October 26, 2023 • 50 mins
Meet the Fire Watchers of Skeetchestn: the people keeping their community safe during nearby wildfires, and working to bring good fire back to the land. Join us for this conclusion to our visit to Secwépemc territories as we discuss a way to bring different knowledge systems together: a synthesis of western science and Indigenous understanding.
This is the 5th instalment in our series of indeterminate length, "On Fire". While you don't need to listen to them in order, you may want to at least catch up Part 4 (Under Water) before diving into this one.
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Introduction Voiceover (00:04):
You are listening to Season Five of
Future Ecologies
Adam Huggins (00:16):
Okay, shall we jump in right where we left off?
Mendel Skulski (00:20):
Sure. Just for new listeners, my name is
Mendel.
Adam Huggins (00:24):
And I'm Adam.
Mendel Skulski (00:26):
And this episode is a continuation of the last
one — about what post disasterrecovery looks like when there
is no post to the disaster.
Adam Huggins (00:37):
Just one crisis after another, fires, floods,
landslides, you name it.
Mendel Skulski (00:44):
So this is Part Five of our series "On Fire".
Don't worry. You don't need togo all the way back to the
beginning to understand what'sgoing on here. But if you
haven't already, you may want tolisten to the previous episode
to get oriented.
Adam Huggins (01:01):
That's On Fire — Under Water.
Mendel Skulski (01:04):
Okay, I think that covers it for housekeeping.
Adam Huggins (01:07):
Yeah. So when we left off, I was in a truck
climbing these awful dirt roadsthrough the 2021 Sparks Lake
fire footprint, right outside ofthe Skeetchestn Indian Band's
reserve. The landscape had beenburned two years previously. So
the trees were all just charredlittle sticks. And there was a
(01:28):
rich understory of wildflowersand medicinal plants that were
coming back up.
Mendel Skulski (01:32):
Plants which kept distracting you from your
conversation with Sam.
Adam Huggins (01:36):
Indeed. And that's Sam Draney, of Skeetchestn
Natural Resources. Also in thetruck, Sarah Dickson-Hoyle from
UBC.
Mendel Skulski (01:45):
And also from Down Under.
Adam Huggins (01:47):
As we were driving, Sam was telling me
about how she became a firewatcher. It goes back to the
2017 Elephant Hill Fire
Mendel Skulski (01:56):
Which you explored in detail in the last
episode
Adam Huggins (02:00):
And at the time, folks in Skeetchestn felt like
they weren't getting up to datereports about the progress of
the fire from BC Wildfire, whichis not good when your community
is right next to an out ofcontrol mega fire. So they
decided to send out a team oftheir own to track the fire and
report back to the community.And this is where our story
(02:21):
picks up. There was just oneproblem.
Mendel Skulski (02:24):
What was that?
Adam Huggins (02:26):
They were missing a technical person.
Sam Draney (02:28):
So I got to go out as the tech, run the iPad, take
the pictures, take the track.And then they never pried me
back off of that fire. I was onit — like "no, you need me I
have to run the iPad." That'swhere the team between me and
Darrel really developed. He'sgot the cultural mindset. He's a
hunter, he grew up on the landhis whole life. He knows every
(02:51):
road, every gully — how the windworks in every gully.
Mendel Skulski (02:56):
Who's Darrel?
Adam Huggins (02:57):
Darrel is the man that we've driven all the way
out into the bush to see. Andcan you believe it? We're just
arriving right now.
Mendel Skulski (03:06):
Convenient.
Adam Huggins (03:11):
Amazing.
We get out at this open meadowsurrounded by a mix of green and
black trees, above a lake.
Sam Draney (03:20):
This is Sedge Lake. So this up here is one of our
potato plots. So the springbeauty — Indian potato.
Adam Huggins (03:29):
Just up the hill, there are some guys with a
little excavator installingfence posts around the patch
that Sam is pointing to. They'reprotecting a number of different
experimental plots.
Mendel Skulski (03:39):
Kind of like... crop trials?
Adam Huggins (03:42):
Yeah, but for native plants. And man, I really
wish I knew that you couldinstall fence posts with an
excavator. Would have saved me alot of back pain.
Mendel Skulski (03:49):
You live and learn.
Adam Huggins (03:50):
Anyway, pretty immediately, we're greeted by
the man that we came here tosee.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (03:55):
Hi! Darrel, I'm Sarah.
Darrel Peters (03:57):
Darrel.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (03:58):
Nice to meet you.
Adam Huggins (03:59):
Adam.
Darrel Peters (03:59):
Nice to meet you.
Adam Huggins (04:00):
Great to meet you.
Sam Draney (04:02):
You know me.
Darrel Peters (04:03):
Oh yeah.
My name is Darrel Peters. I'mfrom the Deadman's Creek Valley.
People call it Skeetchestn now.
Mendel Skulski (04:15):
Oh so you finally got someone to introduce
themselves. I'm proud of you. Sotell me more about Darrel.
Adam Huggins (04:23):
Well, Darrel is kind of the do-it-all guy for a
Skeetchestn Natural Resources —be it fisheries, forestry,
ranching,
Darrel Peters (04:31):
No matter what comes up, I'm always involved.
That's what I do for the band —territorial patrol, going
through all our whole territoryand going into the overlap to
the other bands and seeing who'sdoing the work and who's doing
the ranching in the areas, who'sdoing the mining, and that's how
I got to know everybody all in agreat big circle.
Adam Huggins (04:55):
So naturally, he was one of the folks that
Skeetchestn sent out to trackthe Elephant Hill Fire In 2017,
and Sam came along
Mendel Skulski (05:03):
To run the iPad.
Adam Huggins (05:04):
Yeah, to do the tech stuff.
Sam Draney (05:06):
And I followed Darrel on the fires. I was just
right there behind him,especially on Elephant Hill. I
felt like a little baby deer —just following behind, was so
excited. Learning so much, andjust like continued learning.
Mendel Skulski (05:22):
So what were they actually there to do?
Adam Huggins (05:26):
they were there to be boots on the ground and eyes
on the fire, because they feltlike they were being left out of
the loop.
Sam Draney (05:32):
We felt like we weren't getting up to date
information on what washappening, where the fire was
going. So we were actually goingout and actively GPSing the edge
of the fire. So we knew howclose it was getting to reserve
so we could make a call on whenwe were going to evacuate, what
are we going to do to protectourselves. Because in any of the
recent fires, we weren't goingto back down, we weren't going
(05:55):
to leave. We weren't going toleave our homes to be protected
by somebody else that maybedoesn't have the same values,
let alone our own values out onthe land in us, you know, being
out and using it actively. So Iwas able to map the fire daily —
map the fire line, show the datawe were collecting in a way
(06:16):
people can understand it. Andjust really latched on to Darrel
and Elephant Hill and didn't letgo. But that's where fire
watch... that's what it is forme is just actively watching the
fire.
Darrel Peters (06:31):
Going to the head of it — taking our GPS points
and watching what fuel it'staking up and which wind
direction and knowing the timeof day of where things are
going, how your weather is, ineffect. That's what I've learned
from my grandmother. And watch,and listen and record in your
mind of where things are goinghow long it takes. Because when
(06:52):
you have different fuel loads,the fire travels at different
time lengths, and that's when itcrawls up into the trees. That's
why you see some of the trees...
Adam Huggins (07:00):
I'll just chime in here to say that Darrel spoke in
great detail and at length aboutthe many different factors that
he's considering when he'swatching a fire, and making
judgments about how it's goingto move where it's gonna go.
It's so much knowledge
Mendel Skulski (07:15):
And probably too much detail for this
conversation.
Adam Huggins (07:19):
Yeah. And I think Sam summed it up really nicely.
Sam Draney (07:22):
Just like actively using our traditional ecological
knowledge to make calls, to helpour community make choices.
Darrel Peters (07:31):
Guardians of the land is who we are, because
that's where we naturally comefrom.
Adam Huggins (07:41):
And as I was standing there listening to Sam
and Darrel, go back and forth. Icouldn't help but imagine how I
would feel watching a fire thatwas barreling towards my
community. So I asked them aboutit.
Sam Draney (07:55):
It's a huge mix of emotions. I connect very
spiritually to fire. ElephantHill was a learning experience
for me. I fell in love with fireon that. The way it moves, the
way it acts. I always connectedit to a woman's spirit. She puts
on a performance, she dances.Then she goes to sleep at night.
(08:18):
Sparks Lake again, reallyspiritual connection. I
understood what it was doing. Iagreed with what it was doing.
It was reclaiming our land forus. It was restarting the
succession. Tremont, that's adifferent monster. It was
robotic. It was mismanaged. Thatwas a mass amount of burns that
(08:40):
kept awakening a fire that, tome, was trying to go to sleep.
It was tired. But the back burnsjust kept going wrong. They
weren't taking input fromSkeetchestn or the ranchers, and
we've all been on the land ourwhole lives. And they were just
lighting stuff up that didn'tneed to get lit up. So you go
(09:01):
from understanding what'shappening to just feeling empty
on the inside, because what welive on is now gone.
Mendel Skulski (09:12):
Hold on, I'm a little confused. What, what made
the Tremont fire. So differentfrom Sparks Lake and Elephant
Hill? Weren't Sparks Lake andTremont burning around the same
time, just on two differentsides of the Thompson River?
Adam Huggins (09:28):
Yeah. From my understanding from Sam and
Darrel, there were a number ofthings. But a big part was that
a different set of folks from BCWildfire were in charge of the
response on Tremont than atSparks Lake. And at first they
didn't even want Skeetchestninvolved.
Darrel Peters (09:45):
The head guy didn't want us to go work in
there or be part of it. And Iwas like "Well, this is our
territory. This is our home.This is our place and you're
telling me that I cannot gothere." I just went back to the
traditional rule of "this is ourland our home, our
jurisdiction." He was FirstNations too, and I just told
(10:08):
him, I said, "Well, you're FirstNations. You should know where
your territory starts and ends,right?" And he said "yes." I
said, "Well, that's what I'mdoing too. I'm overriding what
you want just for the governmenttable, back to my traditional
rule — to be the keeper of theland. to look after stuff." So
that's when they let us back onthe fire.
Adam Huggins (10:33):
But from their telling, once they got back onto
the fire after this delay, theywere run ragged just trying to
deal with what they perceive tobe mistakes that BC Wildfire was
making in their response. Forexample, back burns lit at the
wrong time of day, in the wrongplace, or even the wrong side of
the mountain.
Darrel Peters (10:52):
And it was like, me and Sam are just
checkerboarding all over theareas. It was like "you go be
lookout over there, I'll takethis fire over here, get control
here. You go scout for me andother areas to see what had to
be looked after in the propermanner." And once they let us do
that, then we started gettingcontrol on the fire and keeping
(11:13):
it away from the people'shouses. And we started saving a
lot and capitalizing in areas.That's when everything got
better for us, was when theyactually started listening to
our information and what wewanted to bring to the table.
