Canadian Mountain Network: Training Youth as Stewards for an Uncertain Future
The Canadian Mountain Network (CMN) was launched in January 2019 with the generous support of the Government of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) Program. This pan-Canadian research network supports the resilience and health of Canada’s mountain peoples and places.
Caribou on a snow patch in the Mealy Mountains National Park Reserve, Labrador. Photo: David Borsih.
CMN’s research framework is designed to provide coherence across the Network’s investments and maximize their impact. Guided by several years of consultations with diverse researchers and knowledge-users across the country, it sets the stage for Canada’s first formal mountain systems research agenda and will build on fourteen projects funded through CMN’s first call for proposals.
The CMN strongly advocates for bringing Indigenous knowledge and Western science together in research partnerships to inform and enhance decision-making. This strong emphasis is a first for the NCE program and distinguishes CMN from previous networks that have prioritized the academic sector and Western approaches to research. From the beginning, CMN has provided a third of its research funds to Indigenous-led research projects and additional support for projects that emphasize the value of braiding knowledge systems (known to some as “two-eyed seeing”). Our goal is to grow the percentage of funds allocated to Indigenous-led research to forty percent in the coming years.
As part of our initiative to serve mountain peoples and places, we are working to advance strategic partnerships that will leverage investments in Indigenous Guardians programs in mountain regions. We want to ensure that such programs include not just conservation enforcement and monitoring work, but also the capacity to lead community-based research to understand and adapt to the changes that Guardians see every day on the land and in the waters. We are especially focussed on supporting youth to build their research leadership skills and experience. This is an area where we hope the Government of Canada will respond to calls from the Indigenous Leadership Initiative and many other organizations across the country to improve support for Guardians programs. As we have seen from similar long-running programs in Australia, these investments provide significant socio-economic and environmental benefits. In addition to the knowledge created and mobilized, these programs also offer culturally meaningful employment, relevant skills training, and improve mental and physical health for guardians.
Nationally and internationally, we are beginning to see the development and advancement of sustainability protocols from Indigenous peoples. We see non-Indigenous governments finally recognizing that they cannot do the important work of conservation without Indigenous peoples, and especially their youth, leading the way. Among the Indigenous-led projects across the country supported by CMN, several deal with issues ranging from traditional laws and wildlife management to the development of Indigenous protected areas to the creation of community-led climate change research protocols. In this work, training and preparing our youth is one of the most important aspects of resiliency. Building up our Indigenous youth in the ways of our people, guided by Indigenous spirituality, is what our Elders have been and continue to encourage.
Below are several examples of exciting research projects receiving CMN support that align with these goals and objectives:
Bringing Research Home: Reclaiming Research to tell the story of Climate Change in the Kluane First Nation Territory
This project is centered on the values, knowledge, and needs of Kluane First Nation (KFN) located in Burwash Landing, Yukon. The aim is to collaboratively study how KFN can enhance its ability to actively drive and participate in research in their Traditional Territory. In many ways, work on this topic is well underway; in other ways, it is just beginning. This project will strengthen connections between KFN and multiple Yukon-based research organizations as they work together to develop a KFN-driven research agenda and protocol. It will move the development and usage of tools to understand and share knowledge forward, and it will facilitate knowledge mobilization in a way that empowers KFN to more directly influence and benefit from research and knowledge gathering in their Traditional Territory.
Lingit Kusteeyi (Tlingit Way of Life): Revitalizing Tlingit Law for Land and Wildlife
This project engages constructively with Tlingit law, articulates these laws, and applies them as a guiding force to rebuilding the relationship between wildlife and humans in the Taku River Tlingit First Nation (TRTFN) traditional territory in northern B.C. and Yukon. The main objective of this project is to develop a TRTFN Wildlife Protocol and Policy that will be strongly rooted in Taku River Tlingit traditional practices, perspectives, and law. The Wildlife Protocol and Policy will guide the TRTFN internally by articulating what TRTFN’s expectations are of its own citizens in terms of how they interact with wildlife. In addition, the policy is also intended to support governance externally as TRTFN engage with Provincial and Federal agencies and other First Nation on wildlife management issues. TRTFN believe that wildlife management needs to be strongly grounded in Tlingit laws and values and that these need to be consistent and well articulated for outside parties to understand. The TRTFN Wildlife Protocol and Policy is an important step in the decolonization for wildlife management and to ensuring that wildlife can once again exist in abundance within the TRTFN Traditional Territory.
Kluane National Park and Reserve, Yukon Territory. Photo: Samantha Titze.
Nio Ne Pene – Trails of the Mountain Caribou: Renewing Indigenous Relationships in Conservation
This Indigenous-led program involves research about the relationship between Indigenous well-being and caribou conservation on the backbone of the Mackenzie Mountains straddling the Sahtú Region (Northwest Territories) and Ross River Dena traditional territory (Yukon). For Mountain Dene/Dena of Tulı́t’a, Norman Wells and Tu Łidlini (the community of Ross River, Yukon Territory), Nı́o Nę P’ęnę́ encompasses all of nature – it’s what holds everything together and attracts wildlife. The area has been a gathering place for people and caribou for thousands of years. The three partnering communities in this program are developing a plan for research, monitoring and land protection to achieve their vision for keeping Dene kǝdǝ (language), Dene ts’ı̨ lı̨ (ways of life), and Dene ɂeɂa/ɂa (law) strong in co-existence with caribou. The three-year program will support establishment of Indigenous-led Guardian and land protection initiatives, and will help to set the standard for defining the nature of such initiatives in Canada.
Mobilizing Mountain Metrics that Matter: Inuit- Led Environment and Health Monitoring in the Mealy Mountains National Park Reserve
At the core of this project is an emphasis on Inuit knowledge concerning changes in weather and precipitation patterns, wildlife and vegetation, and land and sea ice regimes due to climate change, and how these environmental alterations are affecting Inuit traditional territory in mountain regions. Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding local perceptions and ideas about environmental changes, and locally-developed ideas for monitoring the effects of these changes in the Mealy Mountain Park Reserve in Labrador. This project will also facilitate and enhance intergenerational transfer of Inuit knowledge between experienced knowledge holders and youth within the program, protecting and promoting this knowledge for future generations. The community of Rigolet is a powerful example of the move to Northern-led research, as it continues to take the lead in the expansion of the eNuk app, the use of the weather monitoring stations, and the Monitoring Mentors program through this work. As stated by a community member from Rigolet, Inuit-led monitoring is essential to community knowledge and adaptation, because “the best scientists are the people that’s out there.”
Youth learning traditional skills. Photo: Norma Kassi.
Norma was raised and educated in Old Crow and is a citizen of the Vuntut Gwich’in First Nation (People of the Lakes) and a member of the Wolf Clan. She gained her depth of traditional, scientific and ecological knowledge in Old Crow flats where her grandfather, mother and the land were the bearers of this invaluable, ancient knowledge. Encouraged by her Elders, she entered politics and in 1985 was elected as Member for Vuntut Gwich’in First Nation in the Yukon Legislative Assembly, a position she held until 1992. From 1995 to 1998 Norma was the Environmental Manager for the Council of Yukon First Nations. In 2007, she co-founded the Arctic Institute of Community-Based Research and served as Director of Indigenous Collaboration until May 2019. In addition to her role as Canadian Mountain Network Co-Research Director and as an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Science at McGill University, Norma serves as Senior Advisor to the Indigenous Leadership Initiative that advocates for the creation of Guardians programs. She also serves on the Assembly of First Nations Environment and Climate Change Joint Committee on Climate Action.