Using Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the fight to protect our environment

Kerry Ann Charles-Norris photo

From Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition and Cambium Indigenous Professional Services

It used to be that Provincially Significant Wetlands were protected from site alteration and development, full stop. No more is that the case as the Province of Ontario breaks its own rules, and breaks with logic too, by approving development on highly protected areas, many of which are protected because they flood and buffer us from the impacts of flooding. We need to fight this abuse of power wielded by the Province.

Those of us on the outside are fed up with the Province’s disregard for the environment. And that puts us in the same place as some of our First Nations neighbours who have, over centuries, been separated from family and traditional territories, and are frustrated. What can we do?

Today the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition and Cambium Indigenous Professional Services’ Kerry Ann Charles-Norris are releasing a report called Advancing Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the Lake Simcoe Watershed: Perspectives on protecting what matters to our land. 

The report, written mostly by Georgina Island First Nations member Kerry Ann Charles-Norris, describes what Traditional Ecological Knowledge is and how it is used by Indigenous Peoples to identify areas that are important to them.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is oral knowledge that is embedded within Indigenous ways of knowing, is culturally based, place specific, collective, holistic and also includes long periods of observation.

The report details who’s who at Lake Simcoe, why “consultation” is so often disappointing, and how one goes about doing a Traditional Ecological Knowledge assessment.

At Lake Simcoe there is an opportunity to reach the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan’s Natural Heritage targets by focusing TEK analyses at first on areas that would be better protected if they were bigger, or if other values, such as those that rise to the surface in a TEK analysis, were considered in the protection of natural areas.

We need all the help we can get, and the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition very much appreciates working with local First Nations on our shared objectives.