Ollie Williams·April 29, 2024

A bull caribou. Twildlife/Dreamstime

NationTalk: Cabin Radio – Indigenous governments are looking to Guardians programs to safeguard the land and water while providing employment, too. How do you make sure they all work together?

Amos Scott recently became the executive director of the Caribou Guardians Coalition, a body dedicated to coordinating the work of different Guardians programs that have the same goal: protect the herd.

“The Caribou Guardians Coalition is the Indigenous groups around the Bathurst caribou herd, who have formed this coalition as a collective voice on caribou management,” Scott said earlier this month, just after his appointment.

“Those Indigenous partners, in discussions with the Government of the Northwest Territories around managing caribou, needed an opportunity to sit together, come to the table and have a common understanding on that work.”

The Bathurst herd is vitally important to a range of Indigenous communities in the NWT. It’s also been in drastic decline for decades.

The coalition isn’t the first time Scott has been involved in a Guardians program or similar project in the North. He has worked with the likes of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative and remains a project director for the Northern Indigenous Stewardship Circle.

“What I’ve learned in the last couple of years is that individual communities are working really hard,” he said of his experience seeing these programs through different lenses.

“People who work in Guardians work – and in environmental monitoring and Indigenous-led conservation – they are kind-of worked to the bone, if you will. They need a lot more support.

“A coalition like this is one way to help create more support systems for the people doing the work. I see my role as trying to find ways to support the work that all of those Indigenous partners are undertaking at the moment, so that they can focus on caribou.”

To hear more from Amos Scott about the growth of Guardians programs, the work of the Caribou Guardians Coalition and how you bring different groups’ programs together, listen to the Cabin Talks podcast.

Listen: Amos Scott on Guardians programs and the Caribou Guardians Coalition.

Click on the following link to listen to “Cabin Talks”:

https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/2UlIS6rfrkmfappnW9M6Zc?utm_source=oembed