Boreal culture
First Nations groups struggle
to maintain their identity and relationship with the
land in the boreal's changing economic environment
Story by Jodi Di Menna
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| Click on image to view map |
An Ojibwa woman from Superior’s northern shore wraps her newborn daughter in the skin
of a rabbit and diapers her with sphagnum moss collected from the forest floor. A young Algonquian
deer hunter draws a bow carved from the wood of a birch tree; his family gathers berries from
the understory. For thousands of years Canadian First Nations have relied on the boreal forest
for food, shelter and culture. But in the age of industrial forestry, the way in which First
Nations groups inhabit the boreal is changing.
“We’ve always been involved in forestry in one way or another,” says
Harry Bombay, executive director of the National Aboriginal Forestry Association and a member
of the Rainy River First Nation in northwestern Ontario. “If you take forestry in its
broadest interpretation, we’ve been foresters for centuries. But in the last 10 years
or so we’ve become involved in a different kind of way — more as forest managers
and as owner/operators of aboriginal owned businesses.”
There are currently some 1,000 First Nations-owned forestry groups operating in the Canadian
boreal. These range from single-person operations to large-scale developers, such as Little
Red River Forestry Ltd., operated by the Cree nation in Alberta, which employs hundreds of
people. About 15,000 aboriginal people in Canada make their living in forestry and logging.
Despite this trend toward aboriginal involvement in forestry, a recent report from Global
Forest Watch Canada found that aboriginal communities within forest regions tend to have
significantly lower average incomes, employment rates and education levels than aboriginal
communities outside the forest region. This raises questions about the distribution of benefits
from logging and other developments within the boreal. “There are a lot of obstacles yet
in our way for our participation in forestry,” says Bombay.
“It’s about achieving true sustainable forest management. It’s the only way
we can preserve our knowledge systems and maintain a relationship with the land and drive
economic benefits which meet both traditional and contemporary economic needs.”
Native populations and cultures were established in the boreal between 20,000 and 5,000
years ago. During the fur-trade years of 1670 to 1870, European influence came in the form
of forestry activities in the southern boreal, as demand for lumber and the depletion of
forest increased in the south and east. With about 1 million people in 600 communities across
the country, the boreal is home to 80 percent of First Nations people in Canada, including
Cree, Innu, Metis, Dene, Gwich’in, and Athabascan.
Most aboriginal people today regard the forest as critical to their cultural survival and
their ability to maintain their identity as indigenous people. For this reason, becoming
more involved in commercial forestry management is critical to First Nations groups. “We
have a lot at stake in the sense that our livelihoods are in danger,” says Bombay. “The cultural
aspects of our lives are threatened.” To create your own maps of Canada, go to The Global
Forest Watch’s website.
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