Ideas - How brutal wildfires are 'killing' Indigenous ways of life

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

In 2021, a deadly heat dome produced a devastating wildfire season across British Columbia. While immediate media coverage often focuses on evacuations and the numbers of homes destroyed, many First Nations say what these fires do to the land in their territories — and the cultural lives of their communities — is often overlooked. "These fires are killing our way of life," says a Tmicw coordinator for the St'át'imc Chiefs Council. IDEAS visited St'át'imc territory around Lillooet, B.C. to learn how 21st-century wildfires are reshaping the landscape — and their consequences for plants, animals, and humans alike. *This is part one in a two-part series.Guests in this series:Chief Justin Kane, elected Chief of Ts'kw'aylaxw First Nation Michelle Edwards, Tmicw coordinator for the St'át'imc Chiefs Council and the former Chief of the communities of Sekw'el'was and Qu'iqten Sam Copeland, senior land guardian for the P'egp'ig'lha Council Luther Brigman, assistant land guardian for the P'egp'ig'lha Council Travis Peters, heritage supervisor and interim lands manager for Xwísten First Nation Gerald Michel, council member and the Lands Resource Liaison for Xwísten First Nation Denise Antoine, natural resource specialist for the P'egp'ig'lha CouncilDr. Jennifer Grenz, assistant professor in the department of forest resources management at the University of British Columbia. She leads the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC, which works entirely in service to Indigenous communities on land-healing and food systems revitalization projects that bring together western and Indigenous knowledge systems and centres culture and resiliency. Virginia Oeggerli, graduate student in the Indigenous Ecology Lab in the faculty of forestry at UBCDr. Sue Senger, biologist working with the Lillooet Tribal CouncilJackie Rasmussen, executive director of the Lillooet Regional Invasive Species Society

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This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. It is dead here, hey? Yeah. Jesus. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. I see a lot of these trees to the side of us are kind of leaning over. What's happening in this area? Well, all of the root systems of these trees burned up. This is Stathliam territory in interior British Columbia, more than two years after a devastating fire.

And so you know many were left standing for a while but now it's all very loose soil and or what's left in the soil and so now the trees are starting to fall over because there's there's nothing supporting them they're just like basically like poles you know stuck in the ground. You're kind of left with these just the black trunks of the trees all the branches have either broke off or burnt off in the fire and so you're left with these almost black telephone pole looking structures up the hillside. This has changed so much even since last fall hey like just in terms of understanding the scope of the devastation because, you know,

there were some branches left before, you know, and there's sort of this illusion of life, but now as time goes on, there's less and less life up on that hill. In 2021, the McKay Creek wildfire ripped through 46,000 hectares of land near Lillooet, BC. While coverage of wildfires tends to focus on the immediate effects on people, the evacuations, the numbers of homes lost, the consequences of these fires are far-reaching and long-lasting.

We don't really know, you know, the full effects of this for years down the road. And not just for human beings. It's not just the deer, it's not just the bears, it's all the other little animals that they all depend on, like the little ants right down from that to, you know, other birds and stuff. It's all interconnected. These are the connections that get lost when people talk about the number of homes that burnt and then move on in two years.

It's not two years. It's 80 years when we're talking about Mielder Winter Range. These fires are going to kill our way of life if we actually don't get in there and really assert our voice and our authority to make those changes on the ground. We're stuck with the results in the end because we're not leaving here. This is our territory. This is our home. IDEAS producer Pauline Holdsworth brings us this documentary from Stapley and Territory. And I imagine that the cultural impact and the grief is cumulative because the impact is revealed over time and then you also have you know the other fires that are happening near this territory this summer.

I think we don't talk enough about the cultural impacts of these fires. You know one of the things that I often hear, you know, other Indigenous people and people like me say, you know, we are the land. And so to see the land how it is now, where life is not coming back, it's a really difficult reality. And it's also really difficult to explain those cultural impacts and try and, you know, get help with tending to them. This is the first of a two-part series

called Healing the Land. Part One, After the Fire. On a hot, smoky day in September 2023, I arrived at the Lillooet Tribal Council Office to meet with members of an Indigenous-led post-wildfire research project. The project is led by Northern Stathliam nations, Squaila, Hoyshten, Tikwetpipetla. They're working alongside the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC and the Lillooet Regional Invasive Species Society.