Adam Huggins (11:29):
And eventually, of course, the 2021 Tremont and
Sparks Lake fires burntthemselves out. But they took a
huge toll on the land, and oneveryone who was involved with
the response.
Sam Draney (11:41):
I was emotionally done after the last set of
wildfires.
Adam Huggins (11:47):
Is it okay to call that burnout? Is that all right?
Sam Draney (11:49):
It is. It was burnout. I still am. I took a
six month leave, and I justtried to completely check out.
But in that six months, I did alot of soul searching. There's
nowhere else I'd rather be. Icould have ran and been on the
pipeline, or been bartending orwhatever. But this is where I'm
(12:13):
meant to be. This is my journey.I feel like I'm meant to be a
warrior for the land. And I canimagine how some of the other
community members feel. There'sjust been a huge change within
our own community, it feels likesince the fires. I just hope it
changes for the better soon.
Mendel Skulski (12:35):
What kind of change is she talking about?
Adam Huggins (12:39):
The kind of change when most of your territory and
your economic base have justgone up in smoke in the span of
a few years.
Darrel Peters (12:48):
Since the fires came through, it just kind of
burnt us out of house and homeagain. And now we're restarting
of where we were 20 years ago,30 years ago. Seeing it from
that aspect to this aspect nowis a big change for me. And like
(13:08):
growing up here and having itall green, and now it's just
burnt to match sticks.
Mendel Skulski (13:14):
That sounds devastating.
Adam Huggins (13:17):
But the thing about fire watching is that they
see the damage, and the loss,and the changes. But afterwards,
at least in some places, theyalso see the regeneration.
Sam Draney (13:32):
I call plants my friends. So after Sparks Lake
and Tremont, when I finally wasallowed to go back into the
bush, I went out with the girl Iwas training and I was I was so
excited to see my friends. WhereI didn't even do much work that
day. I was like "We gottaharvest, we've got to spend time
with them. We need to getreacquainted and see how they're
doing." And you know, I stillhave that same view that every
(13:57):
spring I get out and get to gosee my friends again.
Adam Huggins (14:00):
And throughout this whole cycle of wildfire and
recovery, they've been buildingtheir capacity to keep boots on
the ground in their territory.
Darrel Peters (14:09):
Before we only used to be just a small, tiny
crew of three or four peoplelike this getting out to do a
whole bunch of work. And nowit's like 22 to 30 of us.
Adam Huggins (14:22):
So for example, with the Skeetchestn Natural
Resource Department, in additionto the cultural heritage and the
archaeological work, theecological studies that they do,
they've got a territorial patrolthat keeps an eye on the land.
Before and after the fires,there's a huge amount of
pressure on their territory fromhunters, recreation, ranching,
(14:44):
fishing. And so Darrel and Samand their team are always on the
Darrel Peters (14:49):
"Okay, you're on that area. I'm on this area. You
lookout.
watch that side. I watch thisside. Soon as we switch sides,
you watch that side. I watchthis side. And these are the key
things we look for." So that'show we look after each other.
Adam Huggins (15:03):
And then even though there's still lots of
room for improvement, it soundslike there is a lot more
conversation and collaborationacross the region, than there
had been in the past — beforethe mega fires.
Darrel Peters (15:15):
Because we all have good points, and when you
get them all aligned you canaccomplish a lot of good things.
But when you're not aligned, thethings just get jumped around,
you blame each other, and oh,they didn't do this, they didn't
do that. Well, maybe we shouldhave better communication to get
things in order.
Sam Draney (15:33):
Now with these mass burns, people have had to really
think about, oh, what's mypartner doing? Or what's my
neighbor doing. And I've seenmore people coming to sit
together at one table, andlearning more. We're learning
more from each other to moveforward, in hopefully a good way
— to where we don't have to ask.We are still here, we are still
(15:54):
stewards, we are stillpracticing the traditional
ecological knowledge that's beengifted to us. But we're open to
that collaboration. And we hopethat people are open to that
from us, because we're stillhere, we're always going to be
here. Like I said to everyministry guy on the fire. We're
(16:15):
always here. We're alwayswatching. And now the stress is,
how do you manage these areas sothat they aren't put back to the
same state as they were beforethe fire?
Mendel Skulski (16:40):
So how do you manage these areas, so they
don't get back to the same statethat they were before the fires?
Adam Huggins (16:49):
Well... so you know how, the last episode, we
were talking about kind of theimmediate recovery efforts after
the fire?
Mendel Skulski (16:59):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (17:00):
Rebuilding fences, restoring fire guards and
salvage harvesting.
Mendel Skulski (17:04):
Sure, yeah.
Adam Huggins (17:05):
That's really just the tip of the iceberg in terms
of what this land needed afterthe fires. And Sam and Darrel,
and Skeetchestn NaturalResources are dreaming much
bigger. This might not surpriseyou at all. But one of the most
important tools that they'vebeen using is...
Mendel Skulski (17:22):
Mmm. Cultural fire.
Adam Huggins (17:24):
Exactly. Darrel started doing burns on the
Skeetchestn reserve back in theearly 2000s.
Darrel Peters (17:30):
As soon as they said "You're gonna get charged
for burning", I was like, No, Iwant to start this and started
as a precedence, so that I havemy traditional rights the way my
grandmother and them did,through generation to
generation. And that's why Ireally, really wanted to bring
fire back to the land, becausethat's our key. And that's the
one that always saved us.
Adam Huggins (17:52):
And this actually surprised me a little bit to
hear, but at first, evenSkeetchestn folks were a little
bit nervous about Darrel's burns— because it had been so long.
Darrel Peters (18:02):
When I first did a few prescribed burns closer to
the communities, people werescared, didn't have the proper
education, and they didn'tbelieve in what we were doing.
And I was like, I'm only tryingto make things better here for
us.
Sam Draney (18:15):
That just shows how recent cultural burning is back
to our community. Because like,I've only learned from Darrel.
I've only got to practice and dothis under Darrel, where I've
got the confidence to startdoing it on my own — in my own
hay fields, where I'm nowrestrained by my property line.
I'm not at Darrel's level to betrusted to go out and do
(18:35):
community burns, although I'mright there beside him. But even
him talking about doing culturalburns and band members still
being afraid. When I interviewedmy kyé7e about cultural burning,
she's 92 years old. She neverpracticed cultural burning in
her lifetime. She lost that toresidential school. Because we
were stopped by legislation. Wewere thrown in jail. You know,
(19:02):
our right was taken away from usby Smokey the Bear. To where
even harvesting in a ProvincialPark terrifies my kyé7e, because
she was chased out by parkrangers. So do you think she's
going to try to put fire to theground? I'm trying to practice
my rights and title. I'm tryingto better the land. But
(19:23):
economics, safety, you know,having to jump through
government hoops — because wehave to ask to practice. It's
not recognized yet.
Darrel Peters (19:37):
The reason why I really take key to the fire now
and know it to a T, is becausemy family — my first family —
was taken on me from a housefire. I don't have the brothers
and sisters and everything thatI used to have, and now it's
just kind of like... now I haveto respect the fire. Oh, okay,
(20:00):
this could take you and yourother families, and the family
and the generations to come. Sothis is what you have to learn.
And I've learned it to where...how to start it, watch it, fight
fire with fire on the land,knowing your wind direction, and
fuel loads, and to keep it inthe areas that you want and the
boundaries you give it.
Adam Huggins (20:22):
So for now, they're burning just on the
reserve, and occasionally alsoto improve range on adjacent
Crown land when asked. Butthere's a lot more work to be
done to bring fire, culturalfire, good fire, back to the
whole territory.
Darrel Peters (20:39):
That's why I'm so drawn to fire to look after the
land and the people and torejuvenate the lands, so that it
brings better vegetation for theanimals. So it's a big
lifecycle. If I quit lookingafter that, it's going to quit
looking after me. So that's whyI put my time and all my
efforts. I'm supposed to begoing out to the lake and have
(21:00):
fun with everybody. But no, I'mup in the mountains working all
the time. And it's like, yeah, Igotta go camping. Yeah, you're
going camping, to go to work toget away from everything. Sure.
I don't take that time off. If Ido take that time off, then I'm
losing my connection for what Ido, to go sit on the lake. I'd
(21:22):
rather have that time up here.
Mendel Skulski (21:24):
So, no vacations for Darrel.
Adam Huggins (21:27):
Definitely no vacations for Derrel. And I took
this as a bit of a cue to lethim get back to work with his
crew. We packed ourselves intoSam's truck to head back down to
the valley. And along the way,she had some final thoughts to
share with me about what itmeans to work out on the land.
Sam Draney (21:49):
It's a lot of reclaiming that knowledge that
we've lost. We have lost a lotof elders and you know, with the
residential school, a lot ofthem had shut down. And I never
realized that 'til reallyrecently. But they just like
shut down. And they were soinsecure with their own culture
because they were told "No,that's bad." When you're scared
to do it, you're scared to passthat on. But in my generation,
(22:14):
I'm noticing a huge thirst forthat knowledge. We want to
reclaim our culture. We want torelearn it but we don't have
unfortunately that directionabove us. Because of the the
traumas, and theintergenerational trauma has
been passed down to us. So we'rehealing still. When I started my
journey to being sober, I reallyreconnected to the land and seen
(22:37):
its value on my journeyphysically, emotionally,
spiritually, mentally. And Iseen how sick it was. And anyone
that is pursuing sobriety, Ialways tell them, you know, you
need to go get reconnected withthe land. But when this is what
they have to reconnect with, itdoesn't really build them up.
(22:58):
And I had to say that to a lotof people during the fires
because you know, we were hurt.We all ran away to the hills
when we were down. We all gohunting. We all go berry picking
with our kyé7es, or Aunties, ormoms. So when we got to sit
there and watch it burn off, ithurt a lot of us mentally and
(23:20):
emotionally. You know, I justhad to like the only thing I
think it was like it's aphoenix. This had to happen.
She's taking back what is her's,but she's gonna give us
something better. And it's ourturn to take care of it better
than we have before.
Adam Huggins (23:41):
Sarah and I said our goodbyes to Sam and her new
puppy. And then we headed upDeadman's Creek towards the last
stop on our visit when we comeback I have two more voices to
introduce.
Mendel Skulski (23:57):
Or, reintroduce. That's after the break.
Marianne Ignace (24:26):
[Secwepemctsin] Hello, my name is Marianne
Ignace. My Secwépemc name is[Secwepemctsin]. It was given to
(24:47):
me by my husband Ron's auntie,the late Mona Jules. And the
name that you see on my emailsignatures is Gulḵiihlgad.
That's my adoptive name amongHaida people where I I started
out my research and living inNorth AmericanIndigenous
communities many, many yearsago.
