The land just outside the powwow arbour is filled with overgrown prairie grasses, patches of invasive plants and soil along the riverbank that is just beginning to erode. 

It’s here that members of the Blood Tribe, also known as the Kainai Nation, are looking to restore the land in the traditional way, for the first time in decades: by embracing fire.

Supported by the Kainai fire department, Waterton Lakes National Park and members of Blackfeet fire management in Montana, fire has come back to the land not to destroy, but to heal.

In early May, four agencies came together over four days for a knowledge exchange on cultural fire, training on how to responsibly set fires (known as prescribed burning) and, finally, putting fire directly back on the land.

In a small circle under the afternoon sun, the gathered firefighters and land guardians each held a small piece of tobacco while Kainai Elders Calvin Williams and Dennis Chief Calf led a prayer.

Then, setting two dried cattails aflame, Williams and Chief Calf ceremoniously lit the ground on fire. Slowly, the sparks grew larger, burning low and slow across the landscape.

“Our culture is being threatened — not just by colonial aspects, but invasive species, climate change — and we’re trying to figure out ways to reignite those cultural pathways,” Alvin First Rider, Kainai’s environmental manager, says.

For decades, a fire like this would not have been possible and, at one point in time, illegal. As Western settlers moved across Canada, wildfires were actively stopped in a bid to protect land and property — called fire suppression — and relatively few resources have been put toward bringing fire back to the landscape in a controlled way.

“Fire suppression is a colonial tactic,” he says. “It was used to remove us, remove bison, off the landscape, and that’s one thing we need to get back on the landscape and express our sovereignty, is using fire as a tool the way we always used it.” 

Bringing cultural burning back to the land is part of First Rider’s vision to reintroduce traditional land management techniques. His plan is to restore fire alongside the rematriation of bison and beavers to rebalance ecosystems. Now, supported by three years of funding from the federal government, Kainai is creating the first fire guardians program in Canada.

Power and respect: The Blackfoot people and fire

The Blood 148 reserve is the largest in Canada, encompassing 1,400 square kilometres and home to more than 8,600 of the nation’s roughly 13,000 registered members. The Blood Tribe or Kainai Nation is one of four making up the Blackfoot Confederacy, along with the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana and the Siksika and Piikani Nations in Alberta.

The traditional use of fire among the Blackfoot people goes all the way back to creation stories, particularly the tale of Napi and the Sun Leggings. 

In that story, Napi, a trickster, stumbles upon the Sun’s lodge and sees a pair of beautiful leggings the Sun uses to start fires when he hunts. After Napi tries and fails to steal them several times, the Sun gives Napi the leggings, but warns him they must be used responsibly.

Napi ignores these instructions, and in his arrogance and vanity, sets the grasslands on fire — destroying the leggings in the process.

“It just kind of goes to show that power of fire and how you’re supposed to follow direction. And then just community-wise, it’s powerful, there’s that respect,” First Rider says.

Williams says these stories are important because they explain how fire was traditionally used by ancestors “in a good way,” as a “beneficial means for our tribe.”

First Rider explains Traditional Knowledge and methods were handed down generationally by fire keepers, such as using bison horns to transfer hot coals.

“There was that notion historically that these lands weren’t maintained and wild, but historically they were. We managed them, and that’s one thing we’re trying to reintroduce is how we manage our landscape,” First Rider says.

Many people on the reserve recall their Elders and grandparents burning land around their property to manage pests, clear out trash or replenish a nearby berry bush.

But in the 1980s and ‘90s, the use of fire to manage the land died out in the community.

“The last time I ever seen anyone burn was in the mid-1990s,” First Rider says.

“It always kind of astounded me that people went away from that. That fear mongering really got ingrained into us, to where people are so scared of fire that they don’t use it. There’s a taboo around it.”

Under the Indian Act, fire management and protection services on First Nations reservations are managed by band councils and regulated by community bylaws but paid for by the federal government.

In 1990, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (now Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada) signed a three-party agreement with the Treasury Board and Human Resource Development Canada to establish new ways of suppressing fire and providing greater fire protection services for First Nations communities to reduce wildfire risk in Alberta, Ontario and New Brunswick.

But while this may have hastened the decline of cultural fire practices, the history of restricting Indigenous uses of fire goes back much further. Amy Cardinal Christianson, senior fire advisor with the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, told The Narwhal the use of fire among Indigenous people wasn’t lost but taken away through colonial fire exclusion policies. In 1874, B.C. became the first province to outlaw cultural burns; by the early 20th century, it was banned across Canada. 

“It’s not like people just forgot it and walked away, it was systematically taken away from Indigenous Peoples through prosecution, through fines, through jail time,” she says.

But it’s now understood that cultural burning, along with prescribed burns, mitigate the risks of serious wildfires — risks that have been exacerbated by decades of fire suppression policies. And Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by wildfires. 

“I think for me it also becomes a social justice issue right now, where we know we need fire on the landscape. So, who better to do that than Indigenous Peoples?”

The difference between cultural and prescribed burns

Although prescribed burns share a similar purpose in how they impact the land, a cultural burn is distinct in that it is led by traditional Indigenous land management practices and knowledge.

“Indigenous people across Canada have used fire on the landscape historically to steward for cultural objectives and so that’s burning to improve a berry production, to get more green grass growing, to make firewood, to open up trails,” Christianson says.

In comparison, a prescribed burn also works to support healthy landscapes but is done primarily for wildfire prevention and ecological wellbeing purposes, and not for cultural reasons.

“Prescribed fire really comes from wildfire agencies, and so it operates very similar to wildfire response,” Christianson says. Both are directed by wild firefighting services operating usually outside Indigenous communities, rather than the communities themselves.

Christianson says cultural burns are also community driven and often led by families. They can involve the whole community, from youth to Elders. 

“When you’re on a cultural fire, there’s laughter, it’s fun. People are visiting, smiling, hanging out together, learning from one another, and so that’s really what I love about cultural fire.”

Parks Canada has been using prescribed burns to help reduce wildfire risk by eliminating built up wood, grass and plant material and to restore ecology for several decades now.

These burns are grounded in Western scientific techniques and typically use gasoline or diesel drip torches to light the land. According to Parks Canada, the agency did 13 prescribed burns in seven parks last year.

The fire crew at Waterton Lakes National Park, which is on traditional Blackfoot territory and borders the Blood reserve, have been helping support the development of a fire guardians program for about six years. That’s when First Rider met the park’s fire management officer Matt Rance, and spoke with him about Indigenous land sovereignty and its connection to fire.

“I started to tell him my vision, and he got it right away,” First Rider says.