It's not recognized the devastation after and the recovery and restoration. after and the recovery and restoration. And we've been dealing with it for two years. Since 2021, the ground was still smoldering and we started the table. Justin Cain, elected chief in Squail. We've done a lot of work. We've had a lot of people sitting there, but we're scrambling.

And that's what I keep saying. When I go to these meetings, I said, we need that support. We need funding to have a true restoration on the land. Look at the communities now, the bears are all over everywhere because there's no shrubs out there for them, there's no food. There's no food for us, no food for the animals. And I'm glad that you're here because what we're trying to do isn't being told anywhere. No one's hearing it and we need to find ways for that to put it in writing.

And it's all these pieces like Dr. Sue and now we're studying the mule deer. Mule deer are probably the second most important protein source for the Stoutland nation after salmon and these banks on the Fraser River are where mule deer winter range is. The McKay fire wiped out 75% of the mule deer winter range. Hi, I'm Sue Sanger, and I'm a professional biologist working with Little Wet Tribal Council. Little Wet Tribal Council has been involved

in looking at mule deer for many, many years. The Stoutland elders have said the populations of mule deer for many many years. The Stoutlum elders have said the populations of mule deer are in decline and this is before these fires. Now we have this big impact on winter range and so I'm helping to look at all the information that the nation has collected and try and help create a strategy so we can restore it. It's going to take 80 to 121 years to restore this winter range to its function that it had before this fire. So when we talk about the government not stepping up, this isn't a short-term thing.

In order to replace that winter range, the nation is going to be without that for decades to come. And when we add that to things like the salmon aren't returning, the sockeye salmon aren't returning in the numbers the nation needs them to, then families are going to hunt more. Well, where are the deer going to be? So these are the connections that get lost when people talk about the number of homes that burnt and then move on in two years. It's not two years. It's 80 years when we're talking about Mielder Winter Range.

The day I arrive, there are three active fires nearby, and the air is thick with smoke. A visceral reminder that it's not just the 2021 fire that threatens this territory. It's all the other fires too. The Casper fire is blowing up right now. And it's blowing up really good. Like it was out yesterday, but for some reason it's fired up. Travis Peters, Heritage Supervisor, as well as intern Lands Manager. What goes through your mind on a day like this, which I guess there have been a lot

of days like this, this summer where the sky is very smoky? It's very heart concerning. I mean, you know, knowing that how much have displaced the wildlife because it's not just the deer, it's not just the bears, it's all the other little animals that they all depend on, like the little ants right down from that to, you know, other birds and stuff. It's all interconnected. And when you see the smoke out here, you sort of wonder what's going through their head. Where's that fire? Which way should I go? The McKay Creek wildfire displaced wildlife to other areas, The Mackay Creek wildfire displaced wildlife to other areas, places that themselves are now on fire. So the three other fires I already know have burned more Mieldir winter range.

So we're not just worried about Mackay now. Now we have three more fires that we're going to have to do the same work on. I mean some of these fires were out. Some of them were nearly out but they backed off and they should just stay on it until it's really out. But what I'm really getting to is the back burns. A back burn is a fire intentionally lit on the edge of an active wildfire to deprive it of fuel and to try to get the larger fire under control. They need to start working with the communities, let us know when these backburns are happening and not to backburn when it's it's not needed because I know the McCabe fire was out or

it was it was puffing smoke inside the fire when we last flew it. Then they did a backburn over in Lee Creek and that's where it got out. It's these back burns that get away because they're burning unnecessarily timber and wildlife areas, habitats and we've been telling the province we'd like to at least know if you're going to back burn so we can notify our communities in case something does go wrong or justify why they need to back burn, not just because they want to learn from how it's going to burn, is what we hear. Is it going to put it out?

Is it going to stop it? And the one thing that was really heartbreaking when I first heard about the back burns when they were first just, they were blowing up and burning everything out there is how our people felt watching them knowing that they were burning their wildlife habitat, that the deer were going to be dying in these fires, that the

bear that they were actually ruining their hunting grounds, their gathering places. Michelle Edwards, I'm the team coordinator for the Statham Chiefs Council. Over even Adams Lake, oh the wind's going to pick up at four, so what do they do? They light the fire at 345 and there goes the fire. That whole community just about burnt down. It's that local knowledge that's really important to them and we need that because you know you've got elders saying in these ashes that are falling that's our wildlife right? They're actually being cremated out there and then their ashes are falling down. We have to take this stuff seriously.

