Ideas - How Indigenous ecology is reviving land destroyed by wildfires

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

What happens to the land after a brutal wildfire? IDEAS visited St'át'imc territory near Lillooet, B.C., to follow land guardians and scientists from the Indigenous Ecology Lab at the University of British Columbia, as they document the effects of wildfires and chart a new future based on Indigenous approaches to healing and balancing an ecosystem. *This is part two of 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

At Desjardins Insurance, we know that when you're a building contractor, your company's foundation needs to be strong. That's why our agents go the extra mile to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs. You put your heart into your company, so we put our heart into making sure it's protected. Get insurance that's really big on care. Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed.

This looks like actually a tree that likely had fallen over maybe before the fire, but you can see this was quite a big tree. So you know how hot this fire was that the stump actually completely burned up. This is Stathlium territory in interior British Columbia, more than two years after a devastating fire. And then right now though like this area has actually been tree planted and so we can see some baby pine and some fir which is incredibly important for the mule deer. This is part of their winter range and then you'll see that the trees are planted in the wells. The wells are areas at the base of the burned trees that form a depression in the ground.

Because that's where water will collect and then there's a little bit of protection for those seedlings as well. So we're kind of using the dead trees to help facilitate, you know, new life. Not all of these seedlings will survive. The soil in this area has turned to ash, and it's started to wash away. Many of the trees are curved and bent from the pressure of loose soil. But despite the serious challenges ahead, members of an Indigenous-led post-wildfire project are embarking on an effort to heal the land.

If you're working to heal something, that's a long-term investment. You know, we're not going to take what I call the MICK restoration, you know, fast food approach to ecological restoration. But I really do think when we use that term healing, it gives a reverence also to what we're doing. That it's bigger than just the mechanics of it. It brings ceremony back into this. Ideas producer Pauline Holdsworth brings us this documentary,

the second of a two-part series called Healing the Land, Part Two, From Eden Ecology to Indigenous Ecology. I think we underestimate the power of story and how it affects our understanding of the world around us. And it's not a criticism of the Christian faith, but the power of the story of the Garden of Eden. And, you know, the whole concept of trying to get back to this perfection that existed, you know, before humans messed it up, has stuck with and been the foundation of ecology, you know, as it's developed. This is Dr. Jennifer Grenz, an Inglokhama scholar of mixed ancestry.

Her family comes from the Lytton and Bonaparte First Nations. She's 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. You know, even the terminology we use, like restoration, like that means to go back, to put back things the way that they should be. That has a huge impact on how we think about healing land. You know, are we really trying to put things back to some arbitrary point in time. And then also, you know, how that defines the human relationship with land. Like in the case of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sinned and

brought destruction as a result of that. You know, things were perfect before the people messed it up, which is in contrast to, you know, indigenous worldviews and understanding our roles in the ecosystems, which is to have a leadership role and be shaping those lands and caring for them. We're not separate from the environment, but that Adam and Eve kind of Eden ecology does separate us from the land around us. This is really interesting because I think there is a response that a lot of people have to seeing some of the devastation of recent years and saying, wow, what have we done?

And wanting to kind of make amends. And I'm wondering how you think through that, the kind of amends or work that we as humans need to do. How you think through that without kind of falling into the trap of eat an ecology and imagining it can be put back to some perfect place? Well, I think an aspect of reconciliation that we don't talk enough about are ecological reconciliation and food systems reconciliation. And so for me that is the lens that I'm applying to the landscape. How do we not just bring

healing to our lands but to all the relations on the lands and to people? And so as soon as you are centering or using that lens on the land, there's no way you can slip into an Eden ecology because you're honoring the stories of the past, but you're writing a new story for the future. And that story might be completely different than what was 50 years ago. It might even be the same. And that's what is wonderful about this is that it depends on where we are and whose land that is. This is Stathliam territory where northern Stathliam nations, the Squaila, Hoistin, and

Tikwit-Pepetla are working alongside the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC and the Lillooet Regional Invasive Species Society on a post-wildfire research project. What was your initial hope for what you want the future of this land to be after what happened in 2021? My hope was that we were going to have all the opportunities that we recognize that are needed for full recovery, full restoration on the land. Ministries, licenses were reaching out immediately. They wanted to start talking about what's going to happen next.