Rance, who has worked with fire as a firefighter and technician for over 23 years, has been with the park since 2019. He helped First Rider and Kainai do their first two burns in the Blood Tribe Timber Limits, 1,940 hectares near Waterton managed by the tribe for cultural use. He also assisted First Rider in getting several members of the Kainai land management department their standard wildland firefighting course certification.

“They’ve really helped us build capacity to where we’re able to use it from a Western certification standpoint and get that Western lens on how they plan burns and the proper way to communicate burns,” First Rider says.

Rance says working with the fire guardians has been “one of the more fulfilling parts of my role.”

“I just feel humbled to be in this room with these folks who are doing such amazing work and anything I can do to help and support that we’re going to do,” he says.

The rise of the fire guardians

According to Indigenous Services Canada, the federal government provides annual funding for fire protection services, such as firefighting, fire hall operations, equipment and insurance, which between 2016 and 2024 averaged $50.2 million annually to the 634 First Nations communities across Canada. 

In March, Natural Resources Canada granted Kainai Nation $500,000 over three years to establish a fire guardians program.The grant, which comes after years of work by First Rider, will “strengthen the integration of Indigenous cultural practices and fire-related knowledge,” while helping the First Nation develop tools and resources to incorporate these cultural practices and knowledge into fire management within the community.

Nathan Provost tells The Narwhal he is the first to be hired with this funding as the fire guardian program coordinator. He says he wants the program to educate the community and empower youth.

“Letting them know that this is what we used to do back in the day, and [that] fire is good. It’s not that colonial notion that fire is bad,” he says.

There are more than 200 Indigenous guardians programs in Canada, and many have received federal funding since 2017, which has been managed by the National Guardians Network since 2024. But this one is unique for its focus on fire.

Christianson says there are currently no other federally funded guardian programs for fire across Canada, but for there to be more, there needs to be better funding for proper salaries and sufficient resources. 

“These are very knowledgeable practitioners that are going to be hired in these programs. We should be paying them a lot more,” she said, adding funders “seem to think when it’s an Indigenous program that the wages can be much lower.” 

First Rider says the next phases of the program will focus on acquiring equipment to do cultural burns and hire cultural practitioners within the community who already have fire knowledge.

To plan the four-day knowledge exchange and training session on burns, First Rider reached out to neighbours in the Blackfoot Confederacy, across the Canada-U.S. border.

Sheldon Brewer, a fuel specialist in Browning, Montana, and member of both the Blackfeet Nation and Kainai, has been working with fire for almost 30 years, including wildland fire fighting to prescribed burns.

Brewer says when he got into prescribed burns he started learning about traditional methods of burning by the Blackfoot people, such as lighting cattails, sap-covered pine cones and cow or bison dung.

“Everything that we use presently as field specialists derives from a history, and that history started out back when First Nation Peoples pretty much dominated the area that we currently live in,” he says.

Being invited to be part of the training as a Blackfeet fire specialist is a full-circle moment for Brewer.

“To be home and to participate in this project that’s happening, especially early stages, is one of the biggest key moments in my life that I can say I’m very proud of,” he says.

Costs of wildfires rising with more destructive, deadly fire seasons

Wildfire seasons have become more intense and more destructive in Canada, and the costs of fighting them have also risen.

2023 saw the most destructive wildfire season to date an estimated 5,475 fires ignited more than 17 million hectares of land. That’s over 10 million more than the previous record in 1995.

Last year, Canada saw nearly the same number of fires, but only roughly five million hectares were burned. Still, 2024 had more singed hectares than than the annual area burned in any of the previous 10 years before 2023.

And at the time of publishing, more than 1,900 fires have already burned over 3.6 million hectares of land across the country. In late May, Manitoba declared a state of emergency as wildfires raged in the north of the province, forcing the First Nations of Pimicikimak and Mathias Colomb to issue evacuation orders. Saskatchewan declared a state of emergency shortly after.

Firefighters from across Canada have been called in to fight the flames, as well as from the U.S. It all comes at an enormous cost to governments and communities.

In comparison, Christianson says the cost of cultural burns and investing in fire guardian programs is “peanuts.” Fire guardians also reduce the risk of fire on the land, which in turn helps reduce the risk and cost of large wildfire disasters.

Christianson points out that a guardian’s salary is around $80,000 per year, whereas “we’re spending millions to billions of dollars on fire in Canada.” The cost of wildland fire protection has frequently exceeded $1 billion annually. Manitoba recently put a down payment of $80 million dollars on three water bombers, with the full cost still to be determined. 

So a fire guardian, she adds, “makes it a really good economical case from a Western sense.”

But Indigenous fire experts argue climate change is only part of the smoldering problem.

“Smokey the Bear, he did a damn good job in making our forests unhealthy,” Brewer says, referring to the mascot which has been a symbol of wildfire prevention in the U.S. since the 1940s.

“We go against Mother Nature, we get end results from it and a lot of the time, it’s not what we expected.”

Southern Alberta is no stranger to wildfires. In 2017, the Kenow Fire was one of the area’s most devastating wildfires in recent years, burning 35,000 hectares of land, including “almost half the vegetation” in Waterton, according to Rance.

He says the fire created an opportunity for the park to press the reset button and utilize prescribed burns in areas they might not have been able to before, and including cultural perspectives into those burns as well.

“We’re looking at it as an opportunity to [create] the future plan and make sure that an event like that doesn’t happen again.”

A living restoration project on Blackfoot territory

With the training, First Rider hoped to forge a type of fire network among the participants. He wanted them to come away from it with experience of using fire as a land management tool “from a cultural lens, respecting it,” and not fear it.

During the post-burn debrief, Provost said he was thankful to the Elders for their prayer to make sure “the grandfathers were watching — helping for everything to run smoothly.”

“I remember the older ones used to always burn, and you just never seen that anymore, because, you know, getting in trouble after a while,” he says.

“Just really feels good to see everybody come together like that.”

As the area by the powwow arbour burned slowly, the red, blue and yellow fire suits of the various agencies mingled on the landscape, as participants lit the grasslands aflame and controlled them with water hoses. 

The participants and community onlookers watched the fire, talked and laughed. Even those who said they felt initially panicked by the flames felt a calm wash over them as the burn went on.

“For me, what was much more exciting about it was their relationship building and just being out on the land with people who are so proud of their culture and just so excited to be together and working together,” Christianson says.

“It’s about much more than fire. It’s about that cultural pride in what you’re doing and bringing communities together.”

Despite working with fire for more than three decades, this was Brewer’s first cultural burn using traditional methods.

“It’s something that I’ll cherish for a long time,” he says.

The burn is only the beginning for First Rider’s holistic plan, who calls it a “living restoration project.”

“The goal is to rematriate our connection with fire along with our bison,” First Rider says. A bison herd was reintroduced to the Blood reserve in 2023.

