Here’s a confession: “Indigenous-led conservation” is a term that’s always landed awkwardly with me, even though it’s in my job title. It feels like more of a marketing slogan than a mission statement, an appealing but slippery notion. Speaking from experience, Indigenous people are often cast as caretakers of the natural world. This designation stems from Indigenous laws and customs, but also, uncomfortably, from settler stereotypes and simplistic ideas about who we are and what we represent. There’s a vagueness about it that elicits questions: conserving whose land? Under what authority? 

Indigenous sovereignty, on the other hand, is much more concrete. 

Take, for example, a dispute in Ontario I reported on this week. Back in January, Environment and Climate Change Canada awarded 27 “Indigenous-led natural climate solutions” grants, including one to the Métis Nation of Ontario, which planned to use its $1.3 million to purchase 40 hectares of wetlands. Usually these announcements are met with little fanfare, but this one … blew up. 

Here’s why: the Métis Nation was born in the Red River Valley of what is now Manitoba, and most Métis settlements are found in the Prairies. Unlike First Nations, the Métis did not have reserves, and were repeatedly displaced and forcibly resettled. This historic injustice makes it a bit complicated (and contentious) to explain where exactly the Métis homelands are located. But one place those homelands definitely aren’t located, if you ask First Nations leaders, is southern Ontario. So why, they ask, is the federal government giving the Métis Nation of Ontario money to buy land there? 

It’s a question that gets at the distinction between the general understanding of Indigenous-led conservation and the concept of Indigenous sovereignty — which includes conservation and stewardship responsibilities, but is rooted in the reciprocal recognition between a people and their homelands. As Temagami First Nation Chief Shelly Moore-Frappier told me, “to have a nation you need land.”

The backdrop to this drama is Bill C-53, which is set to pass in the House of Commons, and which would recognize a number of provincial Métis governments and lay the groundwork for treaty negotiations, including in Ontario. The federal government and the Métis Nation of Ontario have said the bill is about the right to self-governance, not land rights. But not everyone is buying it — especially now. “The government is telling us over and over it’s not about land — and yet they’re giving $1.3 million to the same group to buy land,” said Jason Batise, a Matachewan First Nation member and executive director of Wabun Tribal Council.

As Moore-Frappier pointed out, treaties are all about land. “How do you make a treaty without land?” she asked. 

That’s a head-scratcher, and one that this story about the Métis Nation of Ontario does not even begin to answer. Good luck to the feds with that! But it is a useful primer to understanding Indigenous Rights, which are impacted — for better or for worse — by the funding decisions and recognition of the federal government. For everyone who cares about reconciliation, it’s important to learn who Indigenous people really are — not as general ideas, but as members of specific nations, with distinct histories and lands of our own. 

Take care and read Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed, 

Michelle Cyca
Editor, Indigenous-led conservation

This week in The Narwhal

What we’re reading