Set against a context of Indigenous health disparities, climate turmoil, and unpredictability of human-ecological systems, this article asks the question of how transformative sustainability education (TSE) with its increasing emphasis on Indigenous knowledge and ways of being can be effectively and ethically applied in colonized modern nation-states? In doing so, it makes the necessary links between the interconnected goals of addressing underlying determinants of Indigenous health and supporting the resurgence of Indigenous knowledges and ways of being toward ensuring planetary well-being more generally. As a means of negotiating this critical interface, three pedagogical capabilities of TSE (Scaling DEEP, Scaling OUT, and Scaling UP) are briefly outlined. Having laid this theoretical groundwork, this article (Part 1) focuses primarily on the role of the transformative sustainability educator in Scaling DEEP (effecting cultural and relational transformation from a de-colonial perspective) as a necessary precursor to the interrelated domains of Scaling OUT and UP (programming and policy change).