First Rider is also looking for more areas in the community where his team can put down fire, but says there’s still healing that needs to be done in the community.

The plan now is to plant willow cuttings and saplings back to the burned area to stabilize the stream bank and encourage beavers to return. Then the rain will come in to do its job — and then it’s time to burn some more.

“This land needs guardians, and we really need to be able to express our sovereignty and our culture by using these historical practices,” First Rider says.

“That’s in our DNA: fire and bison.”

Updated June 12, 2025, at 4:06 p.m. PT: A previous version of this story stated the cost of wildland fire protection and management reached over $1 billion annually for the last six of 10 years. That statement was pulled from a dataset spanning 2007-2017. The story has been updated to state the cost of fighting fires frequently exceeds $1 billion.

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As a wildlife biologist in Waterton Lakes National Park in southwestern Alberta in the 1980s, Kevin Van Tighem spent most of his time worrying about running into a bear while out on the job. 

One June morning, while checking the beaver ponds near the park’s entrance for fish, he came face to face with that fear when he ran straight into a grizzly bear cub. 

“My heart stopped. Because of course, there’s a mother somewhere,” Van Tighem, who retired in 2011, says while sitting on the deck of his cabin near Pincher Creek, Alta., not far from Waterton.

Another cub appeared behind a log. Van Tighem looked around and into the eyes of the sow, standing just metres away. He stood frozen in a panic, thinking of his wife and children and what would happen to them if he was killed. He thought of his own mother and how she’d feel to lose her son.

The sow looked right at Van Tighem, then grabbed a piece of cow parsnip and turned her back on him to enjoy her snack. He backed out of the aspens and into the sunshine, then returned to his car in a daze.

“I just felt so weird,” he says. “She’d let me go and everything I knew told me I was supposed to be dead.”

The misconception of grizzly bears as territorial killers has been a media stereotype since the arrival of settlers in North America. Van Tighem credits the beginning of the violent grizzly bear myth to the expeditions of Lewis and Clark in the American northwest.

“They were travelling with muskets, and every bear they saw they shot at, and so they wounded a bunch of bears,” he says. “Those bears then became aggressive.”

“We made bears dangerous,” he adds. “We made the dangerous story, and then we just kept reinforcing it, because once we were scared of bears, once we saw them as dangerous potential predators, everybody shot [at] first sight.”

This fraught relationship has dire consequences for bears. There are fewer than 1,000 grizzly bears in Alberta, according to a 2021 survey from the province. Still, people kill bears for self defence and to protect their livestock. They kill bears that have gotten into human food or garbage. And people kill bears for no reason at all, whether out of fear or for sport. In Alberta, more than 90 per cent of known grizzly bear mortalities are human caused, according to the government’s most recent dataset. From 2008 to 2019, more than 200 grizzly bears were killed by people in Alberta. Hunting grizzly bears has been prohibited since 2006 and nearly a third of all human-caused mortalities are illegal kills. 

Sarah Elmeligi, a conservation biologist, landscape planner and consultant who was recently elected to the Alberta legislature representing Banff-Kananaskis, says grizzlies are either portrayed as violent killers or soft cuddly bears from a Disney film. “Every single person, probably, in North America has relationships with grizzly bears, even if they’ve never seen a grizzly bear live,” she says.

“There’s all kinds of preconceived notions that we bring forward to how we expect bears to behave on the landscape.”

While there is a purpose in warning the public of the dangers of bears, Elmeligi says those stories do not always promote the truth. It’s far more common to have a mundane encounter, she says: “Person saw bear, bear saw person, bear left — or bear continued about its business and nothing happened,” she says. “But that doesn’t really make for good storytelling.”

But Indigenous Peoples have long had their own stories about and relationships with bears, based on respect rather than fear. “Those animals are our way of life through ceremony, through song. All those animals are inside as our spirit,” Mike Bruised Head, a Blackfoot Elder from the Kainai Blood Tribe, says. Those narratives offer a different way to think about these beings, and how we can live together on the land. 

A rich history of Traditional Knowledge about bears

Having lived among bears longer than any settlers on these lands, Indigenous people have their own stories and relationships with bears. The Blackfoot people of the Treaty 7 traditional territory are no different.

The Blackfoot Confederacy consists of the Kainai, Piikani and Siksika Nations, as well as the Blackfeet Nation south of the U.S. border.

Bruised Head is an Elder and member of the Kainai Blood Tribe, which borders Waterton Lakes National Park. Pa’ksíkoyi is the Blackfoot name for the grizzly bear, a name the grizzly himself told man to call him by, according to Blackfoot stories. Sometimes translated in English as “greasy mouth,” Bruised Head says Pa’ksíkoyi refers to the layer of moisture and saliva that rests between the grizzly’s lips.

Pa’ksíkoyi taught Blackfoot people how to live and offered protection and help in the form of healing through the thunder medicine pipe bundles, ninaimsskaah. In return, Bruised Head says, the grizzly bear asked for respect and for Blackfoot people to not eat bears or other animals that were not “split-hoofed.”

Bruised Head says after the signing of Treaty 7 in 1877 — when settlers pushed into the west by railroad and Blackfoot people were forced onto reserves — Blackfoot people were forced to hunt bears to survive. Then as residential schools enforced assimilation into western Christian culture, many Indigenous people forgot the bears’ cultural and spiritual significance.

“There was a separation, a spiritual separation, where back then we got to see all these animals daily and now we see them in parks and we’re foreigners to our own mountain lands.”

Bruised Head refers to the grizzly bear as a cultural keystone species, because of its importance to Blackfoot medicine bundles and societies, as well as its cultural significance in many Indigenous nations across Turtle Island.

“There’s just something about the bear, the grizzly bear, there’s something very powerful even though we speak other languages,” Bruised Head says.

Southern Alberta is also traditionally home to the Tsuut’ina Nation, Stoney Nakoda Nations and Métis settlements. Each has their own relationship to the grizzly bear.

Métis herbalist and sash weaver Kalyn Kodiak has learned about the use of local bear medicines from her great-great-grandmother, Marie Rose Delorme Smith. Kodiak says bear medicines such as dandelion, carrot and burdock — brown, oily and fuzzy roots that, when fresh, give off a strong stinky smell that resembles celery, similar to bears themselves — offer not only spiritual protection but also physical protection against disease and viruses. They can even help cleanse the body of certain poisons.

Kodiak says the Métis learned about these medicines by watching bears (they do not distinguish between black bears and grizzly bears in their stories), what they ate and didn’t eat and even how they used certain herbs on themselves. She says the Métis also learned how to raise their families as attentive parents from bears.

“Family and community are huge values for the Métis and the bears. The bears taught us how to be good family members to each other,” she says.

