Protecting Biocultural Heritage and Land Rights

The document examines three climate adaptation projects by the W8banaki Nation: lake sturgeon habitat restoration, medicinal plant preservation, and riverbank erosion assessment. It highlights the importance of integrating traditional Indigenous knowledge with western science and argues for flexible, long-term, community-led funding models over rigid, top-down provincial programs.

• Climate change is negatively impacting the W8banaki Nation's traditional activities and cultural continuity by disrupting the timing of hunting, trapping, and fishing, increasing the danger of winter travel due to fragile ice, and reducing the quality and quantity of medicinal plants and native species like yellow perch.
• The lake sturgeon project demonstrated that integrating W8banakiak knowledge with western science, alongside partnerships with regional actors like Hydro-Québec, can lead to effective conservation measures such as sanctuary areas and improved water flow management.
• Initiatives to manage medicinal plants and invasive species helped preserve ethnobotanical knowledge and strengthened intergenerational ties by connecting Elders with youth through workshops and community gardens.
• The Erosion Project on the St. Francis and Bécancour rivers documented how climate change accelerates bank erosion, which threatens water quality, fish habitats, and archaeological and cultural sites.
• Provincial funding programs for climate adaptation were found to be too rigid and top-down, often excluding implementation activities and dismissing traditional Indigenous knowledge in favor of quantitative measurements.
• Effective funding for First Nations' climate adaptation must be stable, flexible, and tailored to community needs, as rigid eligibility criteria often exclude projects with cultural or archaeological components.
• The W8banaki Nation argues that federal funding mechanisms lack the flexibility to allow nations to define their own priority species for conservation, which negatively affects their sovereignty.

APA

Canadian Climate Institute (2021). Protecting Biocultural Heritage and Land Rights. https://climateinstitute.ca/publications/protecting-biocultural-heritage-and-land-rights/

Chicago

Canadian Climate Institute. Protecting Biocultural Heritage and Land Rights. 2021. https://climateinstitute.ca/publications/protecting-biocultural-heritage-and-land-rights/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Canadian Climate Institute |title=Protecting Biocultural Heritage and Land Rights |date=29 September 2021 |url=https://climateinstitute.ca/publications/protecting-biocultural-heritage-and-land-rights/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{canadianclimateinstitute2021protecting, author = {{Canadian Climate Institute}}, title = {{Protecting Biocultural Heritage and Land Rights}}, institution = {Canadian Climate Institute}, year = {2021}, month = sep, url = {https://climateinstitute.ca/publications/protecting-biocultural-heritage-and-land-rights/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }