The Canadian Mountain Podcast

In Part Two of Decolonizing Media on the Canadian Mountain Podcast (CMP), the team dives further into the limitations and challenges of decolonizing media and explores strategies to sustain this effort into the future. Sherry Woods, an Indigenous CMP Producer, leads the discussion with the CMP team, including Meg Wilcox, Kyle Napier, Julie Patton, and Catalina Berguno. The conversation explores the team's encountered limitations and challenges, lessons learned, and their plans for advancing their work as media makers.

As the Canadian Mountain Podcast (CMP) concludes its final season, the team gathers to reflect on the process of decolonizing their media practices throughout the podcast series. Sherry Woods, an Indigenous CMP Producer, leads a discussion with the CMP team—comprising Meg Wilcox, Kyle Napier, Julie Patton, and Catalina Berguno—exploring how the podcast has evolved its practices to better integrate Indigenous perspectives and amplify Indigenous voices. In Part One of the discussion, the team explores the steps taken to decolonize their media practices. Part Two will delve deeper into the limitations and challenges of these changes and how they plan to sustain this effort into the future.

Part 2 of the Canadian Mountain Podcast on Indigenous intellectual property builds upon the foundational concepts explored in Part 1. Continuing the conversation, Kyle Napier, a Dene/nêhiyaw Métis university instructor specializing in Indigenous language revitalization and intellectual property is joined by Saad Iqbal, a research assistant at the University of Alberta, to further discuss their joint research project investigating Canada's intellectual property laws. They also aim to evaluate the efficacy of Canada's intellectual property laws in protecting Indigenous knowledge and how they intersect with environmental concerns.

Copyright legally protects creators, granting exclusive rights for activities such as printing, publishing, performing, filming, and recording, or authorizing others to do so. This protection prohibits unauthorized use, subjecting infringers to legal consequences. In part 1 of the Canadian Mountain Podcast’s two-part series on Indigenous intellectual property, guests Kyle Napier and Saad Iqbal, both researchers and doctoral students at the University of Alberta, discuss their research on how Canadian intellectual property laws can better serve traditional Knowledge Holders. They are conducting an in-depth examination of Canada's IP laws and their impact on information control and the beneficiaries, particularly within the context of Indigenous knowledge. Part 1 explores IP, traditional knowledge, and the inherent conflicts arising from differing views on information and ownership.

The Chic-Choc Mountain range in the Gaspésie Peninsula of south-eastern Quebec is the focus of this episode of the Canadian Mountain Podcast. Catherine Lambert, the Executive Director of the Mi’gmaq Indigenous Fisheries Management Association and Louise Chaverie, an Associate Professor with the Norwegian University of Life and Sciences, provided their perspective on the Knowledge Hub “Developing Knowledge on the Status of Aquatic Ecosystems in the Chic-Choc Mountains”. Overall, the goal of the Hub is to create and enable collaborative research and conservation measures between the Mi’gmaq, university researchers, and management organizations so that the best possible decisions can be made to protect the lakes and rivers in the region. These aquatic environments support fisheries, forestry, tourism, and arts and crafts, which combined, generate several million dollars in revenue each year.

Catherine and Louise explain the work that is happening as part of the Hub and how it expands the traditional conservation efforts that have historically gone towards marine and forestry resources, as well as discuss how and why they are doing fieldwork during Canada’s winters for climate monitoring. This episode also details how the Hub supports the cultural exchange of knowledge to better steward and protect these areas.

In episode three of season five of the Canadian Mountain Podcast, join host Julie Patton and producer Noel Ormita for a conversation with Chief Roland Wilson and researcher Clayton Lamb about the Indigenous-led conservation of the Klinse-Za Caribou. Roland Wilson is Chief of the West Moberly First Nations and Clayton Lamb is a wildlife scientist with Biodiversity Pathways — an organization that uses data to inform decision-makers at all levels of government in Canada. Both are passionate about increasing the caribou population. In the face of near-extinction for the Klinse-Za Caribou herd in 2013 and the subsequent lack of response from the federal and provincial governments, the West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations took decisive action. Recognizing the adverse consequences of the declining caribou population on both the environment and their way of life as outlined in Treaty 8, which guarantees their right to harvest caribou, these First Nations proactively addressed the situation. But with only 38 caribou remaining in this herd in 2013, the local Nations could not hunt without further endangering the population.

These restrictions are a direct infringement of Indigenous Treaty rights. Through the conservation efforts of the West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations, the Klinse-Za caribou population increased to 101 individuals by 2021. Through predator reduction and maternal pens, these efforts will continue until the Klinse-Za population can grow consistently without external interference, and the local Indigenous Peoples can once again sustainably harvest caribou.