This is Justin Cain, the elected chief of Squaila Nation. What was a priority is repairing the fire guards that were put in. You know, that's reducing one impact, but there's still 30 other impacts that weren't addressed. You said the initial hope is full recovery on the land. What does full recovery look like for you? Land stability, food sovereignty, protection of the wildlife. they would be able to flourish

out there. What would be the Eden Ecology approach to this landscape? So if we were taking an Eden Ecology approach, we would look around us and we would see, you know, these scorched trees, you know, that are black and sticking up and, you know, barren, almost looking land underneath it and say, we need to put this back to what it was before. And so we're looking at the tree species that are here. So we've got pine, we've got some fur. We would just be putting it back to what we thought it should be.

At whatever period of time we've decided is the kind of normal condition, you know, as opposed to, you know, taking what I would say a more indigenous ecology approach and saying, what were the stories of the past here? Who was here before? What were the conditions like? What were the land uses? What are the conditions right now? Who are the people here now? What did those relationships with land need to be? And what are we facing ahead of us? Which we know is a changing climate where things around here are getting much, much hotter. So we would be then looking to perhaps different species. You know, these are really complicated discussions, painful discussions, you know, because some of these species, as an

indigenous person, we've had relationships with for a very long time that we might have to be prepared to say goodbye to. But we also have demonstrated sort of an epistemic openness to other species. We have survived changes of speciation on the landscape, and this might be we have survived changes of speciation on the landscape. And this might be one of those critical periods of time. Is it even possible for this land to be kind of what it was, say 10 years ago, given how the climate is changing? You know, just when it kind of separate possible and desired. Well, I mean, I think if we look back to the land 10 years ago

where we are now, you know, is that really the baseline that we actually want? Because that still represents a history of fire suppression and the impacts of colonization on the landscape. Do we want to go back to what it was 10 years ago where the tree density is way too high, you know, where we're losing grasslands in this area. You know, I kind of look at it more like maybe now as complicated, difficult, painful as this is the opportunity to reimagine what we want these lands to be.

And that it's okay for us to ask that question, what do we want these lands to be? Because there isn't necessarily a quote unquote natural state for them. We don't even know what a true forest was 100 years ago because it's all been based on licensee process. Chief Justin Cain says for decades, forest management has been driven by the needs of licensees, timber companies. Putting pine back in the ground was a solution and the recommendation to have a forest system. But it's not a, it doesn't work for the ecosystem.

It shows with the decline in numbers of the mule deer over the last how many years that things aren't working. The wildfire basically capped what's been happening in our territory. The wildlife's been threatened for many years and this just pushed it over the top. So now the nation is trying to revive their territory in more ways than one, addressing the impacts of the fire, of climate change, and of more than a century of colonial land management and fire suppression. So right now the land is teaching us about repercussions of how we've managed it before. If we will stop and listen and watch and look and not be reactive, you know, as a lot of the responses in these kinds of cases tend to be. You know, we see this terrible scar

on the landscape. I mean, that's what I see around us. And there's this immediate reaction, you know, to want to cover it up, right? Like, we'll just get seed on it. We'll just, you know, cover up the scar on the landscape because we don't want to cover it up, right? Like, we'll just get seed on it. We'll just, you know, cover up the scar in the landscape because we don't want to have to confront our role that got us to this place to start with. But we need to look at it. We need to feel it because that is what is going to fuel us to do something different this time around. The story about, you know, who humans are and their relationship to the natural world that we get from the story of the Garden of Eden is very different than some of the stories about humans and their purpose in an ecosystem that you would get from Indigenous philosophies in this area. What are some of the stories that you've heard that give you kind of a different understanding

of who we are as humans in an environment. Well, Kwakwakiwak Knowledge Keeper shared with me a story that is in my dissertation and will be in my book about Thunderbird and our role in the ecosystem being that without humans there was chaos. You know, animal populations, plant populations were not right and that humans were created from the animal relations to take on the responsibility of providing a balance and not a static balance, but a dynamic balance in the ecosystem. You know, we are meant to be shapers of the land and make decisions that are really difficult decisions about who stays, who goes, what land looks like.

