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Janna Wale believes that including Indigenous peoples in climate planning and adaptation makes for better plans
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Published Oct 14, 2023 • 4 minute read
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Whether harvesting salmon or simply spending quality time with her grandfather and uncles, Janna Wale has no shortage of stories about being on the water with her family.
She can vividly recall memories from her early years fishing in her Gitxsan homeland — there were “tons of fish everywhere” at the confluence of the Skeena, Nass and Bulkley rivers.
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“Our culture is totally built around salmon,” said Wale, who is from the Gitanmaax First Nation and is Cree-Métis on her mother’s side. “They’re so important — they’re featured a lot in our traditional stories.”
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Growing up, harvesting salmon and berry-picking allowed her to stay connected to her culture and to the land.
Gitanmaax, she said, translates to “People who harvest salmon using torches,” noting her people have been doing that for more than 14,000 years.
“The fact that we’ve been able to maintain that relationship to those territories this whole time, and we’re still here, is part of who I am as well.”
But there’s one fishing memory in particular from her early years that sticks out, a harrowing experience that opened her eyes to the disturbing reality of climate change and its effects on the salmon population.
It happened one summer when she was a teenager — her dad and her uncles were out fishing for salmon, but there weren’t enough fish for them to harvest and feed their families.
“I just remember getting taken back into town by one of my uncles, and my dad and my other uncle were staying out (overnight) to try and get enough fish. I remember thinking, ‘This is serious. There is not enough fish.’”
Wale, now in her mid-20s, said she’s been watching the decline of the salmon population for her entire life.
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“For me to see those changes on the land that fast is pretty frightening, especially being a salmon people,” she said. “It’s a very common thread that people are worried.”
It was her connection to home and her observations of climate change’s affect the salmon that defined her academic direction, which is grounded in learning how Indigenous people can be resilient in the face of climate change.
Guided by the question, “Where have the salmon gone?” Wale earned a bachelor’s degree in natural resources science from Thompson Rivers University.
She listed decreasing river levels, high water temperatures, changes to acidity and sediment as some of the major reasons why salmon populations in her homelands are depleting
“That’s a huge source of protein for a lot of people. It’s just hard to replace that. You have moose, but if there’s no salmon, there’s no bears,” she said.
“And if there’s no bears, you’re gonna have totally different affects all of the different animals living in the area.”
Wale graduated in 2022 with a master’s degree in sustainability at the University of British Columbia Okanagan.
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In her master’s thesis, Climate Rez-ilience: Building Transformative Climate Resilience in Indigenous Communities, she explored Indigenous Peoples’ understanding and relationship with the land, specifically assessing the Gitxsan Nation and the Secwépemc Nation’s community resilience to climate change by using their traditional round of land-based activities carried out within specific seasonal cycles.
“The way that we live seasonally is so important, and I think that’s such a big staple in a lot of our cultures. Everybody had a different way of doing things on the land, but the common thread is that we all have different seasonal use of place, seasonal practices,” she said.
“I think going back to that would be healthier for people, because it gives people a chance to rest in the winter and undertake different things in the spring, so there’s that. Those changes are reflected on the land.”
Climate resilience and climate adaptation, she said, can be learned from Indigenous teachings and systems from the past.
“Those aspects — respect of the land, respect of the water, being in a relationship and having a caretakership role, having that sense of responsibility — is what I see as climate adaptation, which is not anywhere in the Western definition,” she said.
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Her research found that there are four pillars that influence Indigenous community resilience — integrity and adaptation of the seasonal practices, relationship to land, strength of the people, and interconnectedness.
“The Indigenous world view is more about connectedness, balance, wellness. It’s just totally different ways of seeing the world, and I think you really see that in climate outcomes,” she said.
The Western approach to climate resilience, she said, is fixed more on productivity and output over caretakership and having a relationship with the land.
“I think the differences are in that sense of responsibility and having that root to place. I think it’s really easy for governments to only look at the value of resources as dollars and cents,” she said.
She said the governmental approach to climate adaptation is focused on boosting infrastructure, roads and power supplies. While these things are all important, she highlighted that adaptation needs to be looked at more holistically.
In a recent publication with the Yellowhead Institute, Wale asserts that the more Indigenous peoples are included in climate planning and adaptation, the stronger those climate plans will be.
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As a research associate with the Canadian Climate Institute, she’s building on her university research and education, where she’s helping to find and develop actions and policies to adapt to the changing climate.
With files from Philip McLachlan
Aaron Hemens is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with The Discourse. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
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