Most of the Yukon Territory is covered by the Yukon River watershed, fed by glacial lakes that flow into the Yukon River system, which is home to diverse species, including salmon. The Salmon people, who are made up of 14 Yukon First Nations, are the stewards and the Indigenous peoples of this land and continue to have a deep connection with salmon.

Canada is home to nearly 20 percent of the world's surface freshwater (Statistics Canada, 2018), which is an ideal environment for salmon. However, Yukon salmon populations have been declining for decades. For generations of Salmon People, this means losing a connection with their culture, especially with increasingly rare summer fish camps, where knowledge and practices are passed down.

In this episode of the Canadian Mountain Podcast, Chief Nicole Tom of the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation and Elizabeth MacDonald, Manager of Fisheries at Yukon First Nation Salmon Stewardship Alliance, discuss the history of the Yukon salmon and Salmon People, the multiple factors behind their declines, such as commercial overharvesting, industrial mining and climate change and ultimately, how to move forward. Chief Tom and Elizabeth discuss community-led solutions, conciliatory management, Western science and Indigenous knowledge to revitalize the salmon population and connect the Salmon People to their heritage and the salmon.

Welcome to Season 5 of the Canadian Mountain Podcast! We’re starting this season by understanding how reintroducing Tatâga (bison) into the Rocky Mountains is a meaningful part of healing the landscape but also a restoration of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Tatâga. Buffalo were nearly extirpated from Alberta because of colonization, and Indigenous peoples were removed from their land when Banff National Park was created. This is why the reintroduction of Tatâga is so important for Indigenous peoples and resilient ecosystems, as well as forging a path towards reconciliation. Join us in the conversation as Bill Snow tells us about the Stoney Nakoda Nations report, “Enhancing the Reintroduction of Plains Bison in Banff National Park Through Cultural Monitoring and Traditional Knowledge.” In the second half of the episode, we will hear from Marie-Eve Marchand, who will discuss the ecological, cultural and political impacts of reintroducing Tatâga to their native lands.

Hosts: Sydney Klassen-Rosewarn and Vanessa Forbyster

Guests:

Bill Snow, Consultation Manager, Stoney Nakota First Nations

Marie-Eve Marchand, Organizer, Bison Belong initiative

Mountain landscapes are dynamic systems, and life in the mountains is inherently exposed to a wide range of natural hazards, including landslides, mudslides, volcanoes, avalanches, earthquakes, wildfires and flooding.

This episode of the Canadian Mountain Podcast focuses on the Mountain Risk Knowledge Exchange, which was designed to integrate citizen and community science into monitoring mountain hazards. This new community-based approach is harnessing Indigenous and non-Indigenous local knowledge and building risk management capacity and resilience in mountain communities.

This podcast episode features Principal Investigator Dr. Glyn Williams-Jones from Simon Fraser University, who is leading the Mountain Risk Knowledge Exchange. The second guest is Juan Anzieta, a PhD student from Simon Fraser University who works alongside Williams-Jones on the project.

They discuss their work in developing an open-access portal, where knowledge is co-produced with contributions from citizen scientists, some of which have gathered local knowledge through generations of observations. Users can also learn from the portal, which is a one-stop-shop of information, data and knowledge related to mountain hazards.

In this episode, we learn more about the Canadian Mountain Assessment, which is a flagship initiative of the Canadian Mountain Network that will clarify what we know, do not know, and need to know about Canada’s diverse and rapidly changing mountain systems. This assessment is led by Dr. Graham McDowell, who is supported by a team of international and Canadian advisors that help steward the project as it moves forward. The assessment is the first of its kind in Canada and the first in the world to put a primary focus on working and collaborating with Indigenous peoples.

Host: Ethan Ward

Guests:

Dr. Graham McDowell is the Project Leader of the Canadian Mountain Assessment. He has also led community-level projects in the Nepal Himalayas, Peruvian Andes, Rocky Mountains, Greenland, and the Canadian Arctic as well as numerous large-scale assessments of the human dimensions of climate change in cold regions.

Dr. Carolina Adler is a member of the Canadian Mountain Assessment’s International Advisory Committee and Executive Director at the Mountain Research Initiative. She is an environmental scientist and geographer with broad international professional experience with a career spanning both research and practice in the public and private sectors.

Dr. Philippus (Flip) Wester is a member of the Canadian Mountain Assessment’s International Advisory Committee, who provides guidance on the project based on his extensive work on other mountain assessments, specifically the Hindu Kush assessment that examined the Himalaya mountain range.