Program

Mi’gmawei Mawio’mi Secretariat (MMS) is responsible for Ango’tmeq Nm’tginen (taking care of our land) to support the Gespe’gewa’gi Mi’gmaq communities of Gesgapegiag, Gespeg, and Listuguj First Nations. The health and wellbeing of members has been impacted by centuries of cumulative effects from development that continues to erode Mi’gmaq access to and availability of natural resources and sites.
To better understand and address cumulative effects, MMS is collaborating with community members and organizations to design and implement a Two-Eyed Seeing and Mi’gmaq-led project titled Gespe’gewa’gi Mi’gmaq Social Health Baseline Assessment. The goals of the project include to better understand and educate community members on documented health risks, for the results to support future community projects and cumulative effects impact assessments, to act as an informational tool to guide decision making, and to help inform regional planning.

Attend this session to hear about some of the impacts raised by community members including high levels of water and aquatic species contamination from various operations including pulp mills, mines, waste disposal, and development, and how these contaminations are believed to be linked to health impacts. Come learn about the methodology used to develop a wholistic understanding of the cumulative effects in Gespe’gewa’gi, what they learned about cumulative effects from community members through interviews and surveys and how that influenced their environmental sampling program. The speakers will talk about the preliminary results of the sampling program, share next steps and lessons learned, and share their strategy to address existing and preventing future effects.
Speakers: Juliette Barnaby, Director, Ango’tmeq Nm’tginen (Mi’gmawei Mawio’mi Secretariat), and member of Listuguj First Nation
Jaime Malone, Community Impact and Communications Specialist, Odonaterra Inc.

During the regulatory review phase of many environmental assessments, participating Indigenous groups have expressed concerns about conventional cumulative effects assessment (CEA) methods that rely on conditions at the time of regulatory filing as the baseline for assessment. Indigenous intervenors have asserted that CEA should instead use a pre-industrial or pre-disturbance baseline that encompasses the historic natural state of the environment prior to the occurrence of major anthropogenic changes caused by settlement and development. On the Westcoast Energy Inc. (Westcoast) Aspen Point Program (the project), Stantec Consulting Ltd. produced a Regional Historical Overview (RHO) to supplement the CEA and respond to Indigenous concerns about current baseline. The intent of the RHO is to situate the project in the context of anthropogenic changes to the ecology and landscape that have occurred over time. The RHO provides i) a general narrative description of the natural and human history in the area surrounding the project from precontact to the current existing baseline conditions, with a specific focus on the post-treaty period from approximately 1900 to present; and ii) a geospatial analysis that visually represents in a series of figures changes in land use from pre-disturbance conditions circa1960 to current existing baseline conditions. Input from Indigenous groups engaged in the project indicated that a pre-disturbance baseline was generally understood as a time before widespread settlement. Since the 1950s represents a threshold that saw substantial escalation of industrial activities in Northeast BC, the geospatial analysis uses pre-1960 to depict anthropogenic changes to the landscape that resulted from agricultural, urban, industrial, forestry and other developments. The RHO is designed to supplement the CEA completed for the project by acknowledging the importance of past events in determining the present-day environmental conditions.
Speaker: Colin Buchanan, Technical Discipline Leader, Cultural & Social Sciences, Stantec Consulting Ltd.

The Kokètì ekwǫ̀ (the Bathurst barren ground caribou herd) has seen one of the most dramatic herd declines, down to only 6,800 animals in 2023. The Tłı̨chǫ people have relied on Kokètì ekwǫ̀ since time immemorial, but a harvest ban since 2015 reduced peoples’ interaction with the herd and the land. To enhance conservation and people’s connection to the land, the Tłı̨chǫ Government developed the Ekwǫ̀ Nàxoèhdee K’è (Boots on the Ground) caribou guardian program based on the concept of “We Watch Everything”, a term coined by Behchokǫ̀ Elder Michel Louis Rabesca, focused on monitoring key indicators such as health of caribou and the land, predators, climate change and industrial disturbance.

Since the inception of the program in 2016, the caribou guardians have observed cumulative effects of climate change, as warmer summers and tundra fires, in addition to increasing industrial pressures from mining roads and operations impacting caribou behaviour and their seasonal migration. Using traditional ways of traveling the land to key geographical features known as ekwǫ̀ nǫɂokè (water crossings) and what’àà (eskers), where elders anticipate ekwǫ̀ herds’ arrival, the team uses traditional harvesting methods and traditional harvesting areas to monitor caribou thus allowing them to go back to the original source to remember the stories, language, knowledge, and cultural ways of life that connects them to ekwǫ̀.
Speakers: Petter Jacobsen, Researcher, Tłı̨chǫ Government
Tyanna Steinwand, Manager of Research Operations and Training, Department of Culture and Lands Protection, Tłı̨chǫ Research and Training Institute, and member of Tłı̨chǫ Nation