Adam Huggins (25:07):
It's hard to overstate Marianne's
credentials. She's the directorof the Indigenous Languages
program at Simon FraserUniversity in the Department of
Linguistics and IndigenousStudies. She works across BC,
the Yukon, and even SoutheastAlaska on language documentation
and revitalization. Naturally,that work requires Marianne to
(25:28):
be a fluent ethnobotanist andethnoecologist. And this is her
husband.
Marianne Ignace (25:33):
I'll turn it over to Ron now to introduce
himself.
Ron Ignace (25:38):
[Secwepemctsin] My name is Ron Ignace, and my
Shuswap name is Stsmél’qen.
Adam Huggins (25:48):
Ron was the elected chief of the Skeetchestn
Indian Band for over 30 years.In the past, he served as the
chairman of the Shuswap NationTribal Council, and President of
its Cultural Society. And since2021, he served as the very
first Commissioner of IndigenousLanguages in Canada. For
decades, he and Marianne haveco-authored books and papers,
(26:11):
and overseen an academicpartnership between Simon Fraser
University and this Secwépemcnation.
Mendel Skulski (26:16):
Holy smokes. This is a... this is a real
power couple. And these are thesame folks that we met in the
cold open in the last episode,right?
Adam Huggins (26:25):
Do people know what that is?
Mendel Skulski (26:26):
The beginning.
Adam Huggins (26:27):
Yes, in fact, and the reason that I knew I had to
talk to them was because of apaper that they'd recently
published with SarahDickson-Hoyle
Mendel Skulski (26:35):
Huh!
Adam Huggins (26:36):
About the concept of Walking on Two Legs. So
naturally, I asked them aboutwhere this idea came from.
Ron Ignace (26:44):
We, as Indigenous peoples now, are compelled to
live in two worlds, basically,you know. My great grandmother
told me, you know, to go out andstudy the white man's world and
come back and help your people.When I was going to university,
there was the notion that we, asIndian people, had no history,
(27:05):
simply because we lived in acircle. Because if you put your
finger in one part of a circle,and you go all the way around,
you wind up back where you were,right? They were saying,
Indigenous people don't occupytime and space, and thereby
don't have history. And I lookedat European history — European
history is linear. It's one biglong line from the day that
(27:28):
Christ was born to where we arenow sitting together here today.
And I went back and I studiedour stories, our stsptekwll, our
traditional stories. Our elderstold us that's our university.
That's our school. There had tobe a synthesis. I couldn't
accept that fact, because oflistening to our stories, I knew
(27:50):
that we had history.
Adam Huggins (27:52):
And thinking back, Ron realized that even though
his people's traditional storiestell about life in terms of
cycles, that doesn't necessarilymean that things are going in a
circle.
Ron Ignace (28:05):
If you listen more carefully, it's a spiral. And we
interact with nature. In theprocess of dialectical
relationship with nature —nature transforms us, and we
transform nature — withinnature, not outside of nature.
So that way, we evolve and havehistory, occupy time and space.
Adam Huggins (28:28):
So I'm sitting there with Ron and Marianne in
their kitchen, and Ron istelling me this story. And I'm
thinking to myself, like, I feellike I've seen this image of the
spiral before.
Okay?
So I asked them about it. Andthey were like, "well, yeah, we,
we made an illustration of thatspiral. And we put it in a book
that we were writing. And thenwe put it in a paper that we co
(28:49):
authored with Nancy Turner."
Mendel Skulski (28:51):
Nancy Turner, we had her on the show — in season
one.
Adam Huggins (28:54):
Yeah, she's an ethnobotanist rockstar. I read
this paper that they wrote allthose years ago. And I swear to
God, it's been shaping the waythat I think about Indigenous
knowledge ever since. Like, thatspiral is lodged in my brain.
Mendel Skulski (29:08):
Wow.
Adam Huggins (29:09):
And I'm sure I'm not alone. Anyway, Ron and
Marianne would keep returning tothose traditional stories in
their work as a wellspring ofideas.
Ron Ignace (29:19):
We started studying our laws — we have Secwépemc
laws, even our own constitutionthat goes back 5000 years and we
have a transformer stories.
Adam Huggins (29:30):
Mendel, are you familiar with transformers
stories?
Mendel Skulski (29:33):
Not the robot movies?
Adam Huggins (29:35):
No, not the robot movies.
Mendel Skulski (29:37):
Well, then, no, I am not.
Adam Huggins (29:39):
Okay. Well, to summarize briefly, if I can...
many First Nations have storiesof a time when the world was
unrecognizable to us today —full of monsters and animals
that spoke and walked as humansdo. Then came the transformers,
supernatural beings who changeand rearranged things to make
(30:01):
them the way that they aretoday, more or less. On the
coast, Raven is often a keytransformer. Whereas in the
interior, Coyote takes on thatrole.
Ron Ignace (30:12):
Transformers utilize the knowledge that they were
given from the elders totransform cannibalistic type of
animals, transformer animalsthat caused us harm, and
reciprocal accountability andresponsibility is all embedded
in those stories.
Adam Huggins (30:32):
But the morals of these stories are not always so
easy to reconcile.
Ron Ignace (30:37):
We have a coyote story that tells us not to copy
other people's ways, that itcauses great harm and grief if
we just adopt them and take themon unquestionably. And yet,
there's another story in whichWest Coast transformers come up
after they've met up with coyoteand admonished that we should be
working together to help eachother and to look after each
(31:00):
other's interests.
Adam Huggins (31:02):
To Ron, these stories at first felt
contradictory. Like, how are wesupposed to maintain our own
ways and identity, but at thesame time, interact with, and
learn from, and help otherpeople who have a very different
worldview?
Mendel Skulski (31:16):
Right, like there's this one story that
tells us not to adopt otherpeople's ways. And then this
other story tells us that weneed to work together and learn
from other people.
Adam Huggins (31:26):
Yeah, and at the same time, here he was studying
his traditional stories, andstudying in the academy. So in
some ways, he was alreadyembodying that contradiction.
And then, he thought back toresidential school, how he and
his fellow students would bepunished for speaking their
language.
Ron Ignace (31:45):
But I learned that if I thought in Secwepemctsin,
they couldn't beat me for what Ithought.
Adam Huggins (31:52):
And thinking back on those difficult times, he and
Marianne realized that, in asimilar way, his elders had been
hiding their own religion in thechurch.
Mendel Skulski (32:04):
What do you mean by that?
Ron Ignace (32:05):
Our people were doing a similar thing, in a way,
because our traditional beliefs— our religious and spiritual
beliefs were under severeattack.
Adam Huggins (32:18):
And Ron could remember his time as a child,
sitting on a church pew,listening to his elders saying
Shuswap prayers.
Ron Ignace (32:26):
It dawned on me that a portion of our spiritual
belief that we had that wasbeing condemned by the priests,
were actually being sung andperformed in the church without
the priest knowing that becausethey didn't know the language.
Adam Huggins (32:44):
So clearly, one system of knowledge and beliefs
could survive, even whenembedded or hidden within
another system of knowledge orbeliefs. But you know, how
there's a lot of discussionright now about integrating
Indigenous knowledge into theacademy, and into land
management. And I guess intojust about everything else.
Mendel Skulski (33:05):
Yeah, it's kind of a recurrent theme on this
podcast.
Marianne Ignace (33:09):
Many people have used the terms to
"integrate" Indigenous knowledgeinto western sciences. But guess
who loses out in the process ofthat — it tends to be indigenous
knowledge becoming a footnote,or an afterthought, as opposed
to having our own validity andpurpose and ways of doing things
(33:33):
that can make change in theworld.
Adam Huggins (33:36):
So Ron, and Marianne, get to thinking, Well,
if you can embed Indigenousknowledge into a Western way of
thinking, then why not do thereverse? Why not flip that model
on its head and say, "let'sstand on one leg of Indigenous
knowledge, and on one leg ofWestern science, but we're going
(33:56):
to walk with an Indigenous heartand mind."
Ron Ignace (34:00):
And so that's where I began thinking about the
strategy of Walking on Two Legs,bringing the two knowledges
together without losingyourself, but maintaining
control over western knowledge.Because to me, Western science,
by and large is a rogue sciencethat if you don't manage it and
(34:21):
control it, it goes rabid onyou.
Adam Huggins (34:24):
And in addition to not having a moral compass,
Western science doesn't hold amonopoly on science.
Ron Ignace (34:34):
Yeah, our elders did scientific experiments and they
were not afraid. And in so doingthey reached out to other forms
of knowledge, and were utilizing— in their own way — walking on
two legs. And by bringing inSarah we were walking on, on...
on her legs.
Marianne Ignace (34:54):
Four legs
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (34:56):
Now we've got six legs!
Mendel Skulski (35:00):
So cute. And, you know, I was actually just
thinking that what Sam andDarrel and Sarah are doing out
on the land is kind of exactlythis, right, like, utilizing
some of the tools and trappingsof Western science, but moving
very deliberately from a placeof Secwépemc values.
Adam Huggins (35:21):
Yeah, they're doing it on the land. And
they're doing it in the paperthat they wrote, this metaphor
of walking on two legs,definitely emerges directly from
what's going on in Secwépemcterritory and thought. It's a
concept by and for Indigenouspeople who are making use of
Western science, while alsoreclaiming their own knowledges.
(35:44):
But as a settler, I also tooksomething from the metaphor
Mendel Skulski (35:49):
Isn't taking stuff, kind of the meaning of
being a settler.
Adam Huggins (35:54):
I can see how I walked right into that.
Mendel Skulski (35:56):
But did you get there on one or two legs?
Adam Huggins (36:01):
Okay. What I meant to say was that, as a settler
working with Indigenous people,the idea of walking on two legs
says to me, that it's probablygood to remember that I'm not
the protagonist of the storythat's unfolding.
Mendel Skulski (36:16):
Right. Yeah, you're, you're part of it. But
you're an appendage.
Adam Huggins (36:21):
Yeah, an appendage. And I'll just go out
on a limb here.
Mendel Skulski (36:26):
Pfff.
Adam Huggins (36:26):
And suggest that, as an appendage, you really
don't want to get out of stepwith the folks that you're
working with. A step behind,okay. A step ahead, maybe. But
definitely just one step at atime, walking in the same
direction.
Mendel Skulski (36:42):
And you probably also want to understand the
terrain that you're walking on.
Adam Huggins (36:49):
Yeah. And in that spirit, I'd actually like to
zoom out for a moment, and justtake in the cumulative impacts
that I observed during my shorttime in Secwépemc territory.
Like many families, Ron andMarianne were forced to evacuate
their homes in both 2017 and2021. And they've seen the
destruction of their territoryin real time.
Marianne Ignace (37:13):
We've experienced some really, really
profound losses around what'shappened to the land.
