A Yale University podcast devoted to exploring the big questions animals raise about what it means to be human.
Ep. 33 – Valérie Courtois on Indigenous-led land and wildlife stewardship
“I’ve been at this for almost twenty years now, and in my time, the vast majority of protected areas that have been established and designated in Canada have been either led or co-led by Indigenous Peoples,” Valérie Courtois, founder and director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative (ILI), says. “The boreal forest contains up to a quarter of the world’s freshwaters and wetlands. It has the largest terrestrial storehouses of carbon in the globe. These are things that Indigenous Nations know intrinsically about those landscapes. And so what the ILI does really is to provide a national kind of voice and framework for advocacy of that leadership that is existing on the ground.” Photo courtesy of Nadya Kwandibens.
In 2017, seven Indigenous Nations and groups in Eastern Canada came together to sign an historic agreement to save a herd of caribou that had sustained all of them for time immemorial. The region’s caribou herd was once the world’s largest with 800,000 individuals. For thousands of years, indigenous peoples and the caribou met in this region. But then the herd began disappearing. By 2018, there were only 5,500 caribou left in the herd – a 99 percent decrease from 20 years before. Canada’s governments weren’t taking action, so these Indigenous Nations stepped in to save the herd. Overcoming long-entrenched divisions, and united by their common relationship to the caribou, these Nations created a groundbreaking framework for sustainably managing the herd and stopping its decline.
That agreement, known as the Ungava Peninsula Caribou Aboriginal Roundtable, or UPCART, is just one of many examples of how Indigenous Peoples across Canada are leading the way on protecting some of the world’s most ecologically important ecosystems and treasured wildlife. For millennia, Indigenous Peoples have been the caretakers of the land and have relied on animals–caribou, marten, goose, and the abundance of other animals that call Canada home. But industrial development, such as logging and mining, is putting much of the country’s wildlife and wild places at risk–along with the ways of life that depend on them. While Canada’s provinces drag their feet on needed protections, Indigenous Nations are combining Indigenous knowledge, western science, and thoughtful strategy to chart a new path for their people and for the rest of the world.
Prior to UPCART, “the only management tool that the governments were using with respect to the caribou was ‘hunting on, hunting off,'” Cortois says. “The UPCART’s strategy plan really takes much more of a nuanced approach that looks at the conditions on the ground, what we know about the population size, and the dynamics that are driving that population size – and then also prioritizes access to the Indigenous Nations as the rights-holders for those areas.” Photo courtesy of Pat Kane.
Six of the eight Kaska land guardians pose by the Liard River. “We know that we’re in an era of a biodiversity and climate crisis,” says Courtois, “and even though we’re so lucky in Canada to have such large intact landscapes and functioning ecosystems in place, we have a responsibility to the rest of the globe with respect to those areas and those ecosystems.” Photo courtesy of Taylor Roads.
Our guest on this episode, Valérie Courtois, has been a tireless voice for empowering Indigenous communities to manage and protect their ancestral lands. Val is a member of the Innu Nation, in the heart of Canada’s boreal forest, and is the founder and director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative. The Initiative is working to create a new model of Indigenous-led conservation across Canada. These efforts are not just significant for the lands and wildlife of Canada, but for empowering Indigenous Nations to define their own futures after centuries of colonial rule and cultural genocide. In the last few years, thanks to Val’s leadership, Canada’s government has made an unprecedented investment in Indigenous Protected Areas and Indigenous-led land management, and momentum is only continuing to grow.
“This was the first time these Nations had come together at a table on any issue – all seven of these Nations had never sat together before,” Courtois says of the first meeting of the UPCART. “So for the first meeting, there was a lot of clearing the air, clearing assumptions and stereotypes, all of those things. People were airing their concerns and their fears and their hopes for this herd. And after the first meeting, people came together, they actually shared what their common need was – it was the first time that people with the Innu Nation realized how many caribou the Cree Nation needed and the Inuit needed and what the nature of their relationship were. There was a lot of “Well, our relationship is closer than yours,” and then finally when people were sharing they were like, “Oh wait a minute, we all have an important relationship with this caribou, and even if it’s a little bit different it doesn’t make it any less important or any less of a reason to consider those needs.” Photo courtesy of Valérie Courtois.