We've known this stuff for years and we're just able to actually get our voices out there, right? And I think they're going to become very strong but these fires are taking away our way of life. This is, these are probably the biggest things right now, right? All that history, all that knowledge that was lost with residential school and we don't even want to go there because that's what took our knowledge base away, was when they brought us into school and we couldn't share this. We didn't have the people to get out there. Our parents were too sad, too depressed to be able to do these things, right? So there's a lot that led up to this day, but these fires are going to kill our way of life if we actually don't get in there and really assert our voice and our authority

to make those changes on the ground. And we've said it for years, we need to be an incident command. We don't need to be a commander, but somebody needs to be there going, look, you just got here, you're going to be here for two weeks and you just wiped out our environment, our whole way of life, you just took it away. How would they feel if that's how you start telling them? That's who you are. That's what you just did.

You took away our whole way of life. We aren't going to have it for a hundred years. You starving my people for a hundred years. That's what they need to be told. The honest side of it. The hurting side of it. The stuff that's going to depress us, that stuff that's going to starve us. Those are the things that they need to hear, but that's for us to make that change. Unfortunately, we have to do the hard work. We have to actually make this sacrifice

so that the next generation will be able to benefit from the work that we do. We're going to end up sacrificing our way of life so that the next generation has one. Cooks to him. The hillside across from us is McKay and this is the on our left here is still Black Hills and they kind of meet at the base of this hill. On the second day in Lillooet, we went out with three Stoutly and Landguardians and co-researchers working alongside the nation,

including members of the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC, led by Dr. Jennifer Granz. She is an Inglokopma scholar of mixed ancestry, whose family comes from the Lytton and Bonaparte First Nations. She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Forest Resources Management at UBC, and the author of Medicine Wheel for the Planet, a Journey Toward Personal and Ecological Healing. So the fire complex is about 46,000 hectares, which is really hard to sort of conceptualize in your head how large it is.

And you know, it takes hours to get from site to site. So when we were planning our fieldwork, that was something that we really needed to consider. But when you're driving over that period of time, you really get a sense of actually how big the fire is. But yeah, so we've just kind of we're coming up to the beginning of it. And so you can see all of the tree death that happened, which is almost all of it. The Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC works in service to Indigenous communities on land

healing and food systems revitalization projects. In addition to working on indigenized wildfire recovery, the lab researches the impacts of invasive species, soil microbial ecology, and what culturally important plants need. So I'm looking at all the burn layers, so I have displayed the high severity, low severity, and medium severity burn. All summer, Virginia Ogrely, a graduate student in the lab, the high severity, low severity, and medium severity burn. All summer, Virginia Ogrely, a graduate student in the lab,

has been working alongside members of Statham communities, setting up plots, seeing what plants are coming back, and testing the soil. On it, I have all my plot locations that we have done. So we have 80 plots throughout the wildfire area. The main thing the map tells me is just how much of this fire burnt at a high severity and how much my map is just covered in the color red,

which indicates high severity burn. We have significantly increasing temperatures. This area keeps breaking records over and over for temperatures. So now we've lost all the trees, we've lost the water retention. So now we have these exposed rock faces essentially and hillsides that make it that much more difficult for any recovery to occur. And that's what we're going to also be showing. And Virginia and the team noticed already this year that southern facing slopes in particular, you know, that get really, really hot are showing

very little recovery. You know, so this is the part too that we need to be thinking about when we're thinking about wildfire is like we're in a climate emergency and climate change is now leading us to a place where it is very difficult to start these ecosystems over again. It's just too hot. What can actually grow there and establish without water sources, you know, during the hottest time of the year? And that's what we're hoping to contribute to, you know, figuring out. But we can't just take for granted that the land is going to recover because we're in a different time in different conditions. At one of our first stops, Jennifer warns us not to step too close to the trees, because in many places, the soil around the roots has turned to ash.

So it burned so hot underground that the roots burned. And so if you get close to the trees, you might just have a little drop in. If you touch one of the trees, your hands come away black with soot. There's not much vegetation growing in this ground and what is growing is mostly weedy invasive species. This is some of that mustard that's everywhere through here that hasn't dried out yet.