Adam Huggins (37:19):
For example, Marianne told me that, if you
look at the totality ofSkeetchestn traditional
territory, all of the landswhere Ron's ancestors lived
since time immemorial...
Marianne Ignace (37:30):
45 or so percent of that has been logged
off. Another 40% has beenseriously harmed by the two
wildfires in succession. Itreally means, in the end, 15 or
so percent of that part ofSecwépemc territory is still in
(37:50):
the kind of shape that we wantit to be in. And that to me is
really, really scary. And we'vewe've got to do something about
it to leave a legacy for ourchildren and grandchildren.
Ron Ignace (38:04):
Not only is it the forest devasted — when they come
by after the forest, and theysay "oh, we got to take these...
harvest these trees, you know,these burnt trees." Which then
they go in and rip up the landand further impact the land. And
then once those machinery leave,then the second pounding that
(38:24):
comes along, is the cattlegrazing. And what they do is
they compact the soil and thesoil turns rock hard, and my
medicine plants can't grow, andwhat's left the cows eat. So
we're really good at compoundingdestruction on the land, you
know.
Adam Huggins (38:45):
And then on top of that, you add pressure from
non-Indigenous hunters, fromoff-road recreational vehicle
use, from mining, fromagriculture. And famously after
wildfires, morel mushrooms comeup by the ton, and a wave of
morel pickers is sure to follow.
Mendel Skulski (39:04):
Right! Yeah, I'd heard about how many pickers
went to Elephant Hill after thefire. It sounded like an
absolute gold rush.
Mm.
I'd heard that Secwépemcactually set up a permit system
to deal with the crowds ofpeople that were out on the
land.
Adam Huggins (39:19):
Yeah, that permitting system was actually
Ron's doing as chief inpartnership with neighboring
Secwépemc nations. And they feltsuch a system was called for
because, legally in BC,harvesting in the understory is
completely unregulated.
Ron Ignace (39:36):
And as far as I understand Western law, wherever
there's a vacuum if somebodyoccupies it, your law reigns.
Adam Huggins (39:46):
So Ron thought that the Secwépemc might as well
implement their own.
Ron Ignace (39:50):
So we did that!
Adam Huggins (39:51):
And it actually did make a huge difference. And
in addition to the permitsystem, they also created
designated campsites for themorel pickers.
Ron Ignace (40:00):
We took off, what is it 13,000 litres of human waste
of the mountain, and 15,000pounds of garbage that would
have been strewn from one end ofthe mountain to the other.
Mendel Skulski (40:12):
Wow. Okay, so... so this was a real innovation in
land use, and it was kind of putin place and guided by community
interests.
Adam Huggins (40:22):
Yeah, I think it's actually a great model for how
it can be possible to manage thedemands on a complex land base
like this one.
Mendel Skulski (40:30):
The image I'm getting in my head is, you know,
it's really just a landscapethat's under incredible human
pressure. And then, of course,you add in the climate crisis,
and these wildfires, and thefloods, the landslides. These
communities keep getting hit.And then they're forced to
salvage whatever they can, inthe aftermath... which puts
(40:54):
additional pressure on alandscape that's already so
heavily impacted.
Adam Huggins (40:59):
And this is happening every year, all across
this territory, and across thiscountry, this continent, and the
planet as a whole. I mean, whatwe're seeing unfold in and
around Skeetchestn is a realitythat just hasn't come for most
of us yet. But is on its way, inone form or another. And, you
(41:20):
know, you do those immediatethings, right? You do the
immediate recovery efforts.
Mendel Skulski (41:25):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (41:26):
But a lot of that's really just
rehabilitation, right, tophysical infrastructure, maybe
to community infrastructure. Butnot to the natural
infrastructure, not to theecology, not to the psychic
infrastructure.
Mendel Skulski (41:41):
So that means the real damage still hasn't
been addressed.
Adam Huggins (41:47):
Yeah, exactly. It's a lot to process. So I
stepped outside with Sarah. AndI asked her directly — what does
post disaster recovery reallymean, in a place like this?
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (42:00):
I don't know if the disaster is over
here. You know, if you're inVancouver, maybe the disaster is
over, the smoke is gone. Ifyou're in BC Wildfire, you're
maybe looking at the nextdisaster. But again, for people
who live here, you know, Sam wassaying every year when there's
floods, the land has been takenback by the river. People often
say "natural disasters." There'snothing natural about this. You
(42:22):
know, it's a hazard event, it'sa fire, it's a flood. Maybe
these are natural processes. Buta disaster is a disaster when it
impacts things that we careabout — when it impacts people
and impacts values on the land.And those impacts, the scope and
scale of those impacts is notnatural. It's due to decisions
that have been made overdecades, if not centuries. What
(42:43):
got us to this point that itbecame such a disaster? And why
is it continuing?
Mendel Skulski (42:48):
Well, it's continuing because we keep
burning fossil fuels. And wekeep pushing the land to its
absolute limits. We're living inthe disaster.
Adam Huggins (43:03):
I mean, the folks that teach us and certainly are.
And for the most part, the mediaattention and the funding that
descended on these communitiesin the immediate aftermath of
the fires has departed — aboutas quickly as it arrived. So we
go on with our lives thinkingmaybe that time heals all
wounds. But some of these woundsrun really deep. And they're
(43:24):
certainly not beyond our abilityto help heal. It just seems so
clear that we are not investingenough in dealing with the full
spectrum of impacts. And withthe fundamental drivers have
those impacts.
Mendel Skulski (43:37):
Yeah.
Well, Adam, that's pretty bleak.
Adam Huggins (43:47):
Honestly, that's the way that I've been feeling
lately. And that was myexperience up there. I'm not
going to sugarcoat it. But I amholding on to this image that
Sam placed in my mind — of thePhoenix, rising from the ashes
after the fires. I can see itpersonified in Secwépemc people
(44:09):
asserting their rights to leadthe recovery and restoration of
their lands. And as I wasstanding in Ron and Marianne's
backyard, staring out over aDeadman's Creek, Sarah pointed
out this beautiful green bend onthe edge of the water.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (44:26):
So they actually burned all of this —
Ron and his son, Joe, burned allof these flats this spring. They
always burn in kind of earlyspring. So that really green
grass down here, and across theother side of the river. They
lit this whole thing on fire inmid-March sometime — when
there's still kind of snow up onthe hill slopes. Yeah, it's come
back pretty good.
Adam Huggins (44:46):
Wow, just burning right along the creek.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (44:48):
Yep. I think it was Joe's first time
doing like a big burn. So yeah,Ron was showing him the ropes.
Mendel Skulski (44:56):
That's so cool.
Adam Huggins (44:57):
Yeah, I mean, it was just gorgeous. And you'd
never know that they burned itearlier that year. And then
Sarah pointed over to thislittle rise of land right next
to the house. There is thisline, as clear as day where the
burned area stops and theunburned area begins.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (45:14):
You can see these bright green colors of
crested wheatgrass and brome —these introduced pasture
grasses. And there's this reallystriking line as you look up to
this dry hillside.
Adam Huggins (45:25):
And on the burn side of the line, there's native
bunch grass prairie with thesecultural keystone species and
wildflowers. I mean, it's justextraordinary.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (45:35):
And if you come here, maybe a few months
earlier, you know just afterthey burned, it would have been
the sea of beautiful yellowbells — this beautiful yellow
Lily, which is a culturalkeystone plant for the
Secwépemc.
Adam Huggins (45:46):
And on the side that they don't burn, introduced
pasture grasses and weeds. Itwas just an incredible and
unmistakable difference.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (45:54):
So yeah, it's really, really striking.
I've never seen a line likethis. And this has really been
maintained by the burning thatRon has been doing every year,
for the past, you know, 10, 15years.
Ron Ignace (46:07):
What I heard and was taught from my great
grandparents, we had gardensdown here in the valley bottom
that we tilled and planted, andweeded. But we also had other
gardens in the mountain said wewe went and tended to and looked
after. And when we got back hereand moved to this place, I
remember that we got to knowthat the wind at certain times
(46:30):
would blow up the valley, and atcertain times a day it would
switch and blow down. And so Isaid, we're going to try to
experiment here — use fire tosee if we can heal our land.
Because for a long time, I had awhole host of knapweed and such
invasive species here. And atfirst there, you know, I was
(46:52):
paying the kids 10 cents aknapweed. "You go out and pull
the knapweed, I'll pay you 10cents." I almost went broke!
Then I reduced it to five cents.And then finally I said, "No,
we're gonna go back the oldtraditional way, and we're going
to use fire." And we did, forwhat, about 15 years. I would
(47:13):
set a fire out here in one end,time a day, and switch it around
and start a fire in anotherpart. And the wind would bring
them together and put it out.And one day we went out behind
the house and Marianne camerushing back in, said "Hey!
There's ts̓ewéw̓ye growing outhere!" And we found that also
(47:34):
qweq̓wile, which is a storiedplant. Those are two keystone
plants that hadn't grown on thismound for 100 years.
Adam Huggins (47:45):
And standing there, staring at that solid
line between restoration on oneside, and neglect on the other.
It was as good a reminder asI've ever had that
transformation is alwayspossible.
Ron Ignace (48:02):
We have one great word that I like to say to
people, and give them an idea ofwhat our thought processes are.
And that word is tult7. That wasone of the first few words that
coyote uttered when he camedown. And the definition of that
word is the ability for one toutilize their energy to
(48:24):
transform matter. And that wordripples through all our
transformer stories coming down.And we've learned a lot of ways
in how to live on the land todeploying that, you know. We
understood from the beginning ofour time, I believe, that how
the whole universe worked wasfrom energy into matter and
(48:45):
matter back into energy. And welearned from that, and we're
keeping that tradition, andrevive it, revitalize our
traditional knowledge of ways ofliving. And hopefully to create
a better life for our childrenand our people.
Adam Huggins (49:05):
This episode of Future Ecologies was produced
and hosted by Mendel Skulski andmyself, Adam Huggins. It
features the voices of SamDraney, Darrel Peters, Marianne
Ignace, Ron Ignace, and SarahDickson-Hoyle, with music by
Thumbug, Spencer W. Stuart, andSunfish Moon Light.
(49:27):
Big thanks to Lux Meteora forthe cover artwork, which is a
lovely diptych for both episodesin this mini series. Thanks also
to Aila Takenaka and AvaStanley, who interned with us
for this episode, and to SarahDickson-Hoyle for inviting me to
visit the interior.
You can find links, citationsand a transcript for this
episode, plus photos from myroad trip to Cache Creek and
(49:50):
Skeetchestn atfutureecologies.net
Finally, this independent,ad-free podcast was made
possible by the support of ourwonderful community on Patreon.
to get early episode releases,bonus behind-the-scenes content,
and our lovely Discord server,join us at patreon.com/future
ecologies. If you can't supportus financially, write us a
(50:12):
review and keep sharing us withyour friends. That's really how
the show gets around. And wereally appreciate all of you who
take the time to recommend us toothers. You know who you are.