And I think that's something we're often really afraid to take up and do. And it's not dominion over. It's not that kind of power. It's this leadership that's rooted in humility and in reciprocity and in respect for the land and her people. You can see those ideas embodied in the way the Statham Land Guardians approach their work. As they move around the land, they're constantly listening and watching and always open to learning something new. In addition to looking out for the land, they also make small interventions. Here's Luther Brighman, an assistant Papaitla land guardian.

I think it's what everybody pretty much used to be, like a stewardship kind of thing. Like as we would move from each area, we would take care of it, maybe burn it for different things for berries or always putting back. If you'd pick from a hush and bush, you prune it to help it grow better or a lot of different things you can do. Some spacing and stuff, while you're out there even doing your picking. When people pick mushrooms, you can replant them

as you're picking them, as you drop the spores and help them out, and then they come back as bigger like gardens and stuff. One thing I was hoping to understand more is what does it mean to be a land guardian? What does that mean to you? Oh it means a lot to me because I get to be out on the land and I get to see who is out there using it. Sam Copeland, a senior Papaytla land guardian. I just like to be an out here and to make sure everything is like the animals are okay, the plants are okay, nothing's being abused or anything or some people leave garbage or whatever,

oil spills, fires. We're basically just want to be on the land and try to get to every place that our ancestors were following all these trails. But it's so big and so vast. We've been doing this for two years now and we still haven't got to the end of the trails. And I have a good crew and that makes it even better. We all get along, we're all from the same reserve. We basically, I'd never met Luther before so this is how we met. Yeah, and then meeting all you guys. I just, so much fun out here and the people you meet are all really good people too, seems to like it. Yeah, and I just can't help but want to protect it.

That's why I enjoy my job a lot there. I don't take any time off of it, don't have to, but you got to use your vacation time and all that, so I gotta take some time off. Yeah, I just love learning about the animals, like every year I learn something different about them. And know where they are. I know there's hardly any moose around here anymore, but we've seen one this year. Yeah, that was good. I just love it when I see something I haven't seen for a while. I can take it out and it's really healthy. Just couldn't think of doing anything else.

You have an amazing job. Yeah. Thank you for telling me about it. Yeah, for sure. But something Sam and the other land guardians are seeing is an ecosystem out of balance. We haven't seen deer this far up except for in the fields. And the fields have hardly any deer in them now. They used to have at least 20, 30 at the minimum.

Now we're lucky if we can get up to 20 in the fields here in different groups. So there's a lot of deer missing here and I don't know where they went. Luther says this decline is a major concern because according to statlian law, they're supposed to keep a balance between ocean meat, like the salmon, and bush meat, like the mule deer. The way the world goes, it keeps a balance on the ocean food and the land food. You have to keep a balance because you lose one and you can rely on the other, but if you both get depleted enough then there's nothing really left.

You know, the ocean's getting pretty bad. And I know the deer population here is bad. So as the statlum make decisions about what to prioritize in the recovery process, replanting the mule deer winter range is key. You know, it'll take 80 to 121 years minimum to get back to where this was before it burned. Dr. Sue Sanger, a biologist working with the Lillooet Tribal Council. Anything that we can do like should we I'm guessing we're gonna

like do some planting right try and get it to start growing trees as fast as it can to shorten the time frame. So the work I'm doing is looking at the maps, I'm looking at all this data to try and pick out the places that need to be planted first. And need to be planted in a way that's gonna regenerate the winter range. So in this case mostly fur, right? There are a few places in McKay where the deer have told us through the collaring work that they actually use a pine leading stand with some fur in it but most of where we are now down at the lower elevations it needs to be interior

Douglas fur planted and so that becomes our priority as we move forward is to identify these places and get them scheduled for planting. I don't think it'll ever look the same. It's going to change. It'll be something different now. But it depends on how they, if we kind of intervene and start clearing it, like for salvage logging or something, and start replanting it, it's going to take it even longer to come back normally.

Luther is concerned a logging company might want to come here, salvage the wood, and replant for commercial reasons. Like they want to come in and take out all these and try to make money off the salvage. And that's going to rip logs or rip roads through, which is going to make more damage. And they'll probably be hauling them out on skidders or something and ripping up more of the soil and making more slides for this road. And then that's like, that's their trees for a hundred years from now. They're going to come back and say, yeah, we're going to cut them down for money. So it's not really, I don't think they're trying to help the land.