Yeah, so another weedy species. Not much has changed here, hey? This year, no. All these plants that like really high nitrogen, after a fire, there's a big release of nitrogen that happens. And it's the exact kind of environment that invasive plants and weedy species like. And that's why we're concerned, you know, because once they get a foothold and take off,

they're often more competitive also than the native plant species. So even if there's native plant species left in the seed bank that might come back, they could then end up being out competed by these nitrogen loving invasive plants that are just way more vigorous. I've never seen, I've never seen mullein like this before.

I mean, this is supposed to show you the nutrient release that happens after fire. Like we see these weedy species, they're like the mullein is taller than I am. Like that's not normal. Like you know it's normally like half of the the height of this. But then you also see really weird plant behavior and this is the other thing that we've been paying attention to is you know we're not just trying to quantify like which plants are here is like how are the plants growing and you can see like this kind of splitting off in the flowers like these, this is not normal. There's some physiological response from stress, you know, whether it

was from the fire damage to the seeds, the soil conditions. These are the things we're taking note of as we're walking through to then form research questions later. I've never seen that. That's Luther Brighman, an assistant Papayla land guardian. And the stalk is super thick, too. It's like flat. It might be all grown together.

It looks like flat. It might be all grown together. Like it looks like it's... Okay, okay. It feels all... one. Yeah, it's thin. It's weird. The land guardians were also saying they had never seen mullein grow like this before. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, not only do we need to be worried about the threats of invasive species, but now we've got conditions where these versions of the invasive species are souped up, right?

And then now you can see all this bare soil. Well this is ripe for more. So wondering if we can just listen for a moment. So what do you hear here? I hear some insects. I hear the stream not far from us. What do you hear in terms of the animal relations or the landscape here? One of the things maybe you've noticed like you don't hear any birds. So yeah we can hear the flowing stream you know, and we've got some crickets in the background, but this is a very quiet forest. But when you look around, it's really no surprise there's not much for food around here or cover. And so for me, you know, it's a bit of a deafening silence. But the water is, you know, sort of the hopeful sound because if you look around this stream cutting through,

you can see life is in this area. And that was something that we really noticed even in these high severity burn areas that we can't sort of say that high severity burn areas are entirely without life because where there's water there's life. And it's clear that the water is acting as a, these are plant nurseries, you know, so if we look down at the species that are down there, yeah, there are invasive species for sure and there are some weedy species, but we are seeing a lot of native species

like snowberry in particular in these areas, kittikinik, and I think that is something that we're really interested in too, is how do we help these plant nurseries along? How do we move seed from these areas? Because we can't cover the whole landscape planting, but are there ways that we can use these sorts of processes to our advantage?

And this is also where do we need to then be prioritizing management of invasive species in these areas, especially as cows, and then also our other animal relations are moving through like deer, that they're not carrying the seeds of the plants that we don't want but maybe they're carrying the seeds of the plants that we do. We're seeing some deer tracks around here so that's a pretty good sign to see that they're around checking out their old winter range to see what's here.

It would be interesting to see what their decision is. The deer spend their time here because it has everything they need to live, right? And so the fact that, you know, we call this meal deer winter range, and you can see it's all burnt. We're standing. There's no crown cover, no crown closure. So there's nothing. Winter range needs to provide a place for them to stay warm. And they can't stay warm here now anymore, right? There's no cover. There's no food. At one point, we spot some mule deer in agricultural fields by the river, grazing on alfalfa. Senior

Papaitla land guardian Sam Copeland says he's been seeing the deer more and more here lately. This is like where all the mule deer hang out. It's safer there and they got more food for them. Unless they pack a lunch. Just kidding. And even right in Lalo here, in the last couple couple of years we've seen a lot more deer in town before when we never used to. It's becoming more like Princeton, or you see deer just normally up and down the street now, and it's coming to that. And we're even seeing impacts to the deer, gross and skinny. They're not very big. Some of them you see big growths on their face and it just doesn't look right. And I know Stoutland has been trying to do some assessments with our hunters to bring in some of the carcasses to understand like the head to check to see if you know

what kind of diseases there are and stuff it's very concerning. The wildfire basically capped what's been happening in our territory and we know there's been the wildlife's been threatened for many years and this just pushed it over the top. I know the deer population here is bad. Like we've seen nine. I remember when I was 13, just over here, past this mountain, you could see in the sagebrush fields. You could look down and they're just, you don't even see them, you just see the whole ground moving, thousands of deer. And that's how they used to be when they come in here and getting ready for winter feeding. I know a lot of it is from these

