Episode highlight

In this episode, Russell Myers Ross and William Nikolakis speak about the work of the Gathering Voices Society on revitalizing traditional fire management in Tsilhqot’in Territory and the potential around carbon offsets.

Resources

Russell Myers Ross’ Story

William Nikolakis’ Profile

Gathering Voices Society

The North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance Ltd (NAILSMA)

Intact Foundation

Wildfire governance in a changing world: Insights for policy learning and policy transfer

Goal setting and Indigenous fire management: a holistic perspective

Sponsors

The Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science

Support from:

●       California Indian Water Commission

●       Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation

Takeaways

Valuing Indigenous knowledge and experience (7.59)

Will created the Gathering Voices Society to support “a stewardship model, where First Nations manage the land in ways that are consistent with their values for their own goals and their own ways”.

Practical action (10.54)

Will shares that their goal is to support the community by employing people for the fire programs, and they are guided by their motto to learn by doing. Cultural burning can involve everyone in the community, not just firefighters, to begin seeing fire as a friend.

Learning by doing (14.58)

Will met Russ at a governance conference in 2015. They hosted Victor Steffensen in 2018 for knowledge exchange on different ways of practising cultural burning which led to them doing their first spring burn in 2019.

Balancing benefits, mitigating effects (25.07)

Even though many people hold misconceptions about cultural burning, Russ knows that the benefits will be visible in due time, and healthy land can be enjoyed by all. The community has been excited about reconnecting to the land and the energy is infectious.

2017 wildfires (33.52)

The Gathering Voices Society has secured funding to finance the fire stewardship in Russ’ community. Russ speaks about the aftermath of the 2017 wildfires and the hope for development and education in this space ever since.

Changing the world, one fire at a time (42.37)

Will and Russ discuss the different tools used in cultural burning. Other communities are looking to him for inspiration on land management today. Will is working towards compiling scientific evidence of the validity and importance of this practice.

Carbon (48.56)

Will talks about working with NAILSMA, where they witnessed the growth of well-documented formal Indigenous fire programs that are groundbreaking in understanding the effect of fire across the landscape.

Passing on the torch (54.46)

Russ states that piloting the program in the community was important to measure practicality and interest, and they are now planning on how it can be expanded. He envisions this work to be intergenerational, keeping the community immersed in the knowledge.

Send in your comments and feedback to the hosts of this podcast via email: [email protected] and [email protected].