellbeing, it also promotes land stewardship, intergenerational transmission of knowledge, enhanced learning, capacity building, language transfer, and good training for non-Indigenous researchers.

From Abstract: "This thesis examines the cultural concept and role of the Land as healer in Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut, and the importance of facilitating modern Land-based programs and activities for integrated health, education, and environmental outcomes. It describes a yet largely undefined field of professional practice currently being negotiated on the ground in communities. This valid form of integrative practice, centered in Indigenous pedagogy and wisdom, recognizes that people are intimately interwoven and connected with their traditional lands, and that directly cultivating this fundamental relationship can shape and influence all areas of interaction with society, including our health and wellness. Research methods were framed by an Indigenous methodology of narrative experience. Eleven Land-based practitioners were interviewed, and their narratives speak to the recognition of Land practice as an important part of individual and community resilience in the face of rapid colonial change and its subsequent challenges."

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Redvers, Jennifer. Land-based Practice for Indigenous Health and Wellness in Yukon, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories.  Master’s Thesis, University of Calgary, 2016.