Alright, until next time, thankyou for listening
You are listening to Season Five of
Future Ecologies
Adam Huggins (00:16):
Okay, shall we jump in right where we left off?
Mendel Skulski (00:20):
Sure. Just for new listeners, my name is
Mendel.
Adam Huggins (00:24):
And I'm Adam.
Mendel Skulski (00:26):
And this episode is a continuation of the last
one — about what post disasterrecovery looks like when there
is no post to the disaster.
Adam Huggins (00:37):
Just one crisis after another, fires, floods,
landslides, you name it.
Mendel Skulski (00:44):
So this is Part Five of our series "On Fire".
Don't worry. You don't need togo all the way back to the
beginning to understand what'sgoing on here. But if you
haven't already, you may want tolisten to the previous episode
to get oriented.
Adam Huggins (01:01):
That's On Fire — Under Water.
Mendel Skulski (01:04):
Okay, I think that covers it for housekeeping.
Adam Huggins (01:07):
Yeah. So when we left off, I was in a truck
climbing these awful dirt roadsthrough the 2021 Sparks Lake
fire footprint, right outside ofthe Skeetchestn Indian Band's
reserve. The landscape had beenburned two years previously. So
the trees were all just charredlittle sticks. And there was a
(01:28):
rich understory of wildflowersand medicinal plants that were
coming back up.
Mendel Skulski (01:32):
Plants which kept distracting you from your
conversation with Sam.
Adam Huggins (01:36):
Indeed. And that's Sam Draney, of Skeetchestn
Natural Resources. Also in thetruck, Sarah Dickson-Hoyle from
UBC.
Mendel Skulski (01:45):
And also from Down Under.
Adam Huggins (01:47):
As we were driving, Sam was telling me
about how she became a firewatcher. It goes back to the
2017 Elephant Hill Fire
Mendel Skulski (01:56):
Which you explored in detail in the last
episode
Adam Huggins (02:00):
And at the time, folks in Skeetchestn felt like
they weren't getting up to datereports about the progress of
the fire from BC Wildfire, whichis not good when your community
is right next to an out ofcontrol mega fire. So they
decided to send out a team oftheir own to track the fire and
report back to the community.And this is where our story
(02:21):
picks up. There was just oneproblem.
Mendel Skulski (02:24):
What was that?
Adam Huggins (02:26):
They were missing a technical person.
Sam Draney (02:28):
So I got to go out as the tech, run the iPad, take
the pictures, take the track.And then they never pried me
back off of that fire. I was onit — like "no, you need me I
have to run the iPad." That'swhere the team between me and
Darrel really developed. He'sgot the cultural mindset. He's a
hunter, he grew up on the landhis whole life. He knows every
(02:51):
road, every gully — how the windworks in every gully.
Mendel Skulski (02:56):
Who's Darrel?
Adam Huggins (02:57):
Darrel is the man that we've driven all the way
out into the bush to see. Andcan you believe it? We're just
arriving right now.
Mendel Skulski (03:06):
Convenient.
Adam Huggins (03:11):
Amazing.
We get out at this open meadowsurrounded by a mix of green and
black trees, above a lake.
Sam Draney (03:20):
This is Sedge Lake. So this up here is one of our
potato plots. So the springbeauty — Indian potato.
Adam Huggins (03:29):
Just up the hill, there are some guys with a
little excavator installingfence posts around the patch
that Sam is pointing to. They'reprotecting a number of different
experimental plots.
Mendel Skulski (03:39):
Kind of like... crop trials?
Adam Huggins (03:42):
Yeah, but for native plants. And man, I really
wish I knew that you couldinstall fence posts with an
excavator. Would have saved me alot of back pain.
Mendel Skulski (03:49):
You live and learn.
Adam Huggins (03:50):
Anyway, pretty immediately, we're greeted by
the man that we came here tosee.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (03:55):
Hi! Darrel, I'm Sarah.
Darrel Peters (03:57):
Darrel.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (03:58):
Nice to meet you.
Adam Huggins (03:59):
Adam.
Darrel Peters (03:59):
Nice to meet you.
Adam Huggins (04:00):
Great to meet you.
Sam Draney (04:02):
You know me.
Darrel Peters (04:03):
Oh yeah.
My name is Darrel Peters. I'mfrom the Deadman's Creek Valley.
People call it Skeetchestn now.
Mendel Skulski (04:15):
Oh so you finally got someone to introduce
themselves. I'm proud of you. Sotell me more about Darrel.
Adam Huggins (04:23):
Well, Darrel is kind of the do-it-all guy for a
Skeetchestn Natural Resources —be it fisheries, forestry,
ranching,
Darrel Peters (04:31):
No matter what comes up, I'm always involved.
That's what I do for the band —territorial patrol, going
through all our whole territoryand going into the overlap to
the other bands and seeing who'sdoing the work and who's doing
the ranching in the areas, who'sdoing the mining, and that's how
I got to know everybody all in agreat big circle.
Adam Huggins (04:55):
So naturally, he was one of the folks that
Skeetchestn sent out to trackthe Elephant Hill Fire In 2017,
and Sam came along
Mendel Skulski (05:03):
To run the iPad.
Adam Huggins (05:04):
Yeah, to do the tech stuff.
Sam Draney (05:06):
And I followed Darrel on the fires. I was just
right there behind him,especially on Elephant Hill. I
felt like a little baby deer —just following behind, was so
excited. Learning so much, andjust like continued learning.
Mendel Skulski (05:22):
So what were they actually there to do?
Adam Huggins (05:26):
they were there to be boots on the ground and eyes
on the fire, because they feltlike they were being left out of
the loop.
Sam Draney (05:32):
We felt like we weren't getting up to date
information on what washappening, where the fire was
going. So we were actually goingout and actively GPSing the edge
of the fire. So we knew howclose it was getting to reserve
so we could make a call on whenwe were going to evacuate, what
are we going to do to protectourselves. Because in any of the
recent fires, we weren't goingto back down, we weren't going
(05:55):
to leave. We weren't going toleave our homes to be protected
by somebody else that maybedoesn't have the same values,
let alone our own values out onthe land in us, you know, being
out and using it actively. So Iwas able to map the fire daily —
map the fire line, show the datawe were collecting in a way
(06:16):
people can understand it. Andjust really latched on to Darrel
and Elephant Hill and didn't letgo. But that's where fire
watch... that's what it is forme is just actively watching the
fire.
Darrel Peters (06:31):
Going to the head of it — taking our GPS points
and watching what fuel it'staking up and which wind
direction and knowing the timeof day of where things are
going, how your weather is, ineffect. That's what I've learned
from my grandmother. And watch,and listen and record in your
mind of where things are goinghow long it takes. Because when
(06:52):
you have different fuel loads,the fire travels at different
time lengths, and that's when itcrawls up into the trees. That's
why you see some of the trees...
Adam Huggins (07:00):
I'll just chime in here to say that Darrel spoke in
great detail and at length aboutthe many different factors that
he's considering when he'swatching a fire, and making
judgments about how it's goingto move where it's gonna go.
It's so much knowledge
Mendel Skulski (07:15):
And probably too much detail for this
conversation.
Adam Huggins (07:19):
Yeah. And I think Sam summed it up really nicely.
Sam Draney (07:22):
Just like actively using our traditional ecological
knowledge to make calls, to helpour community make choices.
Darrel Peters (07:31):
Guardians of the land is who we are, because
that's where we naturally comefrom.
Adam Huggins (07:41):
And as I was standing there listening to Sam
and Darrel, go back and forth. Icouldn't help but imagine how I
would feel watching a fire thatwas barreling towards my
community. So I asked them aboutit.
Sam Draney (07:55):
It's a huge mix of emotions. I connect very
spiritually to fire. ElephantHill was a learning experience
for me. I fell in love with fireon that. The way it moves, the
way it acts. I always connectedit to a woman's spirit. She puts
on a performance, she dances.Then she goes to sleep at night.
(08:18):
Sparks Lake again, reallyspiritual connection. I
understood what it was doing. Iagreed with what it was doing.
It was reclaiming our land forus. It was restarting the
succession. Tremont, that's adifferent monster. It was
robotic. It was mismanaged. Thatwas a mass amount of burns that
(08:40):
kept awakening a fire that, tome, was trying to go to sleep.
It was tired. But the back burnsjust kept going wrong. They
weren't taking input fromSkeetchestn or the ranchers, and
we've all been on the land ourwhole lives. And they were just
lighting stuff up that didn'tneed to get lit up. So you go
(09:01):
from understanding what'shappening to just feeling empty
on the inside, because what welive on is now gone.
Mendel Skulski (09:12):
Hold on, I'm a little confused. What, what made
the Tremont fire. So differentfrom Sparks Lake and Elephant
Hill? Weren't Sparks Lake andTremont burning around the same
time, just on two differentsides of the Thompson River?
Adam Huggins (09:28):
Yeah. From my understanding from Sam and
Darrel, there were a number ofthings. But a big part was that
a different set of folks from BCWildfire were in charge of the
response on Tremont than atSparks Lake. And at first they
didn't even want Skeetchestninvolved.
Darrel Peters (09:45):
The head guy didn't want us to go work in
there or be part of it. And Iwas like "Well, this is our
territory. This is our home.This is our place and you're
telling me that I cannot gothere." I just went back to the
traditional rule of "this is ourland our home, our
jurisdiction." He was FirstNations too, and I just told
(10:08):
him, I said, "Well, you're FirstNations. You should know where
your territory starts and ends,right?" And he said "yes." I
said, "Well, that's what I'mdoing too. I'm overriding what
you want just for the governmenttable, back to my traditional
rule — to be the keeper of theland. to look after stuff." So
that's when they let us back onthe fire.
Adam Huggins (10:33):
But from their telling, once they got back onto
the fire after this delay, theywere run ragged just trying to
deal with what they perceive tobe mistakes that BC Wildfire was
making in their response. Forexample, back burns lit at the
wrong time of day, in the wrongplace, or even the wrong side of
the mountain.
Darrel Peters (10:52):
And it was like, me and Sam are just
checkerboarding all over theareas. It was like "you go be
lookout over there, I'll takethis fire over here, get control
here. You go scout for me andother areas to see what had to
be looked after in the propermanner." And once they let us do
that, then we started gettingcontrol on the fire and keeping
(11:13):
it away from the people'shouses. And we started saving a
lot and capitalizing in areas.That's when everything got
better for us, was when theyactually started listening to
our information and what wewanted to bring to the table.
Adam Huggins (11:29):
And eventually, of course, the 2021 Tremont and
Sparks Lake fires burntthemselves out. But they took a
huge toll on the land, and oneveryone who was involved with
the response.