They're just trying to regain back whatever they could have made off this mountain, right? So it's a hard battle. But Luther says there are things the statlum can do. It's just a different way of intervening in the landscape. Yeah, you could help influence the earth to help regain itself a little bit, but you can't take it over and try to, okay, I'm going to plant this all pines. Usually what they do when they log it is just reforest it with pines. When you could see

the last place we were at, all the little fir trees popping out, you know, like for helping that. We've seen the little patch of fir trees all clustered into one spot that could be moved, separated, and spaced, and all those little trees will survive. Because you know that patch won't grow as they're clustered in like that. That's a big impact if you could change the location of 20 trees that were going to die and they start to grow really good and healthy. You know, it's always changing, like it's just... I remember someone told me one time it used to be all mostly juniper, the dominant tree, like back probably when the mammoths were here and stuff.

It's always changing, and you can't really say how it's supposed to be, eh? Because it's always changing and adapting itself. So we don't really know how to really do a big impact like planting a whole mountain or something. But there's things you can do to help it along. As you're walking, just crush some You know, as you're walking, just crush some native plant seeds as you're going, help them move around. I think when we use a term like ecological restoration,

we already kind of have a picture in our mind of what is gonna happen. So often in ecological restoration, we come in like caped crusaders for the environment, right? And we come in and we take stuff out and we put stuff on and we kind of pat ourselves on the back and get in our trucks and never go back or go back to monitor it maybe once in a couple of years. And maybe see that the trees that you've planted have died, that the ecological restoration didn't work. And sadly, often that is generally the case.

I've seen a lot more dead trees that I've planted than live ones over the years. But that's an indicator of broken relationship. Whereas if you're working to heal something, that's a long-term investment. We're not going to one and done. We're not going to take what I call the MICK restoration, you know, fast food approach to ecological restoration. So if we're healing land, we're talking long term, addressing changing needs, being there. And then also, again, being able to shape land to serve our needs.

And it might not be the same as it was before, you know, so there's way more possibilities open to us. Including possibilities like genetic modification. We have a responsibility to pay attention to the plants and if we need those plants going forward for various reasons or our other relations are, you know, reliant upon them, plants that are really struggling like around here, you know, whitebark pine is so critical to grizzly bears and it's having a really hard time. We have the ability to do something about that and make decisions that are going to support those grizzly relations because they are our relatives. So, our genetic solutions, do they play in a potentially important role in us carrying on? Yes, they absolutely do. And that's just bringing the tools of the new and old ancestors together.

You know, this is the power of working from multiple worldviews. And then on the grander conversation about what tools like CRISPR offer us, The most progressive discussions about assisted migration that I've heard are happening in indigenous communities where there are plant species or tree species that are culturally important that are unlikely to continue over the long term in specific territories where there's an openness to genetic solutions to enable, you know, those plants to continue being parts of our culture. Another part of this ecosystem that might be out of balance is the relationship between invasive and native plants. and native plants. So I'm just taking a picture of all the seed fluffs that have been spreading along the ground in this area here,

just so that I can use it in my research and when I'm explaining to people how weedy species and invasive species, or just species in general, spread. This is Virginia Ogrely, a graduate student working in the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC. She's studying what happens to both cultural and invasive plants after different severities of wildfire burn. It almost looks as if the ground is covered in snow from all these seeds and all these fluffs. And so they're spreading from the prickly lettuce and from the willow herb and it's just coating the ground. So I just thought it was a good representation of how species spread and recolonize an area after fire. Can you talk to me about management of invasive species through an indigenous ecology lens? Because I know you've worked in invasive species for a long time.

Some of these invasive species here, you know, Chief Cain was mentioning fireweed can be used also for medicines. You know, how do you balance the different kinds of species on this land, invasive and native? Well, a weed really is just defined as a plant that you don't want somewhere, right? And there's a host of reasons why we decide that we don't want plants there. And I think there's some hints even on the common names of a lot of plants that were developed by, you know,

settlers like fireweed, right? That sounds like it should be a weed if we're calling it fireweed, but it's not a weed. It's a native plant. And it's a really important plant after wildfire and it has food uses, medicinal uses. It just got that name because it was not invited into agricultural settings. But after years of, you know, working on invasive plant management, there are definitely species that deserve active management that cause ecological impacts, economic

impacts, human health impacts. For example, cheatgrass, which is all over the place here. The grass that we're standing on essentially has a common name cheatgrass. This is actually a grass species that's of concern, I mean, across, you know, like I have colleagues in Wyoming that are really concerned, I mean, across, you know, like I have colleagues in Wyoming that are really concerned, you know, about and managing actively this species. It displaces native grasses and you can see now how it's dying off at the end of the season that it creates. There's a lot of thatch associated with this species and that is a real concern for future wildfire. This is one that increases fire risk again.

