CANMORE – The Rockies Institute has announced their largest multi-partner, multi-year project, Fire With Fire, as organizers prepare to enhance climate change resiliency in the province by inviting Indigenous voices to share their wildfire knowledge.
“It’s not just about dealing with wildfire, it’s about building a resilience by entertaining different knowledge systems and that’s the part that I’m most keen about,” said Laura Lynes, spokesperson for the project and board member with the Rockies Institute.
“Using a theme that is actually something that connects everybody, so because wildfire is indiscriminate, it connects us and we can talk about how we can come together as people with different knowledge and perspectives of the world to tackle something that is really hard and really dangerous and scary for people.”
With the province’s first two Out of Control (OC) wildfire of the year spreading more than 13,000 hectares, according to the provincial website, in the High Level forest area in northern Alberta, Lynes called the project “super important.”
“The initiative is aiming to collaborate with Indigenous communities and will be bringing the best available Indigenous scientific knowledge of fire management and the goal is to inform innovative practices for local, regional and provincial climate change adaptations,” Lynes said.
“But the big goal of this project is to use as a template to braid Indigenous and scientific knowledge on adaptation strategy where you bring the theme of wildfire because it is so pressing and the context of climate change, but it is also an applicable model to other really important topics like drought and flood that Albertans will be experiencing.”
Last week, the federal government committed $500,000 to the Rockies Institute Fire with Fire project, funded through Natural Resources Canada. Lynes explained the locally-based Rockies Institute approached the Canadian government last fall to pitch the project to the Building Regional Adaption Capacity and Expertise (BRACE) program, under the umbrella of Adaptation and Climate Resilience pillar – an $18 million strategic investment by the Federal government.
“We are really excited about this,” Lynes said.
“One of the challenges has been, how do you actually braid knowledge systems and people have been talking about it and people have been identifying that we need to listen to Indigenous people and have their knowledge brought to the table and considered in policies and plans?”
She said there are no easy answers.
After working on a similar pilot project with the Kainai First Nation, also known as the Blood Tribe, located in southern Alberta, the Rockies Institute spokesperson said the institute has brainstormed collaborative knowledge sharing initiatives.
Now with the half a million dollar funding, the project will be able to move forward in finding partners from Indigenous communities, where the project summary outlines researchers will develop and deliver workshops with participating Indigenous communities, establish respectful knowledge co-production in-between Indigenous, local and scientific decision-making communities, organize knowledge-sharing events to improve local climate change adaption responses and mobilize best available Indigenous and scientific knowledge in participatory videos.
“I think [we’ll] be exploring how we value and what we value is important to because like it is just infrastructure, it is cultural aspects? What is important to people and Indigenous perspectives help us think about what we value in different ways,” Lynes explained.
Anticipated outcomes outlined in the report include, the knowledge gained from Indigenous knowledge will lead to new insights and innovative practices for enhanced local, regional and provincial climate change resilience, the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of fire management strategies will be enhanced and for Indigenous community participants to “deepen the understanding of the risks of changing fire regimes in the context of climate change and management options to improve local climate change adaptation resources.”