Bears are associated with not just healing but also courage and protection, Kodiak adds. Those who are recognized for sharing these bear traits would often hold the role of protectors within the community —  a far cry from the fearful view settlers have long held.

Connecting Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge with conservation in Waterton Lakes

Connecting Traditional Knowledge to conservation efforts has increased since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action in 2015 and the finding of unmarked graves of Indigenous children at former residential school sites in 2021.

Federally, Parks Canada has stated its commitment to recognizing and honouring “the historic and contemporary contributions of Indigenous Peoples, their histories and cultures, as well as the special relationships Indigenous Peoples have with ancestral lands, waters and ice.” This, the government says, includes Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge in conservation.

Waterton Lakes National Park has been at the forefront of this effort, incorporating Indigenous people and their perspectives and knowledge in a variety of projects throughout the park, such as including Indigenous language and cultural awareness in visitor education programming. Increasingly, the focus is coexistence, a concept long familiar to local Indigenous people. 

“Indigenous people have coexisted with bears for many years and Parks Canada has a lot to learn from us, Indigenous people and our culture,” Carleigh Grier-Stewart, a member of Piikani Nation and the first Parks Canada knowledge weaver, located in Waterton, says. “It’s really important that Indigenous perspectives are being included and being brought to the table,” she says. 

The ongoing perception of bears as killers has influenced Parks Canada’s bear management philosophy and policies over time.

Alex Taylor worked in Parks Canada seasonally for almost 30 years, retiring in 2018 as a human-wildlife conflict specialist throughout Lake Louise, Yoho, Kootenay and Banff national parks. In that time, Taylor saw the way his job was framed evolve over the years. What started as a position dealing with “problem wildlife” changed to “human-wildlife conflict” and later to “human-wildlife conflict and coexistence.” 

The changing of the name of the department matters, as does the terminology of “problem bear,” according to Dan Rafla, a human-wildlife coexistence specialist in Banff National Park.

Human-wildlife coexistence specialists in the different parks work to manage wildlife populations and visitors to “maintain a level of coexistence, keep animals alive and acting appropriately” while also managing humans to “achieve coexistence,” Rafla says. 

Grier-Stewart’s role as the knowledge weaver in Waterton is part of this effort. The position, which she began in 2021, is a result of Canada’s Nature Legacy Initiative, announced in 2018 by the federal government to collaborate with Indigenous partners, stakeholders and other levels of government. In 2021, the government invested $2.3 billion across five years into the initiative in addition to the $1.3 billion in 2018.

Through the resource conservation team within Waterton, Grier-Stewart works with Elders, Knowledge Keepers and community members from Kainai and Piikani, their county land departments as well as the Kainai Ecosystem Protection Agency to build relationships and offer support through the park, such as funding through the Nature Legacy Initiative.

Grier-Stewart says the objective of her position is to eventually have Traditional Knowledge woven into each branch of the park, including conservation policies around bears. Though Grier-Stewart says the incorporation of Traditional Knowledge is a work in progress and is currently minimal in relation to bears when it comes to much of Waterton’s operations, there are areas where Indigenous people are now leading the charge. 

Waterton has first Indigenous wildlife guardians in Canada’s national parks

One of the many tools Waterton Lakes National Park uses to ensure park visitors are educated on how to proactively coexist with bears is the wildlife guardians program. Wildlife guardian programs exist in many national parks across Canada, but Waterton’s program became the first in the country to have a fully Indigenous team in 2022.

“Our guardians are out there talking with people,” Rob Found, a wildlife ecologist in Waterton, says. “That’s the huge piece, is the people management and the education component and what are we telling people out there.”

Found says while a lot of people visiting the park have a high respect for bears, building that respect is something they want to continue. “That’s something where having this Indigenous perspective can be helping enforce that and convince people as well,” he says.

Found acknowledges many Indigenous perspectives, particularly those of the Blackfoot people, come from a place of respect, and says the Indigenous wildlife guardians program is the best way Waterton is helping to improve the management of human-wildlife conflicts by educating visitors on the importance of coexistence.

Kelly Tailfeathers, a member of the Kainai Blood Tribe and Indigenous guardians program advisor at Waterton Lakes, was the wildlife guardian team leader in 2022. In Tailfeathers’ experience, bears often take up the most of wildlife guardians’ time, as they are the largest attraction for visitors. Wildlife guardians check campgrounds to make sure no garbage has been left out and work to clear bear jams — traffic jams caused by visitors stopping to watch bears on the road. 

“We’re trying to educate the people to be bear conscious, be bear safe and watch your food,” Tailfeathers says. “There are park rules that need to be followed for the safety of both the animal and the tourists that visit the park.”

Found says Waterton Lakes is also forming a resource conservation Indigenous advisory group with the motivation of continuing initiatives with the Blackfoot people including managing shared bear habitat in the Blood Tribe’s timber reserve, which resides within the park’s boundary. The group is currently in discussions with the park.

“We want bears across this whole habitat, and that’s one of the motivations for having a joint advisory group where we can actually have Indigenous people talking with us — so we’re not just making all these decisions — but also that we’re getting informed from Indigenous perspectives and also the Indigenous objectives as well,” Found says.

Found says the impact of the Indigenous wildlife guardians is having an overall positive effect not only on creating better visitor experiences with wildlife in the park, but also on the lives of bears themselves.

“If it’s even one person that gets a changed perspective on bears, like they’re not just these things to be scared [of] but they’re actually individuals to be respected, maybe that’s one person that is going to remember ‘oh, we better put our food in the car or something,’ ” Found says.

“That might actually save a bear’s life.”

Updated July 26, 2023, at 3:04 PM: an older version of the story incorrectly stated that a 2021 survey on the number of grizzlies in Alberta was done by the Alberta Wilderness Association. The story has been updated to reflect that the survey was done by the government of Alberta.

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In the spring of 2022, Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood, a reporter for The Narwhal, got an unexpected email. A film production company wanted to know if she’d be willing to work on a documentary based on her reporting on how Clayoquot Sound’s War in the Woods transformed Nuu-chah-nulth homelands.In 1984, Nuu-chah-nulth nations famously turned away logging company MacMillan Bloedel, which planned to clear cut old-growth forests — some of which were more than 1,000 years old. In the decade that followed, there was a series of blockades and protests demanding better logging practices and meaningful consultation with First Nations. 

At the time, it was the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. Thousands of people travelled to the remote region of Tofino, B.C., with the anti-logging fight peaking in 1993 when more than 800 people were arrested. (In 2021, on-going protests at Fairy Creek, on southwestern Vancouver Island, surpassed the War in the Woods as the largest act of civil disobedience). 

