Many Indigenous nations faced long waits for approval and cumbersome applications under the previous system. The National Guardians Network is working to ease that.
Members of Heiltsuk Nation’s Coastal Guardian Watchmen inspect their crab traps near Bella Bella, B.C. The community is one of 80 Indigenous Guardians programs that recently received federal funding. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal
The Narwhal: For more than six years, the federal government has been funding Guardians programs to support Indigenous-led environmental stewardship.
Combining Indigenous Knowledge with western science, guardians play a critical role in monitoring and managing wildfires, water quality, species protections and more. But applying for funding to do this work was “a tedious, time-consuming process,” Gillian Staveley, a Kaska Dena citizen from northern B.C., told The Narwhal. Engaging with the application process meant taking guardians away from the land.
Staveley is a council member of the National Guardians Network — Canada’s first Indigenous-led national stewardship network, which launched in December 2022 at COP15, the United Nations biodiversity conference in Montreal. For the first time, this past year the network independently managed and allocated federal funds for all Indigenous communities. (Guardians programs across Canada have various funding sources, including the federal government.)
In doing so, the network is reinventing the system for distributing federal funds to make “a process that is easier for guardians, that gets them in the field faster,” Staveley said. The network created a toll-free support line and permitted oral reporting by funding recipients instead of requiring hefty written submissions.
A year on, Staveley said the program is working and has created “a new kind of partnership between us and Canada, one based on equality,” and one she describes as “a real example of reconciliation.”
By Fatima Syed
Fatima Syed is a Mississauga-based journalist. She was the founding host of The Backbench podcast. She has worked for The Walrus, …