Around here there are fires on fires, you know, that's happening in Lynn right now. But then there are other invasive species like Mullen that play many roles. If you're ever looking for good toilet paper out in there, they're extremely soft. Wow. Isn't that cool? It's really a texture I haven't felt in a plant before. Yeah, it's like it's almost like this very very soft velvet. Wow. And this is a plant actually that's, you know, categorized as invasive, but actually has a lot of important medicinal uses. The mullein, we use that for sprains and respiratory mix. Like it's good for a smoking mix, and it's good for pain.

Like if you have a sprain or something, just rub that up a little bit there, wet it a bit there, and put it on where you're sprained and wrap it with cheesecloth. The pain will go away, the swollen will go down, and you can walk. You know, I think there's some wisdom in trying to get to know those plants a little bit better, especially in this kind of context, to see are they providing some kind of function? You know, are they holding soil as an example? Are they providing forage for animal relations that don't have much to eat out here? So we're looking at whether there's bites out of some of these weeds or whether there aren't any at all. at whether there's bites out of some of these weeds or whether there aren't any at all. I think it's a much less black and white approach to who the plant relations are that are among

us. I don't know if it's invasive or not though. I don't know much about that. I've never seen so much of it. The seeds of the prickly lettuce, so it's like a plant that's really moved in to the area after the fire that very little is really known about what its role is. It just gets treated like a weedy species. But when we label something as a weed, then we don't necessarily study what kind of benefits

that it provides. But it definitely has shown up in a big way especially in these like medium and higher severity burn areas and so we need to try and understand this relationship. I mean it's prolific so we're just looking at all the little tiny seeds I mean we're we're moving it around right now just just standing in it. As we're looking at the prickly lettuce seeds the land guardians suggest that maybe this plant is doing something for the soil, helping it regenerate. Plant-soil relationships so often get ignored, you know, in research, right? We talk, we have people that study the soil, we have people that study the plants, and yes, there are those that study those relationships, but often in this context we kind of overlook that. And when you're applying indigenous research methodology and in a relational worldview, you know, the thing that you're looking at are these relationships.

And I mean, so that's the first thing we're hearing in the land guardians are like, well, what is it doing? Because there must be a reason. Using an Eden ecology approach, you would start taking many of these plants out. You know, if we were looking around here now, we would see all this mullein and we would say that needs to go. We would see all the Canada thistle, we would say that needs to go. And then we would say, oh, well, we see some knotting onion or we see some kinnikinnik that can stay because it belongs.

And in some cases, that's the right approach. But not in every case. It's just not so simple, because we've talked a lot about climate change in the context of wildfire recovery, and perhaps some of these species that are adapted to highly disturbed extreme environments may have some kind of successional role to play. Our elders

are always telling us to pause and take time and that can be hard when you're managing invasive species because we want to get rid of them before they cause a huge problem. But in some cases, you know, like this where some of them are fairly well established, we need to watch them a little bit more closely, you know, because we tend to, when we other something, we don't actually give it the consideration that it deserves. It's something I call, you know, I want to give all plants relational consideration. Who could you be helping before we just take immediate action?

We just don't know. So we just can't work with such a confidence in our knowing. We need to be more humble. On Ideas, you're listening to Healing the Land, Part 2, from Eden Ecology to Indigenous Ecology. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. And on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America, on U.S. Public Radio and on Sirius XM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca.ideas. I'm Nala Ayed.

At Desjardins Insurance, we put the care in taking care of business. Your business to be exact. Our agents take the time to understand your company so you get the right coverage at the right price. Whether you rent out your building, represent a condo corporation, or own a cleaning company, we make insurance easy to understand so you can focus on the big stuff, like your small business. Get insurance that's really big on care.

Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. The Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lake presents The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Filled with breathtaking battles, mythical creatures, and unforgettable characters, this new adaptation of C.S. Lewis's classic will mesmerize the whole family. Don't miss this epic adventure, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, this season at the Shaw Festival. For tickets, go to ShawFest.com. In 2021, the McKay Creek wildfire ripped through 46,000 hectares of land near Lillooet, BC. 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 the second of a two-part series called Healing the Land, Part 2 from Eden Ecology to Indigenous Ecology. Oh, so this is strawberry right here. Yep this is native strawberry. So you can see like already we're in a low intensity burn and we have more biodiversity, we have more of our food plants. There are sections of the McKay Creek wildfire where the fire didn't burn as hot and the ecosystem is starting

to recover. You know, and this is Saskatoon Berry right here. So who would these strawberries and Saskatoon Berries, who would be eating these? Well you'll notice, you know, as soon as we got out here, everyone grabbed their bear spray, right? Because this is an area where all of our relations are going to come to eat and we need that. You know, they can't, you know, the bears can't compensate by going to the grocery store and buying a container of berries from somewhere else.

All they have is what's here. And that's also why, you know, in our own harvesting protocols, you know, you only take what you need and you leave enough for the other relations as well. So our food plants are responding and coming back and healthier for, for the fire. So, you know, it's so important to understand that fire is not bad. It's just that how the fires burn after all of the fire suppression and increased fuel load and under changing climate and such dry conditions, that high severity stuff has a significant negative impact on ecosystems, but that, you know,

good fire is doing all the things that it's supposed to be doing still. And if you listen here, you'll hear birds. Whereas in the high severity area, where you're listening, you don't hear the birds. Oh, chickadee-deee dees. Yeah, ask a plant person on the spot what they're, what birds they're hearing. Yeah, they're right behind us. There's food for them here, you know, and even when we're standing in here you can feel the

difference in here. There's shade. Where we've been previously, there's no shade. And you can feel the coolness in the breeze, you know, as a result of that. This is a very good story. So this is the kind of burn we would hope for, right? Where it has come across the ground, it's rejuvenated the understory. It's created, I mean, it's burnt out a bunch of the tree limbs, so we are getting more light to the forest floor and then we're getting that regrowth of all of the shrub layer. So it's creating the diversity and so it is exciting. Fire is important on the

landscape and has been used culturally for you know time immemorial. This is Jackie Rasmussen, executive director of the Lillooet Regional Invasive Species Society. In this ecosystem, you'd have high frequency but low intensity fires. They would stay on the ground. They would renew grasses. Grasses are uniquely formed to actually take fire and have them burned off and grazed. So their growing points are very low to the ground. And so the top gets burned off, all the dead matter gets burned off, and then it's time

for new things to grow in. And it creates an equilibrium in the ecosystem where, especially for grasslands, where they actually want to stay grasslands and with trees coming down into the grasslands where they actually want to stay grasslands and with trees coming down into the grasslands they can tend to grow too many trees and our grasslands are so important because of the species at risk that there is habitat for them. So we want grasslands to have these high frequency, low intensity fires. They'll burn out trees, the little ones growing, and then they'll also like renew sagebrush. Sagebrush is an important cultural plant, but what happens is it grows too many and

it'll start taking over. It'll create overshadowing and the grasses will be less. While we're traveling between sites, Jennifer points to a hill that didn't burn and where the sagebrush has taken over. You can kind of see the sort of bluish silver shrubs all through what should be grassland, right? And that's really dense sagebrush. It's just an example of the contrast when, you know, where the fire has not come through and didn't it out. And if there is a fire in this region what will happen with that sagebrush? Well the sagebrush is a resin in it that makes it quite flammable so you've got an

increased fuel load for sure coming through there and then you've just lost the biodiversity of the grasslands. The grasses need those burns in order to actually kill off some trees. So it's really important to have these fires and to be able to to nurture them and that's why a lot of our indigenous communities are saying we need to reintroduce the fires not only for habitat but for the cultural burning that they've done in the past to renew berries. There's elders in the community that talk about burns in every ecosystem to help with manipulating. It's a form of agriculture.