Now, nearly 30 years later, this story is examined in a new episode of the CBC series, The Nature of Things, airing March 17. Produced by Makwa Creative and Antica Productions and narrated by Wood, the film War for the Woods shows how First Nations are voicing their sovereign rights over their territories and finding ways to protect ecologically and culturally important forests.

The documentary was co-directed by Toronto-based filmmakers Sean Stiller, also the director of photography and member of the Williams Lake First Nation of the Secwepemc Nation, and Big Cedar Films’ Geoff Morrison, who co-wrote the film.

Stiller and Morrison sat down with me to discuss the importance of telling the story of old-growth logging from Indigenous perspectives.

Why is this story still important to tell today?

Geoff: At the core of it is the importance of old-growth forests and we look at it [from] two or three different perspectives. The reason we’re hearing so much about old-growth forests in the news is because there is so little growth left, and it’s been scientifically proven that these forests are critical to the planet storing carbon. I think what we tried to do with the film is look at it from another perspective as well. To show that there’s more than just the ecological value, but there’s a cultural value to these forests as well. 

Sean: To some extent, the impetus for this episode being commissioned is that we are now in the thirtieth anniversary of the Clayoquot Sound protests, which of course we allude to in the beginning of the episode. So there’s a timeliness to that historical event, and then using that as a launching pad for more contemporary conversation. We took an opportunity to talk about things like conservation financing, which particularly among the central Nuu-Chah-Nulth nations has become quite a strong push, in terms of how they move past logging, but in a way that allows the nations to provide economic opportunity to their band members rather than just leaving them empty handed. Our focus was to spend time talking about these solutions, versus simply being on the front lines with largely non-Indigenous people who were opposed to old-growth logging.

This documentary was filmed and produced by and with an Indigenous team. Why is it important to tell these stories through an Indigenous lens?

Sean: We see things from a very different perspective, and I think when you’re working with an Indigenous production company, you don’t have to fight for that perspective, it’s sort of built in. It also works its way in a lot of other aspects of production. There’s a built-in understanding that you take the time you need, you take the care you need to address these things in a good way. Things like really generous honorariums and ensuring medicines are being offered to participants, these are all just givens with an Indigenous production company. Things that historically non-Indigenous companies might have had missteps around. You can assume a certain amount of nuance and sensitivity working with an Indigenous production team.

Geoff: For me, it was a great privilege to be able to work with this team on this project and to be able to have a part in telling a story like this from that perspective. There’s so much that’s spoken about in the film that someone from a settler background like myself, might not naturally understand or maybe gravitate towards.

Stephanie Wood, a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh reporter for The Narwhal, is the narrator and guide through the documentary. What was the process of working with Wood throughout the documentary?

Sean: The initial motivation to reach out to Stephanie was that she wrote a retrospective on what was going on in particularly Tla-o-qui-aht territory. The Narwhal themselves were interested at one point in wondering what’s happening now, post the Clayoquot Sound 1993 resistance. She already had spent time building relationships working in that territory. She had also done some work in the Ahousaht First Nation that we visit briefly. So, there was this template, this long-form article she had written — which was really lovely — which laid out a lot of what we wanted to talk to, and she had already met people like Joe Martin and Saya Masso, the natural resources manager. I had a chance to meet with her and then we had subsequent phone chats, she expressed a lot of interest. We felt like it was a really fresh perspective to see things through her eyes. The Nature of Things, because David Suzuki is stepping away from the show, [CBC] was really keen to see a fresh face, to have a different point of view. So, all those things kind of conspired together and it just felt like a really great way to enter this story.

Geoff: [The documentary] touches on a lot of the themes that are present in her reporting, and a lot of her individual interests as a reporter. Looking at new models of conservation, like [Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas], guardian programs. There’s a lot that just really seems to naturally align.

Has anything changed since the 1993 Clayoquot Sound protests? Have there been any updates to the logging and clearcut policy in B.C.?

Geoff: I think one of the things the film tries to do is look at it really from the perspective of the Tla-o-qui-aht and the central Nuu-Chah-Nulth nations. Their story was not as loudly remembered as much in the history, but things really did change for them in terms of gaining control of their forests and how those forests would be logged over the coming years. In a broader sense, from my view, I’m not sure much really changed in terms of the debate on clear cutting and old-growth logging, because here we are 30 years later and we’re still fighting to protect what old-growth remains.

Sean: Perhaps what’s changed somewhat among these nations is a much more robust conversation, or maybe confidence, around questions of sovereignty and of really taking charge of stewardship of the territory. The Tla-o-qui-aht, the Ahousaht and the Hesquiaht have all articulated very clear land-use decisions, very ambitious land-use visions for how they want to steward their territories. These days, there are also outside partners who are incentivized to protect these pristine ecosystems, effectively buyout [Indigenous nations’] tree farm licences so that they’re economically incentivized to not log but have other viable economic paths forward. That feels like a very new conversation.

The documentary focuses a lot on anti-logging activism. What can be learned from Indigenous activism for protecting old-growth forests? 

Geoff: Something that we observed from speaking to people in this film is the Indigenous approach to conservation is much more rounded. There’s a lot more to it, and I think that is much more based on this historical relationship to the land. Hundreds and thousands of years of stewarding the land is what is informing these decisions about how the land should be stewarded today and I think that’s something that’s really exciting about new models of conservation.

Sean: The Nuu-Chah-Nulth people, as do most other Indigenous nations, have their natural law and have systems of knowledge based on observation over many hundreds of years, and when there’s a resistance to logging it’s not out of some purely emotional connection to the forest, it’s because they understand very well that birds migrate in their territory at a certain time of the year. There are other very sound ecological reasons to restrict certain activities at certain times, or to only focus on certain regions and that comes out of carefully fought for scientific knowledge, in some cases, knowledge that [western] scientists themselves are just arriving at.

Why did you want to make this documentary?

Sean: On a personal level, I seem to be drawn to projects that have at their core some relationship to the natural world and human culture, and where those two overlap. And particularly in an Indigenous context, I just find myself drawn to the importance of the stories, especially today. This for me, is one project, among other projects, that I feel deeply passionate about.

Geoff: It’s a very complicated and important story, and I think the privilege to come at it and look at it from a slightly alternative perspective and really focus on the importance of these trees, not just for their ecological value but also the value to Indigenous culture, I think is really what gives this piece a real heart. I’m hoping that’s the message that the audience leaves with and it was a really wonderful experience to be able to play a part in that.

This interview was edited for length and clarity. You can view the film here.

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Wrapping around the city of Ottawa is a horseshoe-shaped green space taking up 20,000 hectares of land. Known as the Ottawa Greenbelt, it’s been managed by the National Capital Commission, a federal Crown corporation, since the 1950s.

