Indigenous Guardians and Wildfire Management:
Project Summary
Global climate change is causing more frequent and severe forest fires across Canada’s landscapes. Local and regional weather patterns have resulted in highly variable fire seasons from year to year, leaving many Indigenous Nations and communities vulnerable to wildfire. The 2021 fire season alone illustrates the devastating impacts of wildfire that threaten our livelihoods as Indigenous Peoples and as stewards of our lands.
Scientists and policy makers are starting to recognize that implementing Indigenous Knowledge systems in fire management, and forest management more broadly, would not only protect communities but also promote forest health and help rejuvenate biodiversity. Greater Indigenous involvement in fire management could both bolster the number of available fire crews, and help protect settlements and other public infrastructure through traditional practices.
Indigenous Nations can offer significant contributions to address some of the most pressing challenges of our generation. In particular, Indigenous Guardians have demonstrated that they are effective steward of our lands and territories, benefiting all Canadians. The rapid growth of Guardian programs across the country is a reflection of a deep obligation and responsibility we have to maintain and care for the land. This is a fundamental worldview that drives the many aspects of our work.
Project Description
The Indigenous Guardians and Wildfire Management project aims to develop a draft national strategy for how Indigenous Guardians might become more actively involved in fire management planning and response. This includes identifying ways to include Indigenous values and approaches to the management of fire-driven ecosystems, restore cultural burning practices and traditional fire stewardship, and exploring mechanisms for coordinated wildfire response across all Guardian programs.
With over 70 Guardian programs across the county established or currently being established, this strategy could supplement the wide breadth of skills and training within existing and emerging Guardians programs to include elements of fire management, fire stewardship and response. Not only is this critical aspect of land stewardship needed to protect our communities in times of crisis, Guardian involvement in fire could help restore the health of our environment and its people, and offer significant revenue streams to support Guardian programs over time.
Towards a National Strategy
To help develop a draft national Guardians and wildlife strategy, the Indigenous Leadership Initiative has established a national advisory committee of academics, practitioners and experts. This committee is helping to identify opportunities, gaps, challenges and barriers that could influence the role of Guardians in fire management.
A preliminary scoping paper has also been developed to help confirm the scale of the opportunity as well as key issues or considerations to be addressed as part of the strategy.
Outreach with existing and emerging Guardians programs is also key to developing an effective national strategy. As a first step, this virtual workshop has been organized in order to seek advice and direction from Guardians and their Nations.
The workshop will help identify key priorities for the draft national strategy, based on the roles that Guardians and their nations aspire to fill. For example, some of the roles that Guardians may want to play with respect to fire management include:
Professional Type-1 wildland firefighters, available for local and national response;
National champions for the restoration of cultural burning practices;
Fire technicians with specialized equipment and training;
Mobile workforces to carry out community-scale FireSmart projects;
Emergency service providers including mobile catering and base support;
Nationally, and internationally accredited wildland firefighting trainers;
Incident Management Teams, providing mutual aid support to our communities;
Fire and forest ecology planners, researchers and consultants;
Equipment managers of nationally available assets including fire equipment, vehicles and aircraft; and
Educators and spokespeople for fire prevention and ecological health.
The strategy will also contain key recommendations that target potential revenue streams for Guardian programs and support our entry into regional and national fire management structures. It will describe how these roles can help assert our own autonomy by building both local and mutual aid capacity amongst the communities that are supported by Guardians.
The recommendations offered by this project will include strategic goals and tangible steps that can be taken to realize elements of a national fire program. For example, many studies explain the need for capacity building at the local and regional scales to address the unique challenges facing Indigenous Nations and communities. Some of these barriers need to be understood in order to develop safe, efficient and cost-effective implementation of the goal.
It is the hope of the ILI that the draft national strategy will serve multiple audiences, including Indigenous leadership, crown governments and other partners. We are all faced with the devastating biodiversity and climate implications of increased wildfire activity across the country, and better enabling Indigenous leadership in this arena will benefit us all.
Summary
Indigenous Nations and communities are experiencing the most severe impacts of climate change and altered natural processes as a result of our exclusion from lands and resource management. Wildfire has the potential to leave intergenerational impacts, and could destroy local livelihoods as experienced by several communities during the 2021 fire season.
The alteration of natural fire regimes has also created conditions that accelerate fire behaviour in a warming climate. Scientists, policy makers and fire managers are recognizing that conventional firefighting is inadequate; we need the implementation of Indigenous Knowledge systems in order to restore the natural balance on our territories and protect our communities.
Fire management, fire stewardship and wildfire response are critical elements of a holistic approach to Indigenous-led conservation. This project will help determine what direction Guardians want to explore further, and take the necessary steps to address our lack of involvement in emergency decision-making that often leaves long-lasting impacts upon generations of our people. As ‘mega fires’ continue to become more severe and frequent, it is time we design a strategy that addresses the challenges we face, and help alleviate some of the pressures of dwindling resources across the country.
This project is initiating a long-overdue conversation about how fires have impacted our communities, and how Guardians can offer potential solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of our time.