Canada’s remote Indigenous communities have undertaken a multi-year project to build resilience and capacity, yet results still leave room for improvement. -By Donna Chan
Creating a better and more resilient future requires Canada’s Indigenous communities and their allies to take proactive steps to build up their capacity for support and their levels of resilience overall. Recently, a Building Resilience and Capacity With Remote Indigenous Communities in Canada project was undertaken in four remote communities. The multi-agency project focused on how the evaluation and assessment of the communities’ planning processes in managing risks and threats, dealing with change, and capitalizing on opportunities that presented themselves.
While no two communities would take exactly the same approach due to each community’s unique beliefs, perspectives, and lived experiences, there are still lessons to be learned. Here, some of the key takeaways will be examined, as well as some of the opportunities to improve and build on what was learned.
How Indigenous Communities Are At Risk
Indigenous communities are considered particularly at risk because of their unique tied to place and the environment as a part of their culture and lifestyle. Climate change, displacement, and the arrival of outsiders can all place communities at risk.
Climate change impacts communities due to the delicate balance between the community and the environment in Canada’s northern regions. These groups are particularly susceptible to unfreezing of ice and permafrost, and shifts in the migration of species they have traditionally relied on for food, trade, and life-sustaining resources. However, they have not always had the statistically driven frameworks to measure these changes, presenting challenges when interfacing with provincial and scientific groups who also have an interest in monitoring and managing climate change.
Displacement and dislocation also impacts remote Indigenous peoples. Resettlement, land dispossession, and landscape fragmentation disrupts both daily life and long-standing institutions and knowledge systems. Losing access or shifting access to traditional spaces can impact interpersonal relationships, family and kinship, oral history, and education, as well as cause economic upheaval that can be tied to marginalization of their peoples, a higher level of burden due to ill health, and higher-than-average levels of socio-economic disadvantage.
Outsiders also pose risks to Indigenous communities in ways that go beyond displacement. Losing the ability to self-govern their communities and independently manage local resources can reduce both independence and adaptability, endangering the future of the community. Misunderstandings, historical prejudices, and specific negative experiences with corporate and government entities also work to keep Indigenous communities at a disadvantage in many ways.
How Indigenous Communities Are Resilient
Give the intense relationship between Indigenous peoples and their lands, their vulnerabilities can also create the potential for great resilience. Their high degree of observance of environmental change can mean that they are aware of changes happening sooner than non-Indigenous peoples and suburban/urban dwellers who lack a daily integration with the environment. This can give proactive communities an advantage when seeking to adapt to changes in the environment and economic conditions.
Indeed, thanks to the closely linked spiritual connection with their lands, and even going so far as including Nature as a type of sentient entity able to reciprocate and collaborate with them, Indigenous communities can build agency into their plans to manage place-based risks. They may choose to establish spaces for species conservation, protect sacred sites, create access rules, and establish other kinds of habitat protections. They can anticipate and plan for shifts in resources and habitation.
This type of resilience depends on a measure of self-governance and independence. Indigenous peoples’ ability to rally, protest, and legally challenge outside actions in courts of law helps re-build their innate resilience. The same is true of calling for policy action and direct action, which strengthens Indigenous peoples’ agency because it promotes self-determination, defends land rights, challenges power relations, and promotes justice.
Regarding institutions, in locations where Indigenous peoples are able to self-govern their lands or at least have considerable input when it comes to resource use and land development, biodiversity conservation and the reduction of deforestation and land degradation are the results. Thus, environmental stress is able to be better managed when Indigenous peoples either have governing power or considerable input in local and provincial governing power in order to significantly impact policy.
How Resilience Assessment Tools Can Help
Resilience assessment tools can help communities see where they are succeeding and where opportunities remain. For example, while sending young people out to be interjuridictional workers can strengthen the economics in a remote community, it creates challenges for knowledge and culture transfer that need to be addressed sooner rather than later if the community wants to preserve valued traditions. Assessment tools can help pinpoint what’s most valuable, what systems are in place to support those values, and resources that might help fill the gaps.
Another example is in identifying ways to strengthen kinship networks. As communities extend out into new places, kinship ties can weaken. However, outside tools such as social media can help reconnect displaced community members, keep links with talented but traveling workers, and maintain governance links outside of the immediate area. Building the habit of using such tools in strategic ways into the existing culture can strengthen the resiliency of the community for the future.
How Non-Indigenous Individuals and Entities Can Help
Local and provincial governments of these Indigenous communities need to coordinate with them to help those communities remain as resilient. It is not appropriate to rely on or cultivate a “riding to the rescue” framework when it comes to supporting these communities. Instead, there needs to be a balance of helping Indigenous communities adapt to new technologies and ways of gaining knowledge and doing activities while also enabling them to keep as much of their institutions and Indigenous knowledge structures intact as possible. This will provide the best combination of blending new knowledge and methods of completing vital tasks while still retaining the culture and knowledge that has helped these Indigenous communities become who they are today.
It would also help for local, provincial, and even the National government to provide funding where possible to support Indigenous communities. While Indigenous communities are becoming more integrated into Western culture in terms of both pecuniary wealth and land ownership, most communities are still at an economic disadvantage. Their poverty benefits no one, and perpetuates many disadvantages and broken systems that could be fixed with strategic disbursements, fiscal support for existing systems, and infrastructure development.
Of course, it is an evolving situation. While the Building Resilience and Capacity With Remote Indigenous Communities in Canada project put a focus on the issue, it was not a “one and done” study or set of solutions. However, by giving continual support and attention to the needs of remote Indigenous communities as exemplified by the communities participating in the study, Canada’s government and local agencies can help these communities fortify their institutions with the latest resources. This can include new knowledge and new methods to help with land preservation, cultural preservation, and with their continued ability to be resilient in ever-growing and ever-challenging changes to the environment and society so these Indigenous communities continue to flourish for many generations to come.