Stories

Two networks that provide support to Indigenous guardians on BC’s coast, the Coastal Stewardship Network and the Ha-ma-yas Stewardship Network, partnered with the Office of Aboriginal Education at Vancouver Island University (VIU) to develop a custom, vocational training program designed specifically for Indigenous guardians.

The Ha-ma-yas Stewardship Network supports Guardian programs from five First Nations on Northern Vancouver Island and the Southern Central Coast of BC. It helped commission a study to identify the best opportunities for guardians to work with resource agencies to manage and protect the marine environment.

The Indigenous Leadership Initiative (ILI) is promoting a federally funded, Indigenous-led National Indigenous Guardians Network in Canada. This network would support the development and employment of guardians across the country. It has generated broad support, including from the Assembly of First Nations which passed a resolution in 2015 calling for a national guardians program.

The Heiltsuk, Kitasoo/Xai’Xais, Nuxalk and Wuikinuxv Nations realized that they could better reach their goals of ensuring healthy and balanced ecosystems, healthy local economies, and healthy communities by working together.

The Coastal Stewardship Network (originally called the Coastal Guardian Watchmen Network) was created in 2005. It was established when Guardian Watchmen on BC’s North and Central Coasts came together to think about how to develop and expand the role of local Guardian Watchmen programs.

For over a decade, Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs have been concerned about a decline in moose populations on their territory due primarily to overhunting. A lack of provincial Conservation Officers in the field meant existing rules and regulations were no longer being followed.

“True community-engaged research occurs when members of communities and research-based institutions collaborate throughout the research process towards shared outcomes,” writes Megan Adams and her co-authors in a recent contribution to the “Toolbox of Research Principles in an Aboriginal Context: ethics, respect, fairness, reciprocity, collaboration and culture.”

When it comes to generating program funds, it helps to be creative.

Some Indigenous communities are developing permit systems that ask tourists or other resource users in the territory to pay a fee that directly contributes to funding Guardian programs.