It's actually being able to create healthy ecosystems and when they burn, they're not just burning for them and the plants and the things they're gathering, they're burning for the four-legged creatures that actually need those plants as well. I've done interviews with elders where they were knee high when they did cultural burns back then. Travis Peters, Hoyshten Heritage Supervisor and interim lands manager. They'll be riding out with their grandfather

and on a horse or sometimes walking and he'd be just saying okay this is an area where we want to you know bring back some more food sustenances. They'd be flicking matches at certain times when the snow level was here and they'd let it burn. And next, you know, a year or so, it'd bring back again wildlife, as well as the plants and medicines. And they kept it to a point where they'd travel throughout the territory and say, okay, well here, this one's getting,

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. I learned a lot from just the elders, just through the stories. I really see our research is just a collection of stories. So we've got soil scientists up here and they're telling their stories of the soil. And we have plant scientists here telling their stories of the plants. And you know, we have Dr. Senniger here who's telling the stories of the mule deer.

And then I kind of see, you know, all of us then bringing those stories together and that's helping us to understand what's happening now. And then we can then create stories going forward together. I mean, we'll actually sit and write a story and say, so who are the characters in the story? Who's there? What's happening there? But that then helps us to know what questions we need to ask to make that a reality. I think one of the great powers of using you know stories as data, creating stories as data, is that you can't ignore human relationship. You can't ignore all of the relationships involved. So it doesn't just become like you know

research that gets published in a paper and then put on a shelf. It actually puts responsibility back onto us to act. I think it's a lot harder for us to do research for the sake of research if there are stories attached to it. And if we're using it to make a story going forward, we're then accountable to like also seeing that story come to fruition. Because if it doesn't, it means that we didn't do our part. And I think that's also a fundamental difference in terms of our approach to, to ecology as well. It's action-based research.

Something also that has been used to kind of denigrate it. You know, like people will say, well, that's a project or you're just a practitioner. You know, there's nothing scientific about, well, now you're planting plants. But we're learning from the land all the time. What is the story of your relationship to this land that we're on today?

So, my grandmother grew up on these lands. You know, we're known as the people of the canyon, which means indigenous people moved around. You know, there's kind of a bit of a misunderstanding when we say like, oh, I'm Inglokotmik. Like that must mean that we only stayed in our territory. Well, my family actually spent more time in statlum territory and this is why we're running into my cousins. One of the land guardians is my cousin, the photographer with us is my cousin. You know, I know more people here than technically my own Inglokotmuk territory

because that's where my great-grandmother Amy Trissara is from. But my grandmother grew up here and so this research has been tremendously important to my own personal healing and understanding of my own identity and the places that she talked about and what her life was like growing up. She passed away when I was about 13 years old, but her sister, my great auntie and my great uncle are both still alive. And they were so happy to hear that, well, my auntie said, you're bringing your gifts back to the lands that I grew up on. I've been training my whole life to come back to my grandma's lands and try and help. What was the kind of relationship with indigeneity that you grew up with? I always grew up knowing that we were Native. Back then, a common exercise in elementary school

was to, you know, draw your family tree and put where your parents and your grandparents came from. And my mom would always have me, you know, put that her relatives came from Canada. And that was sort of that. And then there came a period of time where, you know, I'd heard about my great uncle, you know, working to regain the status of our family as Indigenous people. And I started to ask questions about what that meant. And I was kind of a teenager at the time and found that, yes, our family was indeed Indigenous. We were indeed from Canada. But we had managed to avoid registration by Indian agents. And that was, you know, apparently my great-grandfather

and my great-great-grandfather's greatest accomplishments in their minds was hiding in plain sight. But then to reclaim our identity, which was important to my great-uncle Bill Swartz, required 10 years of work going through church records, baptismal records, census data, visiting headstones, you know. And so once he was successful in doing that, you know, yes, the paperwork was out of the way, but then there's this significant cultural loss. Meanwhile, much of my family still lived up here, but my part of the family had moved to the coast and, you know, lived in South Vancouver. And my mom, you know, saw herself as any other kid growing up in South Vancouver, but then would talk to me about how she would go visit her native

cousins who were her first cousins. There was this cognitive dissonance even about identity that my mom carried. So our part of the family is now embracing our culture, learning more about where we're from. But it's funny now when I look back, I realize how indigenous my upbringing was, but I never realized like why my grandma cooked ulegan, you know, why we were sucking on fish heads and high chairs. Like we did a lot of these things, you know, without really knowing where they came from. My grandmother taught me to knit and, you know, I found out we're from a family of very gifted textile artists. It's an ongoing process, and I think it's a story that's not often told about,