fields and if we could prove that through data, because they get a lot of diseased deer and, you know, different different things and they say it's from overpopulation but it's more from what they're eating and stuff you know. They were never supposed to eat the alfalfa that's out there eh? Anything that's got any kind of hydration in it right? They're going to have to eat it when it gets this hot out here. So it's scary to know that they might get more diseases with this fire taking away most of the grasses up here that they would healthily live off of. Like to me I think of them eating out there,

it must taste good to them, you know, but it's not for them. It's kind of like us going to McDonald's, you know. It's tasty but doesn't fill you up and it doesn't do anything for your health or nothing, right? Today with the costs of everything, food security, of everything, food security, food sovereignty needs to be at the top of our minds. And the processes of fire management doesn't protect our cultural traditional foods and our medicines that are out there that not only we survived off of, but the wildlife survived off, the birds, the four-legged, the ones that live in the ground, they all rely on those systems as well.

On a cultural perspective, looking at it, like all of our stories, like Transformers stories, like if you look into the legends and there's some sort of ecological factor in there, ties the story to the land. Denise Antoine, a natural reserve specialist for the Papayla Council. So currently you talk about like having endangered species in an area, whether it be like a plant or an animal, it's tied to our old stories of the land. And oh, look at there's an eagle. Oh, wow.

It's a young one. That's cool. So it's going to fly right by us. I bet. So as I was saying, like any endangered species of the area, like right now, they're there, and we have stories like we were taught by our grandparents and they were taught by their grandparents. And when a species becomes extinct, then it becomes a legend. So when it becomes a legend, you know, that means that they're gone forever. So we're at that time where we're critical. On Ideas, you're listening to Healing the Land, part one, After the Fire. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts.

And on CBC Radio One in Canada, across North America, on US Public Radio, and on Sirius XM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca. ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighborhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. In 2021, the McKay Creek wildfire ripped through 46,000 hectares of land near Lillooet, BC. This is a region with a long history of fire, but this fire left a new kind of devastation

in its wake. We're working in an entirely new space. These are climate events that have caused destruction that we don't really understand. You know as an example where we were in the high severity burn area we were walking on the ash and what we have to recognize is what is in there normally is the seed bank of all those native trees and shrubs and so yeah what do we do Like, does stuff grow if we're just planting it straight in ash? We're not really sure. What are the soil microbes that are there?

Are the ones missing that other tree species, shrub species might be reliant on? We also don't know that. Everybody's learning in real time here. In September 2023, IDEAS producer Pauline Holdsworth visited the affected area, along with members of Northern Stathlium Nations and their co-researchers to document their efforts to bring this land back to life. This is Healing the Land, Part 1, After the Fire. While we're studying the kinds of plants coming back here, Luther and the other guardians notice lithics on the ground. Arrowheads made of flint.

I was finding some flint from the pit hoses here, the old village that used to be here. That's what we used for spears and arrowheads and different tools and stuff. You could see how the the depressions in the ground here where the houses used to be up and then they collapsed and then you could see the depressions around. Since the village is here there's got to be a burial site and And they're usually along the hill slopes, where we bury in a fetal position on the side of a hill. I would imagine it's down here somewhere along. I think one of the things that's important to remember

is even where we're standing right now, their ancestors resting beneath our feet. So, you know, that's something that is often not considered when we're talking about what to do next. You know, but how do we honor the people who are still here, who are resting here, what's appropriate in this place versus 200 meters up the hill that way where they aren't. And ultimately, those aren't my decisions to make. This is stallion territory, and it's up to the stallion what they want here.

And I really hope that, you know, they're going to lead the way. There's a lot of village sites out there. People have been there since time immemorial. My family, my roots are personally from out West Pavilion. And through the changes, through the Indian Act, we were alchemated to move across the river. And my ancestors are out there. And they lived off the land.