Sam Draney (11:41):
I was emotionally done after the last set of
wildfires.
Adam Huggins (11:47):
Is it okay to call that burnout? Is that all right?
Sam Draney (11:49):
It is. It was burnout. I still am. I took a
six month leave, and I justtried to completely check out.
But in that six months, I did alot of soul searching. There's
nowhere else I'd rather be. Icould have ran and been on the
pipeline, or been bartending orwhatever. But this is where I'm
(12:13):
meant to be. This is my journey.I feel like I'm meant to be a
warrior for the land. And I canimagine how some of the other
community members feel. There'sjust been a huge change within
our own community, it feels likesince the fires. I just hope it
changes for the better soon.
Mendel Skulski (12:35):
What kind of change is she talking about?
Adam Huggins (12:39):
The kind of change when most of your territory and
your economic base have justgone up in smoke in the span of
a few years.
Darrel Peters (12:48):
Since the fires came through, it just kind of
burnt us out of house and homeagain. And now we're restarting
of where we were 20 years ago,30 years ago. Seeing it from
that aspect to this aspect nowis a big change for me. And like
(13:08):
growing up here and having itall green, and now it's just
burnt to match sticks.
Mendel Skulski (13:14):
That sounds devastating.
Adam Huggins (13:17):
But the thing about fire watching is that they
see the damage, and the loss,and the changes. But afterwards,
at least in some places, theyalso see the regeneration.
Sam Draney (13:32):
I call plants my friends. So after Sparks Lake
and Tremont, when I finally wasallowed to go back into the
bush, I went out with the girl Iwas training and I was I was so
excited to see my friends. WhereI didn't even do much work that
day. I was like "We gottaharvest, we've got to spend time
with them. We need to getreacquainted and see how they're
doing." And you know, I stillhave that same view that every
(13:57):
spring I get out and get to gosee my friends again.
Adam Huggins (14:00):
And throughout this whole cycle of wildfire and
recovery, they've been buildingtheir capacity to keep boots on
the ground in their territory.
Darrel Peters (14:09):
Before we only used to be just a small, tiny
crew of three or four peoplelike this getting out to do a
whole bunch of work. And nowit's like 22 to 30 of us.
Adam Huggins (14:22):
So for example, with the Skeetchestn Natural
Resource Department, in additionto the cultural heritage and the
archaeological work, theecological studies that they do,
they've got a territorial patrolthat keeps an eye on the land.
Before and after the fires,there's a huge amount of
pressure on their territory fromhunters, recreation, ranching,
(14:44):
fishing. And so Darrel and Samand their team are always on the
Darrel Peters (14:49):
"Okay, you're on that area. I'm on this area. You
lookout.
watch that side. I watch thisside. Soon as we switch sides,
you watch that side. I watchthis side. And these are the key
things we look for." So that'show we look after each other.
Adam Huggins (15:03):
And then even though there's still lots of
room for improvement, it soundslike there is a lot more
conversation and collaborationacross the region, than there
had been in the past — beforethe mega fires.
Darrel Peters (15:15):
Because we all have good points, and when you
get them all aligned you canaccomplish a lot of good things.
But when you're not aligned, thethings just get jumped around,
you blame each other, and oh,they didn't do this, they didn't
do that. Well, maybe we shouldhave better communication to get
things in order.
Sam Draney (15:33):
Now with these mass burns, people have had to really
think about, oh, what's mypartner doing? Or what's my
neighbor doing. And I've seenmore people coming to sit
together at one table, andlearning more. We're learning
more from each other to moveforward, in hopefully a good way
— to where we don't have to ask.We are still here, we are still
(15:54):
stewards, we are stillpracticing the traditional
ecological knowledge that's beengifted to us. But we're open to
that collaboration. And we hopethat people are open to that
from us, because we're stillhere, we're always going to be
here. Like I said to everyministry guy on the fire. We're
(16:15):
always here. We're alwayswatching. And now the stress is,
how do you manage these areas sothat they aren't put back to the
same state as they were beforethe fire?
Mendel Skulski (16:40):
So how do you manage these areas, so they
don't get back to the same statethat they were before the fires?
Adam Huggins (16:49):
Well... so you know how, the last episode, we
were talking about kind of theimmediate recovery efforts after
the fire?
Mendel Skulski (16:59):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (17:00):
Rebuilding fences, restoring fire guards and
salvage harvesting.
Mendel Skulski (17:04):
Sure, yeah.
Adam Huggins (17:05):
That's really just the tip of the iceberg in terms
of what this land needed afterthe fires. And Sam and Darrel,
and Skeetchestn NaturalResources are dreaming much
bigger. This might not surpriseyou at all. But one of the most
important tools that they'vebeen using is...
Mendel Skulski (17:22):
Mmm. Cultural fire.
Adam Huggins (17:24):
Exactly. Darrel started doing burns on the
Skeetchestn reserve back in theearly 2000s.
Darrel Peters (17:30):
As soon as they said "You're gonna get charged
for burning", I was like, No, Iwant to start this and started
as a precedence, so that I havemy traditional rights the way my
grandmother and them did,through generation to
generation. And that's why Ireally, really wanted to bring
fire back to the land, becausethat's our key. And that's the
one that always saved us.
Adam Huggins (17:52):
And this actually surprised me a little bit to
hear, but at first, evenSkeetchestn folks were a little
bit nervous about Darrel's burns— because it had been so long.
Darrel Peters (18:02):
When I first did a few prescribed burns closer to
the communities, people werescared, didn't have the proper
education, and they didn'tbelieve in what we were doing.
And I was like, I'm only tryingto make things better here for
us.
Sam Draney (18:15):
That just shows how recent cultural burning is back
to our community. Because like,I've only learned from Darrel.
I've only got to practice and dothis under Darrel, where I've
got the confidence to startdoing it on my own — in my own
hay fields, where I'm nowrestrained by my property line.
I'm not at Darrel's level to betrusted to go out and do
(18:35):
community burns, although I'mright there beside him. But even
him talking about doing culturalburns and band members still
being afraid. When I interviewedmy kyé7e about cultural burning,
she's 92 years old. She neverpracticed cultural burning in
her lifetime. She lost that toresidential school. Because we
were stopped by legislation. Wewere thrown in jail. You know,
(19:02):
our right was taken away from usby Smokey the Bear. To where
even harvesting in a ProvincialPark terrifies my kyé7e, because
she was chased out by parkrangers. So do you think she's
going to try to put fire to theground? I'm trying to practice
my rights and title. I'm tryingto better the land. But
(19:23):
economics, safety, you know,having to jump through
government hoops — because wehave to ask to practice. It's
not recognized yet.
Darrel Peters (19:37):
The reason why I really take key to the fire now
and know it to a T, is becausemy family — my first family —
was taken on me from a housefire. I don't have the brothers
and sisters and everything thatI used to have, and now it's
just kind of like... now I haveto respect the fire. Oh, okay,
(20:00):
this could take you and yourother families, and the family
and the generations to come. Sothis is what you have to learn.
And I've learned it to where...how to start it, watch it, fight
fire with fire on the land,knowing your wind direction, and
fuel loads, and to keep it inthe areas that you want and the
boundaries you give it.
Adam Huggins (20:22):
So for now, they're burning just on the
reserve, and occasionally alsoto improve range on adjacent
Crown land when asked. Butthere's a lot more work to be
done to bring fire, culturalfire, good fire, back to the
whole territory.
Darrel Peters (20:39):
That's why I'm so drawn to fire to look after the
land and the people and torejuvenate the lands, so that it
brings better vegetation for theanimals. So it's a big
lifecycle. If I quit lookingafter that, it's going to quit
looking after me. So that's whyI put my time and all my
efforts. I'm supposed to begoing out to the lake and have
(21:00):
fun with everybody. But no, I'mup in the mountains working all
the time. And it's like, yeah, Igotta go camping. Yeah, you're
going camping, to go to work toget away from everything. Sure.
I don't take that time off. If Ido take that time off, then I'm
losing my connection for what Ido, to go sit on the lake. I'd
(21:22):
rather have that time up here.
Mendel Skulski (21:24):
So, no vacations for Darrel.
Adam Huggins (21:27):
Definitely no vacations for Derrel. And I took
this as a bit of a cue to lethim get back to work with his
crew. We packed ourselves intoSam's truck to head back down to
the valley. And along the way,she had some final thoughts to
share with me about what itmeans to work out on the land.
Sam Draney (21:49):
It's a lot of reclaiming that knowledge that
we've lost. We have lost a lotof elders and you know, with the
residential school, a lot ofthem had shut down. And I never
realized that 'til reallyrecently. But they just like
shut down. And they were soinsecure with their own culture
because they were told "No,that's bad." When you're scared
to do it, you're scared to passthat on. But in my generation,
(22:14):
I'm noticing a huge thirst forthat knowledge. We want to
reclaim our culture. We want torelearn it but we don't have
unfortunately that directionabove us. Because of the the
traumas, and theintergenerational trauma has
been passed down to us. So we'rehealing still. When I started my
journey to being sober, I reallyreconnected to the land and seen
(22:37):
its value on my journeyphysically, emotionally,
spiritually, mentally. And Iseen how sick it was. And anyone
that is pursuing sobriety, Ialways tell them, you know, you
need to go get reconnected withthe land. But when this is what
they have to reconnect with, itdoesn't really build them up.
(22:58):
And I had to say that to a lotof people during the fires
because you know, we were hurt.We all ran away to the hills
when we were down. We all gohunting. We all go berry picking
with our kyé7es, or Aunties, ormoms. So when we got to sit
there and watch it burn off, ithurt a lot of us mentally and
(23:20):
emotionally. You know, I justhad to like the only thing I
think it was like it's aphoenix. This had to happen.
She's taking back what is her's,but she's gonna give us
something better. And it's ourturn to take care of it better
than we have before.
Adam Huggins (23:41):
Sarah and I said our goodbyes to Sam and her new
puppy. And then we headed upDeadman's Creek towards the last
stop on our visit when we comeback I have two more voices to
introduce.
Mendel Skulski (23:57):
Or, reintroduce. That's after the break.
Marianne Ignace (24:26):
[Secwepemctsin] Hello, my name is Marianne
Ignace. My Secwépemc name is[Secwepemctsin]. It was given to
(24:47):
me by my husband Ron's auntie,the late Mona Jules. And the
name that you see on my emailsignatures is Gulḵiihlgad.
That's my adoptive name amongHaida people where I I started
out my research and living inNorth AmericanIndigenous
communities many, many yearsago.
Adam Huggins (25:07):
It's hard to overstate Marianne's
credentials. She's the directorof the Indigenous Languages
program at Simon FraserUniversity in the Department of
Linguistics and IndigenousStudies. She works across BC,
the Yukon, and even SoutheastAlaska on language documentation
and revitalization. Naturally,that work requires Marianne to
(25:28):
be a fluent ethnobotanist andethnoecologist. And this is her
husband.