As with the rest of Ottawa, the Greenbelt is on unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin territory. It’s host to all sorts of outdoor recreational activities, seeing more than 3.5 million visitors each year. It also contains sensitive natural areas like wetlands, forests and streams, as well as rural farms and even a sand dune. The Greenbelt is also home to an array of species including the golden northern bumble bee, northern goshawk, muskrat and cattail sledge plant.

“The climate and ecosystem services that an area like the Greenbelt provides are huge for a city like Ottawa in terms of flood mitigation or drought mitigation, climate resiliency in terms of adapting to any number of things and just temperature regulation,” John McDonnell, executive director for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Ottawa Valley Chapter, said.

“I mean, there’s huge value in that.”

But unlike a national park or the Greenbelt in southern Ontario, Ottawa’s Greenbelt isn’t covered by legislation that protects it from development. There are already schools, churches and golf courses within its borders, and more than 1,000 people live there on land leased from the government. There’s also the Nepean Sportsplex, the Queensway-Carleton Hospital, the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre and the Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport — and Ontario’s growing population means that development pressures are only increasing.

Right now, Ottawa is undergoing its biggest public transit project ever, with the building and expansion of a light-rail transit system. There’s also a proposed expansion of a road and the building of a bus transitway in the city’s east end, through a wetland bog. These projects have convinced conservationists of the need for more solid environmental protections for the Greenbelt, and some are clamouring to designate the land as a national urban park.

Here is everything you need to know about the Ottawa Greenbelt and what is at stake for its future.

How did the Ottawa Greenbelt come to be? 

The Ottawa Greenbelt was established in 1950 in the Gréber Plan, named after Jacques Gréber, the Parisian architectural planner of the national capital. It set out development of the capital region for the next 50 years. The Greenbelt was meant to act as a limit on urban expansion, protecting natural areas and designating lands for agriculture. According to the National Capital Commission, the Ottawa Greenbelt is one of the largest and most contiguous greenbelts in the world, and the only one that’s (almost) entirely publicly funded.

The Gréber Plan established the limits of the Greenbelt to include space for institutional buildings, then and in the future. At the time, the federal government did not have enough local support to officially zone the Greenbelt, so it began buying land in 1958. Most of the lands were purchased for about $40 million in 1966, with roughly 40 per cent acquired through expropriation.

By 1970, the Greenbelt’s environmental significance had been recognized, and steps were taken to protect Mer Bleue Bog, a 3,500-hectare natural wetland, and Stony Swamp, one of the most ecologically diverse areas in the region. But Gréber’s idea that the Greenbelt would act as a check on urban growth bumped up against a burgeoning population: as the communities of Kanata, Barrhaven and Orleans grew on the outside of the green horseshoe, roads and services were built through it, including Highway 417 east towards Montreal and Highway 416.

In 1985, the National Capital Act gave the National Capital Commission federal authorization to manage the Greenbelt and in 1996 the commission created the first Greenbelt Master Plan. It’s most recent plan, from 2013, is set to be reviewed this year. 

Don Herweyer, interim general manager for planning, real estate and economic development at the City of Ottawa said the city works in cooperation with the commission, taking its lead on management and development in the Greenbelt. 

He said the city’s official plan reflects the federal Greenbelt plan: while both outline the area’s legal boundaries, a description of its actual physical boundaries is hard to find. Herweyer describes the Greenbelt as “a u-shaped area that extends south from the Ottawa River in the east and west separating the oldest part of the City of Ottawa from its suburban communities and rural area.”

Today, the commission owns and manages 75 per cent of the land, or 14,950 hectares, in the Greenbelt. Most of the rest is managed by other federal agencies, with five per cent being locally or provincially managed roads.

The Ottawa Greenbelt is important for protecting endangered species, wetlands and bird migration paths

The Ottawa Valley Chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, or CPAWS, acts as a community-based voice on wilderness issues in the national capital region. McDonnell said the group’s main role is to be the Ottawa Greenbelt’s advocate to the city and National Capital Commission.

“The Greenbelt is interesting because not only does it provide access to nature for a lot of people, but it also provides important linkages for the movement of species through the region and particularly in and around Ottawa,” McDonnell said.

“During a time of climate change, we know that species will need to migrate to adapt to changing conditions, and so having these connections are vital.”

Users of the nature app iNaturalist have logged sightings of nearly 3,000 species in the Ottawa Greenbelt. The commission’s biodiversity monitoring program has documented 35 species at risk there, including snapping turtles, monarchs, bobolinks and least bitterns. Shirley’s Bay on the northwestern edge of the Greenbelt is a significant route for bird migration, with over 270 bird species being spotted over the years. In particular, the commision notes, the bay is an important migration gateway for arctic and boreal birds.

On the eastern side, the provincially significant Mer Bleue Bog is home to abundant plants, birds and wildlife. “It’s the most biodiverse area in eastern Ontario,” McDonnell said. “It’s a representative of the type of peat bog that you would find in northern Canada and it’s a remnant of the retreating of the glaciers,” making it a very rare, functioning wetland.

Since 1995, Mer Bleue has been recognized as a “wetland of international importance” by the United Nations Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. The bog mitigates both floods and droughts and harbours several species at risk, including a population of endangered spotted turtles.

“It’s diverse, it’s very rich, but it’s very fragile as well,” McDonnell said.

Road and transit expansion are currently the Ottawa Greenbelt’s most pressing threats

The Mer Bleue Bog is especially threatened by current proposals for transportation infrastructure: the extension of Brian Coburn Boulevard and the building of the Cumberland Transitway, a dedicated busway. 

Both projects date back to 1999, when a growing population led to an environmental assessment of the bog as a site for a new transit corridor and a new road. Sections of Brian Coburn Boulevard, previously known as the Blackburn Bypass, were constructed just outside the Greenbelt, finishing in 2013, while the transitway has yet to be constructed. In 2017, after receiving permission from the National Capital Commission, Ottawa began a new environmental assessment for both projects, which would go through the Greenbelt.

In 2019, four out of seven potential locations were short-listed. The city then used four criteria — transportation, natural environment, social/cultural environment and cost —  to make its final choice. The route it picked ranked first in all criteria except for “natural environment:” originally option seven, the route had the lowest cost but would have a significant impact on the Greenbelt, requiring the most widening of an existing road and the extension of two existing watercourse crossings. Ottawa presented this option to the public in June 2021.

But the commission prefers two different options — options one and four, both of which would have relatively low impact upon the Greenbelt’s core natural areas and require only one new watercourse crossing, but were of moderate cost. Option four also had more impact on the local community. Maryam El-Akhrass, a spokesperson for the National Capital Commission, told The Narwhal the commission is currently working with the city “to find suitable measures to limit the environmental impact on the Greenbelt.” 