you know, we hear a lot about residential school and we hear about the 60s scoop, but there's a lot of people who assimilated to hide. You know, maybe they avoided residential school as a result of that, but they sustained cultural loss, loss of community. You know, people ask Indigenous people, where do you come from as though you're tied to community, but not everyone is directly tied to community. Now I'm so fortunate as we've been experiencing, you know,

here I'm running into cousins everywhere in leadership and in these organizations, and it's a really neat thing to feel like you belong somewhere where you actually didn't grow up. It's like being reclaimed and so that's why for me you know the work is it's just deeply deeply personal that you know we don't have to hide anymore and in fact here we are talking to you you know our knowledges are being sought. Like I just think, gosh, if my great grandmother knew that this was important, that people are seeking our knowledges and our ways of knowing to help how she just, I mean, she was a very funny

lady. I mean, she would probably laugh her head off, you know, at the irony, but it's a complicated lived history and I'm just so thankful to be at this piece of it. Like I can't help but think the miracle of survival of the past generations in my family that I could end up standing here in this spot right now. now. Where we're standing right now is by golden fields of grass. It's one of the rare spots here where the ecosystem is flourishing. The first time I saw this area I think I shouted out loud like, whoa, like, because it's just golden.

It's just golden rolling hills. But you can see where like the pine is moving into the grasslands. And eventually what it does was it'll close the canopy and you lose the grassland, right? This is why we need fire for these areas. And so you can see that the fire came through and took care of basically a lot of those pines that were encroaching. And then when you look at the biodiversity of the plants, like all the lily species and knotting onion are in pretty significant abundance and there's a diversity of grasses. Yeah, like in the fall, like last fall, when

we came around the corner and the site appeared, I just, I jumped out of the truck. I just couldn't believe it. We just don't have a lot of healthy grasslands left because of fire suppression, but these are tremendously important habitats and we need to be, you know, bringing our fire stewardship back to ensure that they continue. Is that something that's in progress? When I was talking to Travis yesterday, he was talking about, you know, what he's heard from elders that he's been interviewing about their memories of fire stewardship when they were maybe six or seven years old. Like, is that something that is in the present or the future here?

It's happening. Our fire stewardship is back. And there are some amazing leaders, Indigenous leaders as well as non-Indigenous researchers, you know, working to reclaim and revitalize our fire stewardship. And it's so exciting to see. And it's not everywhere yet, but we're getting there. You know, one of the things that used to really inhibit our access to using that tool was fear in the public.

But I see a real shift in terms of the social licensing around that where non-Indigenous folks are experiencing the impacts of these severe wildfires, recognizing the importance of cultural fire in preventing those kinds of losses. And so there's so much support now. And it's exciting to see that we are leading how to do it because, yes, we've lost some of the connections to those knowledges, but we are regaining them and we are learning how to work with a fire again. And it's just, it's the most beautiful example of cultural resurgence on the land, you know, that we're shaping it again. We're taking up our responsibility again and recognizing these are not natural places that are meant to be, you know,

left alone and they'll just do their thing. They need us. And that's one of the ways that we can meet the land's needs. And reciprocity should be, it's inherent in any land stewardship practice. It's like, what do the trees need? You know, we take for granted native species. We don't ask them what they need because we think they just belong. But I feel like just starting by asking the land and the plants and the waters, what do you need from me? And figuring out what your gift is to be able to give it some of those things. That's practicing reciprocity. You know, like all this stuff we record

for protecting areas and stuff, like, I know in my heart I'd be out to do it to protect the forest itself, to ensure that it survives indefinitely. And not like, I'm not out to reforest it to like make more money off it or anything. We're all guardians in a way. We've got fishery guardians, we got heritage guardians, and we got you know hunters guardians that go out and say hunt and then see what's going on. I'm just hoping that we can continue to maintain that

and other people, you know, other generations start rising here because it's reality now. We all know that it's in our hearts to do that. We just gotta open our eyes. Yeah. We just gotta open our eyes. On ideas, you've been listening to Healing the Land, Part 2, from Eden Ecology to Indigenous Ecology. Special thanks to Chief Justin Cain for welcoming Ideas to Stathliam 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 Ayad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.