They didn't have a vehicle to come into town to buy rice and flour and things, you know, and everything we needed was there for the time. The culture there just shows our past history. I mean, you look at it, we lived on the banks of the Fraser because of the salmon, and then we used the hillside because of the Mule Deer winter range. That's why it's so rich there. We could walk within, you know, day of each other. There's trails that connect to those, and a lot of it's being impacted just by range and wildfires. But it's all connected. Everybody knows that they had family in these areas

over just through the stories and that had been handed down. Like each watershed used to be taken care of by one family community and each stream that came out of the mountain, one family was taking care of it. So they had the responsibility like having like a garden from there to the next stream coming down the mountain because here it's a mountainous area. I've done interviews with elders where they were knee-high when they did cultural burns back then. They travel throughout the territory and say, okay, well here, this one needs a little

managing. And then they'd move on and move the parcels over and over into certain areas that had certain medicines and stuff. We've lost that and we're trying to bring that back. At what point was that partially lost? At what point have elders told you that that they stopped seeing that happened on this land? Colonial times? So what the Indian Reserve, like where all the people were put into one place and they weren't being nomadic to travel with the plants, travel with the food, travel to each elevation to get the medicines or go down the river, go up in the mountain in the fall. That's like covering the whole stallion territory where now we're just looking after little plots of IR land. I would say just around before the residential,

they started getting put in residential schools, as well as a survivor of residential. I'm sort of maybe, I guess, you could say, one of the last generations, because they closed, the one I went to was in Mission, and I believe that closed in 83, and I was in there in 81, 82. But just hearing from my dad my dad who went to residential

knowing that they were put there, they weren't allowed to speak the language, you can only eat so much, they were starving, they had to sneak out into the orchard to climb into trees to get food, and there was other bad things that happened. But otherwise, you know, I believe it was around that time when we started losing our culture by not practicing it. Something that really struck me in the room and that kind of stopped me kind of cold was when Michelle said that the wildfires today are they're sort of replicating that and I wonder what you see as the cultural impact of the wildfires that have been happening in the last few years. The wildfires are huge. I mean

when we did our culture burns they weren't that big. They were more controlled. There were certain times of the year. These mega fires are coming in big and hot. You know, in 10 years, 20 years ago, it was, you know, every couple of years, you'll see a big fire from here. I used to be in a crew as well, in 90 to 95. If I know what I know now, back then, I probably would have became an archeologist. You know, I know now, back then, I probably would have became an archaeologist,

you know, just because of, you know, knowing that our ancestors were out there. I never knew that. I never had the chance of having my grandfather, you know, teach me or anything, or my dad, because my dad had lost that, lost the culture because he went to the residential school. Standing by the pit houses, Luther imagines what this village once looked like. Before residential schools, before the reserve system, even before contact. I think it would have been fully forested, and it's not the same as how you see it now. There would have been a different forest, probably more lush.

And it was always the winter range for the deer, so that's why it's probably the village here, so they'd be here hunting deer or whatever. There's lots of pit houses and villages here. It was a big...we had a lot of people before contact. I think, you know, we had hundreds of thousands of statuium here moving around, stewarding the land to different places if we were here fishing, up here hunting, moving around, stewarding the land to different places.

If we were here fishing, up here hunting, back west picking berries or wherever it may be. And a lot of different mountains have just sacred meanings for, like if this village was here, there'd be a spot where the women would go and a spot where the young men would go and stuff for their their different ceremonies and stuff. There's so much that can come from one site that you know the traditional foods that they were here for at the time and Wow, I don't know. It's pretty neat. But you can also see now the

Wow, I don't know, it's pretty neat. But you can also see now the impacts that the fires had on that archeology. So you can see that there's really no plant life and you can see the compaction of the soil and evidence of the runoff that has happened as well. So that is eroding these areas considerably. And when we were talking about cultural impacts, you know, this is

this is one of them. And then you can also see the impacts of cattle grazing now. This is a concern that keeps coming up, the presence of cattle in the burn area. So everything we're looking at here, these kind of white dry areas these this is cow patties and you can see that it's everywhere we are all around us right on top of a cultural area not far from the pit houses we come across the burnt remnant of a fence lying on the ground okay so this used to be keeping cattle out of this area potentially Potentially, yeah. Yeah, you can see the, so you see the burned fence post. So this is the thing too, is like there's cattle that are allowed into the area before fence repairs been done. You know, and these fences were here to protect these cultural areas.