Heweyer also said discussions between the city and the commission are still ongoing. He said that all route options would impact the Greenbelt to some degree, since to avoid it entirely, “you’d have to go south — you’re talking a long way south — and it really wouldn’t service that area anymore if you did that.” 

The Ottawa chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society has been an avid opponent of the Brian Coburn Boulevard and Cumberland Transitway projects and its online petition against the project has over 5,000 signatures. McDonnell said the Mer Bleue sector of the Greenbelt is already heavily fragmented by roads and is unable to support another.

“At the end of the day, it’s a six-lane highway, and it would cause irreparable harm to Mer Bleue, just given the proximity, with things like road salt, impact on wildlife movements,” he said. “If there were ever to be a spill of a tanker or something like that on that road, that would be a disaster.”

Even the wilderness society accepts that the Greenbelt’s u-shape around the city means that some construction through it is unavoidable. But McDonnell would like to see better protection for wildlife in the area. He said the National Capital Commission has done such protective measures in the past: when Hunt Club Road was expanded around Stony Swamp, for example, it mandated underpasses and fences to keep animals off the road.

The wilderness society has also recommended the city make use of existing roads, like the Blackburn Hamlet Bypass about 100 metres north of the proposed route, which is what would be widened if one of the commission’s preferred routes were chosen. 

The group would also prefer the city add on to the light-rail transit expansion crossing the Greenbelt in the west, east, and south ends of the city rather than building a new bus corridor. The approved light-rail expansion is in phase two of construction and will add 44 kilometres of new rail and 24 new transit stations. The southern extension to the airport is set to be finished later in 2023 and the total project by 2025.

“The city is spending a whole lot of money on [light-rail transit] and so it doesn’t make sense to be building roads at the same time,” McDonnell said.

Natural disasters, such as last year’s derecho, are another worry

Urban development is not the only threat. The derecho that ripped through southern Ontario last May, with winds clocked by Environment Canada at over 130 kilometres an hour, caused significant damage to the Ottawa Greenbelt’s forest canopy and natural areas. The National Capital Commission said the storm was at least as severe as if not more so than the 1998 ice storm, which killed 35 and injured over a thousand people throughout eastern Ontario and southern Quebec.

“Hundreds of thousands of trees were impacted, especially in the Pine Grove, Southern Farm and Pinhey Forest sectors of the Greenbelt,” El-Akhrass said. “We estimate that we have lost approximately 70 per cent of the upper canopy layer in these areas, which cover about 2,700 hectares of land. The storm also left its mark on large parts of the Mer Bleue and Stony Swamp sectors.”

El-Akhrass said mature trees were uprooted and will take years to regenerate, affecting their ecological benefit, “including carbon storage, moderating local climate by providing shade and regulating temperature extremes.” She added the storm’s profound impact on the Greenbelt will be felt for years to come and numerous species will need to “adjust their behaviour and demonstrate their resiliency.”

McDonnell said the storm demonstrates the impact of climate change on a fragile ecosystem like the Greenbelt and more violent storms of the same nature are likely to occur in the future.

“It demonstrates the need for large conserved areas because a storm like this can wipe out a fairly substantial section of it,” McDonnell said. “Nature’s great, it will recover on its own, but in the meantime, species will be told to relocate elsewhere.” He added it is fortunate there was not more fragmentation to the impacted areas otherwise wildlife would have had nowhere to go.

The National Capital Commission is at the beginning of its process for the natural restoration of the Greenbelt, preparing long-term recovery plans that include debris management and tree planting. However, “it will take time to see a significant difference in the landscape,” El-Akhrass said.

El-Akhrass said there have already been signs of recovery, like a population of specialized woodpeckers that appeared after an increase of native insects ate dead or dying coniferous trees.

“For the first time since 2014, American three-toed woodpeckers have been seen in the Greenbelt,” she said.

Will the policy changes in Ontario’s Bill 23 affect the Greenbelt? 

Last November, the provincial government passed Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, making sweeping changes to development policy across Ontario, including the weakening or elimination of much environmental oversight of development applications. Bill 23 has a number of provisions that will likely make future encroachments on Ontario’s protected green spaces easier — the legislation that protects wetlands such as Mer Bleue Bog at the provincial level was also significantly weakened.  

The Doug Ford government has also made the controversial decision to open parts of the provincially managed Ontario Greenbelt in the southern part of the province to development.  

But, as Heweyer pointed out, Bill 23 does not have any direct impacts on the Ottawa Greenbelt because of the lands’ federal status. Still, there is the possibility of indirect impacts on the Greenbelt from future construction of provincial infrastructure, such as transit corridors or road widening. Heweyer said he is unsure how the municipal, provincial and federal governments would handle it if the province were to move to use Bill 23 to develop any part of Ottawa’s Greenbelt. 

Canada is the “landowner and a superior level of government,” he points out: it could use its muscle to impose its will, just as the province is using Bill 23 to override municipal governments’ planning and zoning choices. “I’d like to think that wouldn’t happen but who knows what could happen in the future,” Heweyer said, adding that the city and federal government have a good relationship when it comes to figuring out zoning for building infrastructure and services.

The National Capital Commission told The Narwhal that the National Capital Act means Bill 23 will have no impact on its mandate to “prepare plans for and assist in the development, conservation and improvement of the National Capital Region.”

Would national park status give the Ottawa Greenbelt better protection? 

McDonnell and the rest of the Ottawa Valley Chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society have been pushing for the federal government to designate the Ottawa Greenbelt as a national urban park. McDonnell said this status would provide greater protections against development, creating more requirements to manage the area for ecological integrity and biodiversity.

“Right now, it’s just a big piece of federal land. Nobody really knows where the boundaries are … it’s just sort of empty land,” McDonnell said.

“So, it makes sense that people would wonder, well, why aren’t we developing that?”

The society raised the issue during last fall’s municipal election and has also had meetings with the commission, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault and Parks Canada. It is circulating a new petition with its suggestion.

In December 2021, Guilbeault’s official mandate letter set the objective of creating a network of national urban parks across Canada, one in each province and territory “with a target of 15 new urban parks by 2030.” 

Nadia Khaireddine, a spokesperson for Parks Canada, told The Narwhal the federal agency aims to designate six parks by 2026 and is developing a new national urban parks policy to guide their creation. She said the agency has heard from many people about potential sites across Canada, “including in the national capital region, but an official intake process has not yet begun.” She added that the agency would consider “the site’s potential for protecting nature, connecting Canadians with nature and advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.”

Having a national urban park 10 minutes from Parliament Hill, McDonnell said, would “demonstrate [Canada’s] conservation leadership to Canadians and to people visiting from other parts of the world.”

“The status of national urban park would help elevate the Greenbelt, give it the importance that it deserves.”