Marianne Ignace (25:33):
I'll turn it over to Ron now to introduce
himself.
Ron Ignace (25:38):
[Secwepemctsin] My name is Ron Ignace, and my
Shuswap name is Stsmél’qen.
Adam Huggins (25:48):
Ron was the elected chief of the Skeetchestn
Indian Band for over 30 years.In the past, he served as the
chairman of the Shuswap NationTribal Council, and President of
its Cultural Society. And since2021, he served as the very
first Commissioner of IndigenousLanguages in Canada. For
decades, he and Marianne haveco-authored books and papers,
(26:11):
and overseen an academicpartnership between Simon Fraser
University and this Secwépemcnation.
Mendel Skulski (26:16):
Holy smokes. This is a... this is a real
power couple. And these are thesame folks that we met in the
cold open in the last episode,right?
Adam Huggins (26:25):
Do people know what that is?
Mendel Skulski (26:26):
The beginning.
Adam Huggins (26:27):
Yes, in fact, and the reason that I knew I had to
talk to them was because of apaper that they'd recently
published with SarahDickson-Hoyle
Mendel Skulski (26:35):
Huh!
Adam Huggins (26:36):
About the concept of Walking on Two Legs. So
naturally, I asked them aboutwhere this idea came from.
Ron Ignace (26:44):
We, as Indigenous peoples now, are compelled to
live in two worlds, basically,you know. My great grandmother
told me, you know, to go out andstudy the white man's world and
come back and help your people.When I was going to university,
there was the notion that we, asIndian people, had no history,
(27:05):
simply because we lived in acircle. Because if you put your
finger in one part of a circle,and you go all the way around,
you wind up back where you were,right? They were saying,
Indigenous people don't occupytime and space, and thereby
don't have history. And I lookedat European history — European
history is linear. It's one biglong line from the day that
(27:28):
Christ was born to where we arenow sitting together here today.
And I went back and I studiedour stories, our stsptekwll, our
traditional stories. Our elderstold us that's our university.
That's our school. There had tobe a synthesis. I couldn't
accept that fact, because oflistening to our stories, I knew
(27:50):
that we had history.
Adam Huggins (27:52):
And thinking back, Ron realized that even though
his people's traditional storiestell about life in terms of
cycles, that doesn't necessarilymean that things are going in a
circle.
Ron Ignace (28:05):
If you listen more carefully, it's a spiral. And we
interact with nature. In theprocess of dialectical
relationship with nature —nature transforms us, and we
transform nature — withinnature, not outside of nature.
So that way, we evolve and havehistory, occupy time and space.
Adam Huggins (28:28):
So I'm sitting there with Ron and Marianne in
their kitchen, and Ron istelling me this story. And I'm
thinking to myself, like, I feellike I've seen this image of the
spiral before.
Okay?
So I asked them about it. Andthey were like, "well, yeah, we,
we made an illustration of thatspiral. And we put it in a book
that we were writing. And thenwe put it in a paper that we co
(28:49):
authored with Nancy Turner."
Mendel Skulski (28:51):
Nancy Turner, we had her on the show — in season
one.
Adam Huggins (28:54):
Yeah, she's an ethnobotanist rockstar. I read
this paper that they wrote allthose years ago. And I swear to
God, it's been shaping the waythat I think about Indigenous
knowledge ever since. Like, thatspiral is lodged in my brain.
Mendel Skulski (29:08):
Wow.
Adam Huggins (29:09):
And I'm sure I'm not alone. Anyway, Ron and
Marianne would keep returning tothose traditional stories in
their work as a wellspring ofideas.
Ron Ignace (29:19):
We started studying our laws — we have Secwépemc
laws, even our own constitutionthat goes back 5000 years and we
have a transformer stories.
Adam Huggins (29:30):
Mendel, are you familiar with transformers
stories?
Mendel Skulski (29:33):
Not the robot movies?
Adam Huggins (29:35):
No, not the robot movies.
Mendel Skulski (29:37):
Well, then, no, I am not.
Adam Huggins (29:39):
Okay. Well, to summarize briefly, if I can...
many First Nations have storiesof a time when the world was
unrecognizable to us today —full of monsters and animals
that spoke and walked as humansdo. Then came the transformers,
supernatural beings who changeand rearranged things to make
(30:01):
them the way that they aretoday, more or less. On the
coast, Raven is often a keytransformer. Whereas in the
interior, Coyote takes on thatrole.
Ron Ignace (30:12):
Transformers utilize the knowledge that they were
given from the elders totransform cannibalistic type of
animals, transformer animalsthat caused us harm, and
reciprocal accountability andresponsibility is all embedded
in those stories.
Adam Huggins (30:32):
But the morals of these stories are not always so
easy to reconcile.
Ron Ignace (30:37):
We have a coyote story that tells us not to copy
other people's ways, that itcauses great harm and grief if
we just adopt them and take themon unquestionably. And yet,
there's another story in whichWest Coast transformers come up
after they've met up with coyoteand admonished that we should be
working together to help eachother and to look after each
(31:00):
other's interests.
Adam Huggins (31:02):
To Ron, these stories at first felt
contradictory. Like, how are wesupposed to maintain our own
ways and identity, but at thesame time, interact with, and
learn from, and help otherpeople who have a very different
worldview?
Mendel Skulski (31:16):
Right, like there's this one story that
tells us not to adopt otherpeople's ways. And then this
other story tells us that weneed to work together and learn
from other people.
Adam Huggins (31:26):
Yeah, and at the same time, here he was studying
his traditional stories, andstudying in the academy. So in
some ways, he was alreadyembodying that contradiction.
And then, he thought back toresidential school, how he and
his fellow students would bepunished for speaking their
language.
Ron Ignace (31:45):
But I learned that if I thought in Secwepemctsin,
they couldn't beat me for what Ithought.
Adam Huggins (31:52):
And thinking back on those difficult times, he and
Marianne realized that, in asimilar way, his elders had been
hiding their own religion in thechurch.
Mendel Skulski (32:04):
What do you mean by that?
Ron Ignace (32:05):
Our people were doing a similar thing, in a way,
because our traditional beliefs— our religious and spiritual
beliefs were under severeattack.
Adam Huggins (32:18):
And Ron could remember his time as a child,
sitting on a church pew,listening to his elders saying
Shuswap prayers.
Ron Ignace (32:26):
It dawned on me that a portion of our spiritual
belief that we had that wasbeing condemned by the priests,
were actually being sung andperformed in the church without
the priest knowing that becausethey didn't know the language.
Adam Huggins (32:44):
So clearly, one system of knowledge and beliefs
could survive, even whenembedded or hidden within
another system of knowledge orbeliefs. But you know, how
there's a lot of discussionright now about integrating
Indigenous knowledge into theacademy, and into land
management. And I guess intojust about everything else.
Mendel Skulski (33:05):
Yeah, it's kind of a recurrent theme on this
podcast.
Marianne Ignace (33:09):
Many people have used the terms to
"integrate" Indigenous knowledgeinto western sciences. But guess
who loses out in the process ofthat — it tends to be indigenous
knowledge becoming a footnote,or an afterthought, as opposed
to having our own validity andpurpose and ways of doing things
(33:33):
that can make change in theworld.
Adam Huggins (33:36):
So Ron, and Marianne, get to thinking, Well,
if you can embed Indigenousknowledge into a Western way of
thinking, then why not do thereverse? Why not flip that model
on its head and say, "let'sstand on one leg of Indigenous
knowledge, and on one leg ofWestern science, but we're going
(33:56):
to walk with an Indigenous heartand mind."
Ron Ignace (34:00):
And so that's where I began thinking about the
strategy of Walking on Two Legs,bringing the two knowledges
together without losingyourself, but maintaining
control over western knowledge.Because to me, Western science,
by and large is a rogue sciencethat if you don't manage it and
(34:21):
control it, it goes rabid onyou.
Adam Huggins (34:24):
And in addition to not having a moral compass,
Western science doesn't hold amonopoly on science.
Ron Ignace (34:34):
Yeah, our elders did scientific experiments and they
were not afraid. And in so doingthey reached out to other forms
of knowledge, and were utilizing— in their own way — walking on
two legs. And by bringing inSarah we were walking on, on...
on her legs.
Marianne Ignace (34:54):
Four legs
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (34:56):
Now we've got six legs!
Mendel Skulski (35:00):
So cute. And, you know, I was actually just
thinking that what Sam andDarrel and Sarah are doing out
on the land is kind of exactlythis, right, like, utilizing
some of the tools and trappingsof Western science, but moving
very deliberately from a placeof Secwépemc values.
Adam Huggins (35:21):
Yeah, they're doing it on the land. And
they're doing it in the paperthat they wrote, this metaphor
of walking on two legs,definitely emerges directly from
what's going on in Secwépemcterritory and thought. It's a
concept by and for Indigenouspeople who are making use of
Western science, while alsoreclaiming their own knowledges.
(35:44):
But as a settler, I also tooksomething from the metaphor
Mendel Skulski (35:49):
Isn't taking stuff, kind of the meaning of
being a settler.
Adam Huggins (35:54):
I can see how I walked right into that.
Mendel Skulski (35:56):
But did you get there on one or two legs?
Adam Huggins (36:01):
Okay. What I meant to say was that, as a settler
working with Indigenous people,the idea of walking on two legs
says to me, that it's probablygood to remember that I'm not
the protagonist of the storythat's unfolding.
Mendel Skulski (36:16):
Right. Yeah, you're, you're part of it. But
you're an appendage.
Adam Huggins (36:21):
Yeah, an appendage. And I'll just go out
on a limb here.
Mendel Skulski (36:26):
Pfff.
Adam Huggins (36:26):
And suggest that, as an appendage, you really
don't want to get out of stepwith the folks that you're
working with. A step behind,okay. A step ahead, maybe. But
definitely just one step at atime, walking in the same
direction.
Mendel Skulski (36:42):
And you probably also want to understand the
terrain that you're walking on.
Adam Huggins (36:49):
Yeah. And in that spirit, I'd actually like to
zoom out for a moment, and justtake in the cumulative impacts
that I observed during my shorttime in Secwépemc territory.
Like many families, Ron andMarianne were forced to evacuate
their homes in both 2017 and2021. And they've seen the
destruction of their territoryin real time.
Marianne Ignace (37:13):
We've experienced some really, really
profound losses around what'shappened to the land.
Adam Huggins (37:19):
For example, Marianne told me that, if you
look at the totality ofSkeetchestn traditional
territory, all of the landswhere Ron's ancestors lived
since time immemorial...
