Vinita Srivastava: From
The Conversation, this is “Don’t Call Me Resilient.” I’m Vinita Srivastava.
Anne Spice: For me, I think the land defender is not a title that you claim for yourself. It’s an action. And it’s about the practice of actually being on the land and reclaiming ancestral territories and territories that are under attack.
VS: In this episode, we take a look at Indigenous land rights and the people on the front lines of these battles. These are the land defenders fighting to protect land against invasive development. Both my guests today have stood up to armed forces to protect land. Their work to defend land is about protecting the environment, but it is much more than that. It is fundamentally about survival and the right to live openly on what is stolen land. Ellen Gabriel has been resisting land encroachment for 31 years. She was at the centre of the 1990 Kanehsatake resistance. You might know it as the Oka Crisis. It was a 78-day stand-off to pro
Last summer, a logging company cleared approximately 1,200 metres of an Indigenous ancestral trail in Bigstone Cree Nation territory, Treaty No. 8 region (northern Alberta), in spite of government regulations in place to protect land.
As an ancient archeological site, the trail should have been protected by the Alberta Historical Resource Act. A Historical Resource Impact Assessment should have been conducted to assess the site’s protected value.
The logging company, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc., conducted a “desktop” assessment. But no one physically visited the area, and the assessment missed identifying the trail.
The trail is a valued cultural place, as the Bigstone Cree Nation Lands Department repeatedly informed Alberta-Pacific. Darren Decoine, the Bigstone Lands Department GIS technician, repeatedly requested detailed maps of the logging plans from Alberta-Pacific, but he says they were never provided. The company is supposed to provide shapefiles (maps
Leah Martin Photography
Pete Westover says his appreciation of, and passion for, outdoor spaces traces back to a family vacation trip to, among other places, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, or Rocky, as it’s called, when he was 12.
The park, which spans the Continental Divide, is famous for its grand vistas, high alpine meadows, and dramatic walking trails, some of them at elevations of 10,000 feet or more. And, suffice to say, the park made quite an impression on the young middle-school student.
“There’s bighorn sheep and mountain goats and all kinds of great wildlife and flora,” he noted, adding that he’s been back several times since. “The road goes well over 11,000 feet, so you’re up there among the peaks.”
Pete Westover, Founder and Partner, Conservation Works, LLC
Leah Martin Photography
Pete Westover says his appreciation of, and passion for, outdoor spaces traces back to a family vacation trip to, among other places, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, or Rocky, as it’s called, when he was 12.
The park, which spans the Continental Divide, is famous for its grand vistas, high alpine meadows, and dramatic walking trails, some of them at elevations of 10,000 feet or more. And, suffice to say, the park made quite an impression on the young middle-school student.
“There’s bighorn sheep and mountain goats and all kinds of great wildlife and flora,” he noted, adding that he’s been back several times since. “The road goes well over 11,000 feet, so you’re up there among the peaks.”