A fiery spring

It was a busy May at Whitefeather Forest Initiative! We hosted 2 back-to-back S100 training sessions for the firefighter program, bringing the number of firefighters trained by WFI just this calendar year to over 50. These sessions were hosted once again at the Fin and Feather Resort in partnership with Outland-Dexterra and generously funded by NRCAN.

The S100 courses were preceded by 2 days in Pikangikum at the community center with elders Harold Keeper and Amie Owens. Trainees from both cohorts had the opportunity to listen to these two seasoned firefighters speak in Ojibwe about their experience on the fire. Trainees also had the chance to ask them questions such as “What was the biggest fire you ever worked on?”, “What is camp like?”, “What did you do when you were scared?”, “How do you take care of mental health on fires?” amongst many more.

Peter Quill also gave a brief history of the organization, including the vision of the elders who worked tirelessly for years to create the land use plan (Keeping the Land). He used the map of the traplines to bring to life the conversations that happened decades earlier. Peter was one of the first people who pushed forward the need for an organization like WFI in 1990s and he continues to be a strong supporter as a community liaison today. He included a simple but sharp reminder to the young Pikangikum trainees in his talk: “It’s your land. It’s your forest. It’s your water. It’s your fish. It’s your animals. Nobody else’s.”

These Indigenous knowledge sessions took place against the backdrop of fires raging just a few hundred kilometers from the community center. The smell of smoke permeated the air and pieces of ash and soot constantly rained from the sky. This inescapable reality elevated the sense of urgency and the weight of the training.

The larger global impact of this project however was made abundantly clear on an afternoon during the second week as we watched WFI’s president Alex Peters shake hands with His Majesty King Charles III and Prime Minister Mark Carney in Ottawa. This opportunity was brought to WFI by our membership with the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance (CBA) which was established in 2020 by King Charles III. Specifically, Whitefeather belongs to the Wildfire Resilient Landscapes Network within the CBA. The Network is a joint initiative between the CBA and the Commonwealth Secretariat which aims to connect and share unique indigenous and community knowledge and experience in wildfire management with scientific knowledge and tools. WFI is excited to sharing our learnings from the Indigenous knowledge sessions and the firefighter trainings with the larger global community in the network soon.