As Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen began training for the upcoming Artemis II mission, there was one special thing on his mind — a patch he'll adorn during flight. Hansen will be the first Canadian to circle the moon when the mission launches in 2026, and he already knew where to pull an inspirational design from.

Hansen makes periodic visits to Turtle Lodge, a center for Indigenous education and knowledge in Sagkeeng First Nation (also known as Fort Alexander) in Manitoba, on the southern tip of Lake Winnipeg. Throughout the lodge is art, including that of Anishinaabe artist Henry Guimond; Guimond was the architect and head man in the construction of Turtle Lodge.

"He mentioned that he wanted to start working and creating this patch, that would have some representation of Indigenous peoples," recalled Dave "Sabe" Courchene III, who is today's leader of the Turtle Lodge, in an interview with Supercluster. "Definitely we can work that out," he recalled saying to Hansen; Guimond is Courchene's brother-in-law, who was "ecstatic" to participate.

Hansen and Guimond went back and forth several times on the patch design — a difficult endeavour given that much Indigenous knowledge can only be shared by certain people, in certain seasons, or in certain locations.

"The knowledge that's presented there… is what we call the seven sacred laws, or seven sacred teachings that are represented by animals," Courchene said. "Each of these animals carry and represent each teaching. The animals are a reminder of us to how connected we are to the land, and all of creation."

The participation by Indigenous teachers in Hansen's mission is far from token; Hansen has made several visits to Turtle Lodge even before he was named to the mission in April 2023. Just two months later, Courchene himself invited Hansen to the lodge for a four-day ceremony known as a vision quest, which requires participants to fast under supervision from Indigenous elders.

As the vision quest is highly personal, Hansen has said little about it publicly — but Courchene did explain the ceremony's significance more generally in a 2010 video on YouTube. Spending time on the land, "creates an opening" for participants to create a direction in their lives from a place of peace, he said. 

While Hansen's patch is not the first time a CSA astronaut had Indigenous elements on a mission emblem, the Artemis 2 patch represents the importance of what Hansen learned from his decade of work with Indigenous peoples. 

The patch includes many elements relevant to Hansen, some of which come from other aspects of his identity or of the space program. For example: a bow is meant to represent Artemis herself, the sister of Apollo as well as a Greek goddess with relations to hunting, nature and the moon. Hansen's decades of service in the Royal Canadian Air Force are symbolized by astronaut wings; he began as a cadet and is now a colonel, still an active duty member while being an astronaut.

The artwork is meant to show Artemis launching an arrow (and the astronaut crew) "around Grandmother Moon, who conveys the cycle of life," according to a CSA description. "It is said that she watches over the waters of Earth, regulates the tides and feeds life. The arrow launches from Turtle Island, which refers to the continent of North America in the creation stories of some Indigenous peoples."

Surrounding the patch are the seven sacred animals, which are intrinsically linked to the land upon which Turtle Lodge was built. The buffalo is meant to show respect; the eagle, love and the bear, courage. The bigfoot or giant — also Courchene's first name, Sabe, in the Ojibway language — is honesty. The final three animals are the beaver for wisdom, the wolf for humility, and the turtle for truth.

"I know Jeremy has really connected and related to that," Courchene said of the seven sacred animals. "He's said that he uses them almost like a guiding principle, on how to work and to prepare himself for his mission."

Hansen's work touches on other communities as well, particularly in the north of Canada; one example was participating in the opening of an educational space in 2018 at L'nu Sipuk Kina'Muokuom School in Sipekne'katik First Nation in Nova Scotia, according to a CBC News report at the time. 

Hansen is also among the Canadian and American astronauts who have visited the Kamestastin (or Mistastin) Lake meteorite impact structure in northern Labrador. The meteorite site is analogous to what astronauts may excavate on the moon one day; for example, the crater has anorthosite, which is commonly found at the south pole of the moon where NASA may set up a lunar base for future Artemis missions.

Geology expeditions there included Innu Guardians, or Indigenous experts who manage the local lands and waters; one with Hansen in 2023, for example, included guardians Hank Rich and David Nui. The Guardians shared "everything about the Innu nation — where they've come from, the structure of their society, what their values are as a people, and some of the challenges," said Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist at Western University in London, Ont. who led the expedition — and who often trains CSA and NASA astronauts alike at craters.

Their stories included discussions of the effects of colonization, Osinski said; the conversations included research, for example shown in a 2016 peer-reviewed paper from the American Journal of Public Health, finding that Innu and Inuit communities in Labrador had a disproportionate rate of suicide to their neighbours. 

Addressing the causes are complex, the paper acknowledges; the literature consulted urges changes to "structural inequities" like poverty, and a focus on community-wide change rather than on individuals, that must be "rooted in culturally specific knowledge." Another issue is that several Indigenous communities in Labrador were told to relocate in the mid-20th century. 

A later government-funded relocation of the Mushuau Innu from Davis Inlet to Natuashish in 2002-03, however, included Indigenous consultation and autonomy in choosing the location in which they would resettle, according to a 2006 paper in Acadiensis by Mount Allison University.

Canada's past decade of Indigenous relations has been overseen by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The independent commission was founded in 2007 in the wake of a class-action settlement concerning residential schools in Canada. TRC received millions of dollars in financial support from public coffers, and spent eight years creating a record of residential school ills including abuse, deaths and language loss. The commission also released a six-volume report in 2015 that included 94 "calls to action" to facilitate reconciliation.

How well the government did in meeting these calls to action is up for debate, but what is certain is there are different perspectives to consider. For example: Hilding Neilson, a Mi'kmaw person from the Qalipu First Nation of Ktaqmkuk Newfoundland and Labrador, is a stellar astrophysicist and assistant professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland. 

In 2021, he co-authored a paper in response to a CSA consultation concerning its future space exploration activities. For example, there is a difficulty in exploring the moon and Mars in a way respectful to the needs of Indigenous peoples. 

"The importance of the moon and Mars — as part of the cultures and knowledge systems of Indigenous peoples from around the world, and that part for many peoples — is one of relation," the paper notes, paraphrasing one aspect of a book by Gregory Cajete, who is a humanities scholar and Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico.

"In the situation of relationality, the moon and Mars and other solar systems objects have their own rights to exist and be. Those rights are not necessarily incongruent with exploration and mining," the paper continues. "However, they do require a significant reconsideration of what constitutes a human right to interact with the moon and Mars."

Hansen himself has noted the divide with non-Indigenous people such as himself, each time he has been invited to work with an Indigenous nation. "Every time I am invited to participate in an Indigenous ceremony, I often feel a little bit uncomfortable showing up," Hansen said in a CSA video about the patch, and his Indigenous mentors. (He was not available for an interview due to his training schedule.) 

"I'm not sure if I really belong there, but every time I am overwhelmed by how welcomed I am and how loving they are," he continued. "Every time I've had the opportunity to sit with an Elder and listen to their wisdom, I've always appreciated the perspectives they've shared."

Canada's framework for moon exploration coexists under the NASA-led Artemis Accords framework, which extend the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 into a "non-binding set of principles" for civil space exploration, according to the U.S. Department of State. Canada was one of the first signatories to the accords in 2020; simply put, they act as both a tool of space policy as well as an instrument by which some signatories make contributions to moon exploration.

Canada has several financial contributions related to the moon, but the largest and most relevant to Artemis may be Canadarm3. It's the third in a series of robotic arms that have been used on the space shuttle and then on the International Space Station. Canadarm3 is slated for use on NASA's Gateway space station; that said, negotiations are ongoing concerning Gateway's funding in fiscal 2026 after the White House zeroed out Gateway in its "skinny budget." 

Assuming all goes forward as planned, however, Canadarm3 is central to CSA participating in Artemis. The Toronto-area MDA Space, which manages all the previous generations of arms, received a contract worth nearly $1B CDN ($730,000 USD under current exchange rates) in 2024 to design, construct and test the arm. Funding for this project will allow Hansen to fly on Artemis 2 — as well as other CSA astronauts, on other Gateway missions. A lunar landing with a Canadian may even be possible one day, Hansen told me for another publication in 2023.

Hansen's training schedule is demanding, but he prioritizes his time at Turtle Lodge, quietly making visits that he only advertises – if at all – well after the visit has concluded. He takes what he learns very seriously: "The mentoring that I've received in The Turtle Lodge has certainly been one of those great examples of a group of people with an open heart, a loving heart, just adding deep and meaningful value to the Artemis campaigns," Hansen said in the CSA video.

Turtle Lodge's Courchene emphasized that his community is very much seen as a partner on the mission – just like NASA, the Canadian Forces or any other entity with which Hansen has contact. The mission patch was a moment for them to come into the spotlight, but it is built on years of relationship-building with Hansen.

"Jeremy's intentions was almost like to bring the spotlight, to look to those values and those teachings and the knowledge that we have to offer," Courchene said of the patch work. He acknowledged things have not always been that way with his community, but his grandfather – a political leader in his era – said "you always have to be open and willing to work with other groups."

For Turtle Lodge, he continued, the mission patch is an example of how the Sagkeeng First Nation can work with the Canadian government on a project of value. Courchene noted the community will stand by to help with other space projects for CSA:  "We will be more than willing to help in any which way we can."

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Elizabeth Howell is a Canadian space journalist; while she has a few generations of ancestry in Canada, her family is of European descent. She produced this article from what is now called Ottawa, on unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.