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The Chiefs of Ontario are calling on the Ford government to repeal the More Homes Built Faster Act, or Bill 23, stating the government’s lack of consultation with First Nations makes the bill unconstitutional.

At a special chiefs assembly hosted by the Assembly of First Nations on Dec. 7, Grand Council Chief Reginald Niganobe of the 39-member Anishinabek Nation also said that Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark had offered to discuss the legislation with Indigenous leaders before it passed, then didn’t follow through with setting up a meeting. 

Wednesday’s session in Ottawa was attended by five chiefs, some in person and some virtually, from both urban and rural areas of the province. It follows a Nov. 23 statement by Chiefs of Ontario opposing the bill, as well as multiple statements by individual Indigenous leaders. Clark admitted on Nov 29. that the bill passed without Indigenous consultation.

But that wasn’t for lack of trying on First Nations’ part, said Niganobe. He said Clark sent a letter about Bill 23 to Ontario Regional Chief Glen Hare on Oct. 25 which included a request to meet with the Chiefs of Ontario to discuss feedback on the proposed legislation. Clark gave the group a Nov. 24 deadline. The bill was passed four days after that deadline, without a meeting.But Hare replied and agreed to a discussion, Niganobe said. Stating that the bill would have negative impacts on First Nations’ inherent Aboriginal and Treaty Rights, Hare requested a meeting to discuss these concerns with Clark, Premier Doug Ford, Minister of Indigenous Affairs of Ontario Greg Rickford and Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks David Piccini, according to Niganobe.

The lack of response, Niganobe said, shows “the government’s so-called commitment to engage with First Nations is entirely false, and the government needs to be held accountable for the blatant disregard of our nation-to-nation relationship.”

In a statement to The Narwhal, Clark did not answer questions about whether he had sent the October letter, or neglected to respond to a meeting request. He said the Progressive Conservative government will “continue to engage with Indigenous communities and organizations regarding the impact of Bill 23.” He added that the government is “committed to fulfilling its duty to consult and is focused on creating meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities and partners as we look to advance prosperity for all Ontarians.”

Niganobe said the Ford government has only consulted with Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services, which is a service organization, not a nation with Treaty Rights.

“Minister Clark must be reminded that this does not constitute engagement and consultation with First Nations,” he said.

The Chiefs of Ontario said in an email to The Narwhal that Ford has agreed to meet with them, but that “details and dates of this meeting are to be determined.” Ford did not reply to The Narwhal’s request for comment.

Chiefs say Ford government is pushing Indigenous consultation onto municipalities

Niganobe said Bill 23 also shows the provincial government’s intent “to continue avoiding all their responsibilities” in relation to consultation with First Nations in the province. The government “intended to delegate engagement duties to municipalities,” Niganobe said: last week, Clark told the newsletter Queen’s Park Today that cities and towns “also have a role to deal with our Indigenous Partners.” 

The duty to consult and accommodate First Nations on matters related to their Aboriginal and Treaty Rights under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, rests with the Crown, which includes both provincial and federal governments but not smaller local governments.

“As they have in the past, and as they’ve done with industry, they’re pushing off the responsibility to somebody else to deal with, which is unacceptable,” Niganobe said.

On Wednesday, Chief Kelly LaRocca of Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation said that although municipalities do have less of a constitutional duty to consult with First Nations, she had seen many city and town councils voice support for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, with some adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

Still, she said, “they’re still not consulting adequately and appropriately.” “We really put a call out to those municipalities to do that properly and engage in that work of reconciliation and discussion with First Nations in their respective areas,” LaRocca said.

She and other chiefs have begun seeking out discussions with municipalities regarding Bill 23. LaRocca recently represented her nation and all of the Williams Treaties First Nations at a Pickering council meeting about the Ford government’s move to amend the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Act as part of its plan to open up 7,400 acres of land in southern Ontario’s protected Greenbelt to development. Chief Mary Duckworth of Caldwell First Nation said the nation has had meetings with municipalities within its territory on Lake Erie, including La Salle, Chatham and Tecumseh, as well as the Essex Region Conservation Authority. The nation has plans to meet with the City of Windsor and the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority next week.

“We look forward to being able to have more conversations around this and with the government to educate them, but also to make it clear that we are not going to stand for this neglect,” Duckworth said.

In an email interview with The Narwhal this week, another Williams Treaty leader, Chief Laurie Carr of Hiawatha First Nation, said that along with Bill 23, she is worried about the effects of other land use policy changes introduced by the Ford government without Indigenous consultation. Those include the amendments to the Greenbelt Plan — “we share concerns of Ontarians of reported conflicts of interest that may have led to this legislation,” Carr said — and changes announced to the province’s wetland evaluation system.Carr also addressed comments in a leaked government document The Narwhal reported on in early November, which noted that Indigenous communities might react “negatively” if Bill 23 leads to First Nations needing to monitor and consult on an increased volume of development applications without an increase in resources.“Our Nations are already inundated with consultation requests, underfunded in capacity development to monitor and respond,” said Carr. “It is unconscionable that the provincial government’s primary focus is that we will be more ‘critical’ about fewer protections and loss of cultural heritage when their priority should be focused on their legal obligations as treaty partners including robust consultation.”

Indigenous housing needs not addressed by Ontario’s Bill 23: leaders

One virtual attendant at Wednesday’s session was NDP MPP Sol Mamakwa of Kiiwetinoong in northwestern Ontario, who had brought up the effect of Bill 23 on Indigenous communities at Queen’s Park that morning. There, he asked Piccini about the Ford government’s “failure to engage in dialogue with the rights holders about the duty to consult and accommodate” which he said “makes Bill 23 unlawful at worst and undemocratic at best.”

Rickford responded by saying that the need to address the housing problem for families, including Indigenous communities, means they will “move ahead with a balanced approach … to work with our Indigenous communities and their leadership to ensure the housing opportunities are there for them as well.” 

But just about every chief in attendance on Wednesday said no one in the Ford government had engaged them on how Bill 23 could help resolve the housing problem for Indigenous communities.

“I would invite Premier Ford as well as his government to spend some time in my territory to look at the housing needs in my community,” said Chief Rachel Manitowabi of Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, on Manitoulin Island on Lake Huron.

Duckworth also doesn’t believe Bill 23 will solve the housing problem for Indigenous communities. She said the Ontario government is using the “wrong tools” to build 1.5 million houses, including “removing environmental protections and getting rid of sustainable land use planning.”

“The consultation and accommodation seems to be left out in Ontario when it comes to Bill 23,” Duckworth said.

“If you want to build 1.5 million homes, I say build up, but you’re not taking our green spaces, you’re not tearing down our trees and you are not going to poison our water and our air.”

With files from Fatima Syed.

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