Marianne Ignace (37:30):
45 or so percent of that has been logged
off. Another 40% has beenseriously harmed by the two
wildfires in succession. Itreally means, in the end, 15 or
so percent of that part ofSecwépemc territory is still in
(37:50):
the kind of shape that we wantit to be in. And that to me is
really, really scary. And we'vewe've got to do something about
it to leave a legacy for ourchildren and grandchildren.
Ron Ignace (38:04):
Not only is it the forest devasted — when they come
by after the forest, and theysay "oh, we got to take these...
harvest these trees, you know,these burnt trees." Which then
they go in and rip up the landand further impact the land. And
then once those machinery leave,then the second pounding that
(38:24):
comes along, is the cattlegrazing. And what they do is
they compact the soil and thesoil turns rock hard, and my
medicine plants can't grow, andwhat's left the cows eat. So
we're really good at compoundingdestruction on the land, you
know.
Adam Huggins (38:45):
And then on top of that, you add pressure from
non-Indigenous hunters, fromoff-road recreational vehicle
use, from mining, fromagriculture. And famously after
wildfires, morel mushrooms comeup by the ton, and a wave of
morel pickers is sure to follow.
Mendel Skulski (39:04):
Right! Yeah, I'd heard about how many pickers
went to Elephant Hill after thefire. It sounded like an
absolute gold rush.
Mm.
I'd heard that Secwépemcactually set up a permit system
to deal with the crowds ofpeople that were out on the
land.
Adam Huggins (39:19):
Yeah, that permitting system was actually
Ron's doing as chief inpartnership with neighboring
Secwépemc nations. And they feltsuch a system was called for
because, legally in BC,harvesting in the understory is
completely unregulated.
Ron Ignace (39:36):
And as far as I understand Western law, wherever
there's a vacuum if somebodyoccupies it, your law reigns.
Adam Huggins (39:46):
So Ron thought that the Secwépemc might as well
implement their own.
Ron Ignace (39:50):
So we did that!
Adam Huggins (39:51):
And it actually did make a huge difference. And
in addition to the permitsystem, they also created
designated campsites for themorel pickers.
Ron Ignace (40:00):
We took off, what is it 13,000 litres of human waste
of the mountain, and 15,000pounds of garbage that would
have been strewn from one end ofthe mountain to the other.
Mendel Skulski (40:12):
Wow. Okay, so... so this was a real innovation in
land use, and it was kind of putin place and guided by community
interests.
Adam Huggins (40:22):
Yeah, I think it's actually a great model for how
it can be possible to manage thedemands on a complex land base
like this one.
Mendel Skulski (40:30):
The image I'm getting in my head is, you know,
it's really just a landscapethat's under incredible human
pressure. And then, of course,you add in the climate crisis,
and these wildfires, and thefloods, the landslides. These
communities keep getting hit.And then they're forced to
salvage whatever they can, inthe aftermath... which puts
(40:54):
additional pressure on alandscape that's already so
heavily impacted.
Adam Huggins (40:59):
And this is happening every year, all across
this territory, and across thiscountry, this continent, and the
planet as a whole. I mean, whatwe're seeing unfold in and
around Skeetchestn is a realitythat just hasn't come for most
of us yet. But is on its way, inone form or another. And, you
(41:20):
know, you do those immediatethings, right? You do the
immediate recovery efforts.
Mendel Skulski (41:25):
Yeah.
Adam Huggins (41:26):
But a lot of that's really just
rehabilitation, right, tophysical infrastructure, maybe
to community infrastructure. Butnot to the natural
infrastructure, not to theecology, not to the psychic
infrastructure.
Mendel Skulski (41:41):
So that means the real damage still hasn't
been addressed.
Adam Huggins (41:47):
Yeah, exactly. It's a lot to process. So I
stepped outside with Sarah. AndI asked her directly — what does
post disaster recovery reallymean, in a place like this?
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (42:00):
I don't know if the disaster is over
here. You know, if you're inVancouver, maybe the disaster is
over, the smoke is gone. Ifyou're in BC Wildfire, you're
maybe looking at the nextdisaster. But again, for people
who live here, you know, Sam wassaying every year when there's
floods, the land has been takenback by the river. People often
say "natural disasters." There'snothing natural about this. You
(42:22):
know, it's a hazard event, it'sa fire, it's a flood. Maybe
these are natural processes. Buta disaster is a disaster when it
impacts things that we careabout — when it impacts people
and impacts values on the land.And those impacts, the scope and
scale of those impacts is notnatural. It's due to decisions
that have been made overdecades, if not centuries. What
(42:43):
got us to this point that itbecame such a disaster? And why
is it continuing?
Mendel Skulski (42:48):
Well, it's continuing because we keep
burning fossil fuels. And wekeep pushing the land to its
absolute limits. We're living inthe disaster.
Adam Huggins (43:03):
I mean, the folks that teach us and certainly are.
And for the most part, the mediaattention and the funding that
descended on these communitiesin the immediate aftermath of
the fires has departed — aboutas quickly as it arrived. So we
go on with our lives thinkingmaybe that time heals all
wounds. But some of these woundsrun really deep. And they're
(43:24):
certainly not beyond our abilityto help heal. It just seems so
clear that we are not investingenough in dealing with the full
spectrum of impacts. And withthe fundamental drivers have
those impacts.
Mendel Skulski (43:37):
Yeah.
Well, Adam, that's pretty bleak.
Adam Huggins (43:47):
Honestly, that's the way that I've been feeling
lately. And that was myexperience up there. I'm not
going to sugarcoat it. But I amholding on to this image that
Sam placed in my mind — of thePhoenix, rising from the ashes
after the fires. I can see itpersonified in Secwépemc people
(44:09):
asserting their rights to leadthe recovery and restoration of
their lands. And as I wasstanding in Ron and Marianne's
backyard, staring out over aDeadman's Creek, Sarah pointed
out this beautiful green bend onthe edge of the water.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (44:26):
So they actually burned all of this —
Ron and his son, Joe, burned allof these flats this spring. They
always burn in kind of earlyspring. So that really green
grass down here, and across theother side of the river. They
lit this whole thing on fire inmid-March sometime — when
there's still kind of snow up onthe hill slopes. Yeah, it's come
back pretty good.
Adam Huggins (44:46):
Wow, just burning right along the creek.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (44:48):
Yep. I think it was Joe's first time
doing like a big burn. So yeah,Ron was showing him the ropes.
Mendel Skulski (44:56):
That's so cool.
Adam Huggins (44:57):
Yeah, I mean, it was just gorgeous. And you'd
never know that they burned itearlier that year. And then
Sarah pointed over to thislittle rise of land right next
to the house. There is thisline, as clear as day where the
burned area stops and theunburned area begins.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (45:14):
You can see these bright green colors of
crested wheatgrass and brome —these introduced pasture
grasses. And there's this reallystriking line as you look up to
this dry hillside.
Adam Huggins (45:25):
And on the burn side of the line, there's native
bunch grass prairie with thesecultural keystone species and
wildflowers. I mean, it's justextraordinary.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (45:35):
And if you come here, maybe a few months
earlier, you know just afterthey burned, it would have been
the sea of beautiful yellowbells — this beautiful yellow
Lily, which is a culturalkeystone plant for the
Secwépemc.
Adam Huggins (45:46):
And on the side that they don't burn, introduced
pasture grasses and weeds. Itwas just an incredible and
unmistakable difference.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle (45:54):
So yeah, it's really, really striking.
I've never seen a line likethis. And this has really been
maintained by the burning thatRon has been doing every year,
for the past, you know, 10, 15years.
Ron Ignace (46:07):
What I heard and was taught from my great
grandparents, we had gardensdown here in the valley bottom
that we tilled and planted, andweeded. But we also had other
gardens in the mountain said wewe went and tended to and looked
after. And when we got back hereand moved to this place, I
remember that we got to knowthat the wind at certain times
(46:30):
would blow up the valley, and atcertain times a day it would
switch and blow down. And so Isaid, we're going to try to
experiment here — use fire tosee if we can heal our land.
Because for a long time, I had awhole host of knapweed and such
invasive species here. And atfirst there, you know, I was
(46:52):
paying the kids 10 cents aknapweed. "You go out and pull
the knapweed, I'll pay you 10cents." I almost went broke!
Then I reduced it to five cents.And then finally I said, "No,
we're gonna go back the oldtraditional way, and we're going
to use fire." And we did, forwhat, about 15 years. I would
(47:13):
set a fire out here in one end,time a day, and switch it around
and start a fire in anotherpart. And the wind would bring
them together and put it out.And one day we went out behind
the house and Marianne camerushing back in, said "Hey!
There's ts̓ewéw̓ye growing outhere!" And we found that also
(47:34):
qweq̓wile, which is a storiedplant. Those are two keystone
plants that hadn't grown on thismound for 100 years.
Adam Huggins (47:45):
And standing there, staring at that solid
line between restoration on oneside, and neglect on the other.
It was as good a reminder asI've ever had that
transformation is alwayspossible.
Ron Ignace (48:02):
We have one great word that I like to say to
people, and give them an idea ofwhat our thought processes are.
And that word is tult7. That wasone of the first few words that
coyote uttered when he camedown. And the definition of that
word is the ability for one toutilize their energy to
(48:24):
transform matter. And that wordripples through all our
transformer stories coming down.And we've learned a lot of ways
in how to live on the land todeploying that, you know. We
understood from the beginning ofour time, I believe, that how
the whole universe worked wasfrom energy into matter and
(48:45):
matter back into energy. And welearned from that, and we're
keeping that tradition, andrevive it, revitalize our
traditional knowledge of ways ofliving. And hopefully to create
a better life for our childrenand our people.
Adam Huggins (49:05):
This episode of Future Ecologies was produced
and hosted by Mendel Skulski andmyself, Adam Huggins. It
features the voices of SamDraney, Darrel Peters, Marianne
Ignace, Ron Ignace, and SarahDickson-Hoyle, with music by
Thumbug, Spencer W. Stuart, andSunfish Moon Light.
(49:27):
Big thanks to Lux Meteora forthe cover artwork, which is a
lovely diptych for both episodesin this mini series. Thanks also
to Aila Takenaka and AvaStanley, who interned with us
for this episode, and to SarahDickson-Hoyle for inviting me to
visit the interior.
You can find links, citationsand a transcript for this
episode, plus photos from myroad trip to Cache Creek and
(49:50):
Skeetchestn atfutureecologies.net
Finally, this independent,ad-free podcast was made
possible by the support of ourwonderful community on Patreon.
to get early episode releases,bonus behind-the-scenes content,
and our lovely Discord server,join us at patreon.com/future
ecologies. If you can't supportus financially, write us a
(50:12):
review and keep sharing us withyour friends. That's really how
the show gets around. And wereally appreciate all of you who
take the time to recommend us toothers. You know who you are.
Alright, until next time, thankyou for listening
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