So, you know, if that doesn't tell you where the priority in management is, or the use of the land, I don't know what does. I was very big on, you know, my concerns were on range, you know, and it's a province that's catering to the ranchers out there, and not knowing that the impacts to our food source is huge. But yet they continue to do it. The first funding that really comes out goes to the Cattleman's Association and nothing to the communities. And if it's to the communities it's pennies on the dollar. It's very little, you know, twenty, thirty thousand dollars, maybe fifty thousand to do some monitoring and stuff, but

other than that it needs to go farther than that to try and really revive the land back. And then there's a tension here too, you know, we don't necessarily want people to know where these places are. You know, there are people that come and rob these areas of their artifacts and disturb our ancestors. And so how are we protecting those areas in this kind of situation with also revealing where they are? And I think that's the other thing is that these lands and these cultural areas are that much more vulnerable now because look at what has opened up. Before this was dense forest,

you know, one really could access and come in here. I would have never even, if I was walking through here, you wouldn't be able to see all these flints and stuff. But after this burn, you could see a lot of evidence of where we were. We were up at McKay Creek there, and that village site like this, there was flints and everything just everywhere. Because before the grass and the weeds came back, you could see a lot of evidence and stuff. Last year, there were mushroom pickers coming in here just kind of traipsing through these village areas, picking mushrooms because the burn provided that opportunity know, provided that opportunity, but it just

feels so disrespectful. And people, maybe they don't know, but it feels very, it feels harmful, you know, to see that. You know, you wouldn't traipse through someone's church or cemetery casually blasting music and pulling things out of the ground. But for us, that's what it feels like to watch that happen. Music There are a few other reasons the presence of cattle in this area is so concerning to Statham members. One is the effect on soil and plant life.

That was concerning when the cows were going in there because it disturbs the topsoil and then it just starts to erode away and once that soil is gone, it can't be replaced really. Well, it takes hundreds and hundreds of years. It's pretty delicate right after the fire for because the earth's trying to rebuild itself soil to grow again and once the cows come through and just start mashing the ground up it just leaches all the topsoil out and then you're pretty depleted for much growth and maybe just all the invasives start popping up because it's not the proper soil and stuff for natural. Those concerns have informed research questions

for the Indigenous Ecology Lab. So part of our experiment is setting up plots that cage out cattle so then we can compare the vegetation outside the fence versus what's inside the fence to see what happens. And this is going to be a long-term study. So you can actually see right now there's not a whole lot of difference because this

is the first year that these plots were installed. But it will be very telling in another year or two years time, you know, to see are there different species inside there? You know, what's the abundance of those species? And so these are all throughout the fire area at different burn severities as well. I just want to go back to the soils. The soils there are very important. You know, having range allow cows to go back into a fire even just to go through and not manage it properly that's gonna happen. The displacement breaks it open, rain hits bang and it's gonna start sliding and we saw huge chunks of material just

just right down to mineral soil, mineral rock, everything is just hard and it didn't look right. You're walking on just rock, no soils whatsoever and this is very concerning. And you know, we've tried to talk with the range here about this just recent and they're saying the same thing. I'm sorry, but we'll get that contract signed and we'll cover your time. But that's not it. Time is on the land. It's keeping that soil back there so we can get our medicines back a lot sooner.

Wildfires also increase the risk of landslides by making the soil hydrophobic. Can you explain what that means? Yeah, so hydrophobic soil is in a way like soil that's like almost afraid of water. So we're looking for water repellent layers basically in the soil. So when a fire burns, the organic material that burns will become volatile and then it will transfer down in the soil column and then it condenses when it reaches a cool soil and that layer where it condenses some of these compounds are hydrophobic and they coat the soil and

so depending on how hot the soil is that can impact where this water repellent layer is in the soil column. The idea is that in lower burn severities, you're going to find that repellent layer closer to the surface, maybe one centimeter down. Whereas if you get a really hot fire, the soil is going to be hot deeper into the soil column, and so you might find that water repellent layer at five centimeters. So you get a big rain if your water repellent layer is at five centimeters, that's that top five centimeters could just all slough off because it hits that layer and the water can't penetrate any further. So then that's when you start getting large amounts of erosion. As one person in Lillooet told me, we have wildfire season and then we have landslide season.

And even this spring, multiple of the creeks washed out. And so they all had to get repaired. So I came up here in the spring and locals were saying, you're not getting out past this kilometer today because this creek's washed out. And so it's just all gone because the water came so quick because there's nothing left to retain in that soil. People live out here and people need to be able to get to town and come back to where they live or visit, go up the roads for hunting and so with this like landslides like and washouts

you're again restricting access to the land and impacting food security. Somebody said maybe it will take 80 to 100 years, you know, for the mule deer winter range to come back as it was. I wonder what, you know, when you think about the land 80 years from now, what do you hope that looks like and feels like? In 80 years I don't know there's the times we're in today with climate changing with drought

Honestly, I don't know where we're gonna be in 80 years But the more we can do today to at least attempt to recover the land, we can say we did our best to put back out there what should have been out there, what was out there, and we can hope that, you know, these heat domes don't continue to happen, that we get more moisture, less drought, that less wildfires. You know, the idea is to have all those things, those sources of foods out there for the for the mule deer to come back that my grandchildren would have traditional practices that my generation, generations before me, we've survived off of those proteins and fruits, vegetables.

What I'm hearing I think is that it must be hard to think about you know 80 years to recover from 2021 but not knowing what's going to happen in 2025 or 2027 that would also need to be recovered from. Yes that's correct. I feel the pain of the communities that are impacted last year and this year they're going to be going through the same struggles we've been going through for the last two years. And the processes aren't changing. The policies aren't changing. And I can guarantee if I went and sat in a working group next year, I would hear the

same things that we talked about two years ago this year, and we're still going to be talking about next year. While life in Statham territory has radically changed, it seems like the rest of the world wants to move on and go back to doing things the same way. The policies don't change. The practices are still the same as like a fire never happened. I think we've had some good supports from some of the ministry people who've been sitting with us from day one.

McKay is still under protected area. Unfortunately, when we talk about the hunters, the hunters are still allowed in there. We fought with that. The process has never changed. Even with the risks of the mule deer has been on the table for many years and they still haven't limited the amount of hunter access in there

at a high level government. I don't think they have even thought about or looked at addressing those. We talked about global warming for years. We talked about climate change. Now we are in climate crisis. And nothing has changed.

Following up on what Chief Justin was saying, the policy shift that needs to happen is outside of the MacKay fire in the winter range. According to the government, you can go log it. Even though it is right beside where we have lost all of this winter range.

When we talk about policy shifts that have to happen, there needs to be compensation or understanding that these animals have been displaced and they will go into adjacent areas. There is no protection for them in the adjacent areas. Those areas could be locked.

Part of the work we will be doing is not just on the foot print winter range, but the adjacent winter range as well. Pushing it for protection. Pushing it for protection. Pushing it for protection. There should be laws

against destroying lands like this for habitat. We just had a meeting with the ministry on meeting with the ministry on heritage. Heritage. Get cattle going

through villages, heritage sites. Get cattle going through villages, heritage sites. Gerald Michelle, Bader-Nose Bobo, lands resource liaison and council member. Council member. get cattle going to villages, heritage sites.

Gerald, Michelle, Better Nones, Bobo, Land's Resource Liaison and Council Member. There should be some laws for this protection. We can make laws for that. Statlin can make laws for that. We do have them in our Statlin-Milanes plan, and we should carry on with that. Use our laws. Use our land.

Thank you. We're not going anywhere. This is our home. Proponents can come and go and they will come and go when the economics doesn't work. But we've been putting our hand up saying, we're here. Train us. Use us. Who knows our backyard better than we do?

You know it's just matter trying to bring back though there's a lot more for generations to come. On Ideas, you've been listening to Healing the Land Part 1, After the Fire. Tune in tomorrow for Part 2, from Eden Ecology to Indigenous Ecology. We're not separate from the land. We are the land. You know, we are the land. And so we can't, you know, just try and fix an area and that's it. We're so tied to it. For me, when we're doing these projects

is like facilitating, strengthening that relationship, being part of cultural resurgence. The land is a mirror of us, and we are a mirror of the land, and so we have to be working to heal the land so that we can be healthy. In the next episode, what an Indigenous ecology approach to restoring this landscape looks like, and how Indigenous philosophies inform decisions about what comes next. Special thanks to Chief Justin Cain for welcoming ideas to Statham territory.

And thank you to Dr. Jennifer Grenz and the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC. At CBC, thank you to Wamish Hamilton. This episode was produced by Pauline Holdsworth and Philip Coulter. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. The technical producer for Ideas is Danielle Duval. Our acting senior producer is Lisa Godfrey. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly and I'm Nala Ayed.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.