Malahat First Nation

Natural asset management can help Malahat Nation understand this larger scale, including unique ecosystems, the connection to ecological services, and actions that the Nation my wish to take to protect them—not simply when there is a referral but on a proactive and ongoing basis. 

Towards Malahat First Nation’s Natural Asset Inventory

Malahat First Nation and NAI worked in partnership on the Malahat First Nation Natural Asset Inventory Project. The goal of the Project was to develop a natural asset inventory and recommended next steps to help Malahat Nation in identifying priority natural assets that they wish to collaboratively care for, monitor, and enhance so that the Nation can advance better land use management decisions within their traditional territories, and ideally support them in upholding their stewardship roles and Indigenous rights. 

In addition to developing the inventory and recommendations, Project deliverables included: an initial condition assessment; risk identification; engagement with the Malahat Nation community to improve and refine the inventory, as well as potential training needs for continued maintenance of the inventory.

The partnership is guided by an Etuaptmumk/Two-Eyed Seeing approach, with the specific intention of finding ways to recognize that managing natural assets within an Indigenous context requires a systems approach.  The Project builds on learnings from work with Treaty 1 First Nations to explore how to braid Western asset management concepts with Indigenous perspectives, knowledge, and cultural values — in the context of Malahat First Nation — to refine a natural asset management approach that helps the Nation respond effectively to referrals, make land informed land management decisions, and empower stewardship of their traditional territory.

The Project provides a tool (the inventory) that Malahat Nation owns and can use at their discretion — a main advantage to having the information collected into a single, Nation-owned inventory is that Malahat can now create reports on specific areas to identify their priorities and can recognize traditional use areas where that information is available. 

Project Highlights and Lessons Learned

1. Conveying Indigenous priorities using a natural asset management framework 

For Malahat First Nation, the biggest takeaway from the Project was learning how to use a Western framework—asset mapping—to build a communications tool to convey Indigenous knowledge and priorities. Incorporating language and community values into the framework brought the tool closer to Malahat’s snuwuyulh, while simultaneously incorporating a method of analyzing the data which can be easily understood by external parties, such as the Province, forestry, or mining companies.

2. Understanding the Two-Eyed Seeing concept as it related to natural asset management

Experience with Two-Eyed Seeing as it relates to NAM is still limited to a handful of projects across Canada, so it is too early to draw substantial conclusions. Nevertheless, the Project allowed NAI to refine the concept slightly to better understand where the overlap between Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Western Science lies.

3. Inventories as a tool for First Nations in referrals process

‘Referrals’ are the process that the Province of British Columbia uses as part of its ‘Duty to Consult’ First Nations when there are proposed developments in a First Nation’s territory. Referrals are looking for permission to develop in a specific area, and they do not normally refer to adjacent developments or address cumulative effects associated with other developments. It is therefore up to the First Nation to understand potential consequences to the land, resources, community traditional use and long-term impacts. 

Lack of staff capacity and/or limited data affects a First Nation’s ability to effectively respond to referrals, making it harder for them to make proactive and informed land use decisions. Enhancing the effectiveness of Malahat Nation’s participation in referrals with their working group is a significant driver behind this Project—the resulting inventory can be a tool to “level the playing field” for Malahat Nation and support it in its dealings with those seeking to undertake development on its territory.

One learning from the Project is that having natural asset management data consolidated into a single inventory and map will allow Malahat Nation’s Guardians to prioritize ground-truthing efforts. Ownership of the inventory also means that Malahat Nation does not have to rely solely on information provided by development proponents, governments or other third parties, and can instead develop and apply their own data in a way that is consistent with Malahat teachings and priorities.

This project was supported by the Island Corridor Foundation through British Columbia’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.

Featured image credit : Jim Hoffman cc – NC-SA 2.0