Projects | Northern Canada
Skownan First Nation Community Values Project

Integrating Aboriginal Values into Land Use and Resource Management

Between January 200 and June 2001, IISD partnered with Skownan First Nation, formerly called Waterhen First Nation, to explore how Aboriginal people value the lands around them and how this information can be incorporated into Manitoba's land-use and resource management activities.

The project contributed to the
"values" component of the ecosystems-based management pilot project initiated by Manitoba's Department of Conservation on the east side of Lake Winnipeg (Ecoregion 90). Although Skownan is located to the west of Ecoregion 90, Skownan lies in an area of interest to the forest industry. The community has completed a traditional land-use survey and conducted an innovative economic development project connected to its traditional livelihood system: the introduction of both domestic and wild herds of wood bison in its land-use area. At the community's request, the province formally protected a large area of land used by the bison in 1998, thereby restricting the range of activities that can occur there. The community is now looking for further economic opportunities related to its culture and livelihood system.

Through our joint project, IISD and Skownan First Nation sought to develop a process that would:

• Help Aboriginal people identify community values with respect to the forested landscape around them;
• Explore ways to respect and reinforce these values in the development and implementation of a community vision;
• Effectively express these values to decision-makers in the provincial government, resource industry and to other stakeholders; and
• Stimulate discussion by all stakeholders on ways to incorporate Aboriginal values into land-use and resource management decisions.

The process was designed to contribute to the larger goal of sustainable community development, providing economic opportunities that are self-sustaining, consistent with local values and priorities, and supportive of environmental stewardship.

To achieve its objectives, the project adapted an approach called Appreciative Inquiry to local conditions. Appreciative inquiry empowers local people by building a shared vision based on community strengths and constructing strategies to make it a reality. The project used appreciative inquiry to determine how an Aboriginal community values the forest around it over the course of a year. This valuation was as holistic as possible, including monetary value from trapping, subsistence value from hunting, medicinal value from gathering herbs, spiritual and cultural value from living in a forested landscape, and other values determined by Aboriginal people themselves.

The following activities were undertaken as part of the IISD/Skownan First Nation appreciative inquiry project:

• Training a local team in the use of appreciative inquiry.
• The trained local team interviewed over 100 community members in the spring, summer and fall of 2000. At the end of each round of interviews, the visions and values shared by community members were identified.
• Six community workshops were held in Skownan, during which community values and visions where clarified and an action plan for the community initiated.
• The outcomes of the appreciative interviews were captured during three video shoots that took place during the spring, fall and winter of 2000. Footage from these video shoots was used to produce two videos that convey the community's values and vision accurately and powerfully: "Skownan: Our Land, Our Future" and "Skownan: Dreaming the Land".
• Focus group workshops were held to enable the people of Skownan First Nation to communicate their values and vision to decision-makers, explore the benefits and opportunities of using appreciative inquiry, and stimulate discussion on how to engage in collaborative processes when working with Aboriginal communities.

Through the completion of these activities, the project identified the values and vision of the community related to natural resources, livelihoods, health and nutrition, education, family, community, recreation and spirituality. An initial action plan was developed to achieve some of the goals identified by the community, such as planting trees in the community, preserving aboriginal culture through the education system, and maintaining access to and the health of Skownan's traditional lands. The project also allowed for the transfer of skills and knowledge between IISD and Skownan First Nation in a 'co-learning' environment.

The project contributed to the principles and guidelines of sustainable development in the following areas:

Stewardship: The project sought to support more effective partnerships between Aboriginal people and decision-makers in the provincial government and resource industries. Such partnerships will enhance the stewardship of Manitoba's forest resources.

Shared responsibility and understanding: The project sought to integrate Aboriginal values into the decision-making process, so that the social views, values, traditions and aspirations of First Nations members are respected.

Public participation: The project established a process that encourages Aboriginal people at the community level to make their views known and incorporates those views in the decision-making process. It strove to establish community consensus on the potential value of forests to Aboriginal people.

Integrated decision-making and planning: The project identified community achievements in the past and present, and used them to create a vision of what is possible for the community in the future, providing an inter-generational perspective on natural resource management. It also tested a process for better integrating the views and opinions of a marginalized group, Aboriginal people, into provincial land-use and resource management decision-making.

Innovation: The project used a new methodology that had only recently been applied at the community level and never before in Canada. Appreciative inquiry differs from standard community development methodologies in which experts help local people identify community problems and then develop projects to fix them. Although logical and efficient, this approach can encourage local people to think of themselves as laden with problems that all too often only outside experts can solve. In this sense, it is disempowering. Appreciative inquiry, in contrast, seeks to locate, highlight and illuminate the "life-giving" forces in a community. Its aim is to generate knowledge by focusing on community strengths, expanding "the realm of the possible" and helping community members first visualize and then implement a collectively desired future.

The use of video as the channel of communication between an Aboriginal community and outside stakeholders was also innovative. Video has the following strengths over the more traditional method of report writing:

• Local people can describe their value system in their own words;
• Emotion is communicated as well as meaning;
• The camera can be taken onto the land, to show forest values that are important to the community as well as describe them;
• Local stakeholders can speak from the familiar environment of their community, just as others can listen and respond in surroundings that are comfortable to them, bridging cultures easily and effectively; and
• Video communicates directly to a broad range of audiences, overcoming differences in literacy and, to some extent, language differences.

In sum, the project contributed to sustainable development because it field-tested an innovative method to determine local values, and then used video as a communication channel to have those values recognized, understood, discussed and included in the decision-making process at higher levels.

Integrating Aboriginal Values into Land Use and Resource Management was funded by the Government of Manitoba's Sustainable Development Innovation Fund and by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.

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For more information on this project please contact:

Jo-Ellen Parry
Project Manager
International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)
E-mail: jparry@iisd.ca

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