To Fight Climate Change, Canada Turns to Indigenous People to Save Its Forests
- Media Manager
- Nov 16, 2022
- 2 min read
The New York Times
Written By: Norimitsu Onishi
Published: November 16th, 2022
Canada is looking to its Indigenous communities to help manage its boreal forests, the world’s largest intact forest ecosystem and one of its biggest stores of carbon
Deep, soft, moss carpeting the floor of the old-growth Boreal forest in Eeyou Istchee territory, Quebec, creates a soft landing for fallen trees, which take much longer to decompose than in forests further south. Here, trees grow far enough apart for people or animals to easily walk between them, providing the vital landscape for practicing the traditional Cree way of life.
BROADBACK FOREST, Quebec — At a bend in the Broadback River, Don Saganash, 60, listened to the steady, familiar sound of the rapids that to his ears were the “heartbeat of the Broadback.” He took in the surrounding forest, the spruce and pine trees rising from a floor of rainbow-colored moss so soft that he had always imagined “walking on air.”
Nothing had changed in this corner of the Broadback Forest since he was a boy, or since he was picked by his father to become the tallyman of his extended family’s trapline, or ancestral hunting grounds. A respected figure among the Crees, his Indigenous community, the tallyman made sure there were enough animals and other resources in the trapline for current and future generations.
“Now,” his father told him, “it’s up to you to protect our trapline.”
Mr. Saganash began fighting against threats from industrial logging in the Broadback — a still untouched boreal forest in northern Quebec, reachable only through unmapped roads and boat rides along its river and lakes — two decades ago. But in recent years, his fight became part of a global contest against climate change.
